Expat In Romania

I came up on this post today and rather than attempt to regurgitate its contents, I'm going to go ahead and link it here. The only comment I want to add is that, as a Romanian, I couldn't imagine this country without haystacks peppering the countryside. They are a testament to Romania's rich agricultural traditions. Somehow, whenever I see them I can't help but think that no matter how crazy the world gets, it can't be all that bad as long as we still got people making haystacks. Here is everything you wanted to know about The Art of the Romanian Haystack

Last night I came up on a marketing blog post . The author argues, correctly, that Toronto is badly in need of a consistent and powerful marketing message that can put the city on the travel map and attract more tourists. Since moving to Europe I've gotten a better feel for this Toronto-as-a-tourist-attraction conundrum, which is why I think that even if the city had that message out tomorrow, there would be little substance to back it up. 1. History - Toronto is badly lacking in anything of historical significance. Black Creek Pioneer village, the old firehouse on Lombard, and the first post office on Adelaide are pretty much laughable as historical artifacts to any European tourist. They're not particularly special by North American standards either. Unless the tourism board wants to rewrite it, that's about it for history. 2. Culture - A bright spot here as Toronto is coming along in many respects. But it doesn't stand above the citywide cultural events that take...

It's always a pleasure to see a new email message from somebody who's been reading this blog. In this case, the message came in from a reader who first contacted me last year. He moved to Canada quite a while ago and settled in the Northwest Territories. He wanted to respond to the previous post on Rosia Montana, but given the length of the reply, I've asked him to allow me to publish it as its own post. He asked me not to share his name, but outside of that, I'm copying it verbatim. (Edit: In Romana mai jos) Hello Matt, Here we go again: Rosia Montana. I got involved in this project about four years ago. I had had phone interviews with radio stations in Bucharest; I published several articles in two or three magazines in Bucharest. I hosted, guided and loaded up with data and portable computer equipment one “Romanian explorer” as the Romanian media called her: Uca Marinescu. Perhaps the name rings a bell. Anyhow she never got back to me; there was no feedba...

I recently found an essay of mine on U.S foreign policy entitled "The Disparities on Vietnam". The 'disparities' referred to events leading up to intervention and the eventual withdrawal from Vietnam as presented by the US State Department on one hand, and the authors of Rise to Globalism on the other. As part of his comments, the professor wrote this at the end: "There may be only One Truth out there somewhere, but humans being partial, having limited sensory arrays and all that, I suspect that the closest we'll get to sneaking up on said truth consists in comparing versions with a will to cancelling out the nonsense and synthesizing what remains, rather than a Best Version Takes All sort-of basis. But then, you do the cancellation thing, you do it with logic and do it beautifully...If it's a tad grim, so is the reality it depicts." I can't promise it won't be grim, but this is my take on the truth about Rosia Montana. My only goal is ...