Expat In Romania

This weekend got my wheels turning. First, my girlfriend and I hitchhiked to the next county over to visit my childhood town of Blaj and we had a lengthy discussion about the state of Romanian football with the guy who picked us up in his flatbed truck. Then, I got the idea for this post after reading a sports paper somebody left on the train on the way back to Cluj. Among analyses of upcoming matches, players, and betting odds, there was a piece about FC Vaslui, one of the better teams in the league. Narrowly missing the title of Romanian champions last season, Vaslui has been drawn to play Inter Milan in the play-off to the Europa League group stages later this month. They will be soundly beaten. But there was something else that caught my eye. The article indicated that the team's owner, a former player and referee  now turned agriculture investor, Adrian Porumboiu, has an estimated fortune of a 1Bn Euro. While I'm not a fan of telling how they should spend their money, I ha...

Believe it or not, this is actually a topic of debate among some circles in Romania. It reminds me of an awesome joke I heard on Radio Guerrilla. This guy who lives in Bucharest goes back home to visit his parents in their small town, still stuck somewhere between 1972 and 1997, where one neighbour still drives a mint condition Dacia 1100 while the other feeds the chickens every morning at 5am. That kinda place. He gets there while one of the neighbours, Ionel, is out on the porch. "Come back to visit us, eh" Ionel says. "Well you know, I don't have much time for home visits nowadays." The guy says, detecting the underlying reproach. "Oh, yeah, I know, I know, you big city folks have everything except time these days. Wasn't like that during communism, though," he says wistfully. "Come on, Ionel, we don't need to go there..." "But of course, and in some ways it was much better, really!" "Oh stop, you're goin...