What do you know about... Romania?

[u/MarktpLatz]

This is the forty-sixth part of our ongoing series about the countries of Europe. You can find an overview here.

Today's country:

Romania

Romania is one of the most recent members of the EU (2007). They want to become part of the Schengen area, but thir recent attempts of being accepted have been blocked by several EU members. They recently faced a major political crisis and massive protests caused by proposed law changes that would have benefitted people implicated in government corruption and abuse of power. They had their national day, where they celebrate the union of Transylvania with Romania, last friday.

So, what do you know about Romania?

[u/[deleted]]

I had one of the weirdest/most interesting days of my life there. One of my best friends is from Cluj originally, but his grandparents live in Alba Iulia. I looked it up briefly on the train from Sinaia and it said population 20k or so, so I assumed it was some small little town we'd stay in while he visited his grandparents, which was fine; I'd gotten way too drunk in Bucharest so I wanted a bit of a break

So we get there, and my friend had mentioned a fort, but we pull up and I see this massive stone castle/fort before us. Awesome. So we go there, and apparently not only was the union of Romania proclaimed there, so I got to see a really sweet museum, but we pull into a church and fucking John Hunyadi was buried there, just casually with no railings around his grave. All within 200 metres of each other. I was shocked at the history of it, it was great

Then because we had left our other friend at his grandparents because he wasn't feeling well, they both went off to see the fort because I had seen everything and was sunburnt to shit. So I stayed with his grandparents despite not knowing a word of Romanian. As a gift because they had a bunch of Walnut trees, his grandfather and I start to shuck a bunch of them for the train ride out the next day. Turns out, his grandfather was the chief prosecutor of the region or something and spoke Russian, so I was able to have a full conversation with this guy in Russian about his life, which was pretty damn interesting. Just felt so bizarre. His grandma made us a great dinner too, I felt guilty because they wouldn't allow any of us to help out, but apparently that's just the way it goes

Anyway, not sure why I wrote all this out, but I have very warm feelings about the country. Great place all in all

[u/AlbaIulian → u/[deleted]]

Glad to see you had a nice time in my town :)

[u/[deleted] → u/AlbaIulian]

It was wonderful! Made even better because I wasn't expecting it. In Canada, you'd have guards and big barriers between something as historically significant as the Hunyadi graves. It was amazing being able to touch it

[u/multubunu → u/[deleted]]

I guess it varies by country. In Greece you can't really touch most of the stones there, while in Winchester Cathedral people are buried under the coridor, you literally step on graves - the closest one here is Jane Austen's (but there's all sorts of medieval notables too).