Hello everybody,
My dear friends wrote already about our activities in Cluj and Predeal, about cool trip to Bran, and Romanian culture in general.
I will try to add a little bit of experiences from mine-polish point of view.
At first some general impressions about Romania as a country and about its culture.
I came here with many bad stereotypes. I really don’t know why, but people in Poland identify Romania with very poor land, full of gipsy people, pickpockets and stray dogs. Everybody, who I spoke about my plans, dissuade me to spend here few months of my life. I imagined this place as very dangerous zone, where I will be afraid to go out of flat alone. But as I ascertain many times, it is always better to create your own opinion instead of blind trust to rumors.
First impression about Cluj-Napoca was very positive. The city has so nice architecture, beautiful old town and many cool bars and clubs. The people are very polite, kind and hospitable, also as guys said girls are very pretty here. There is almost no gipsy people or stray dogs on the streets, at least not more that in Warsaw.
However, as we heard Cluj is one of the best, or maybe even the best city in Romania, according to security, culture and level of life, so maybe some other parts of Romania suits better to some not positive stereotypes.
Impressing is the number of people speaking English language in Cluj, since I traveled a lot around Europe, I must say that, I didn’t meet so many English speakers yet. People selling vegetables, cashiers at shops, waiters or passers on the sidewalk, all of them were possible to communicate in English. I didn’t see it other countries like: Spain, Italy, France, Turkey or Croatia. Maybe it is just specificity of Cluj, I don’t know.
Quite extraordinary thing on the streets is, when we rise our head above, we can notice the huge mess in electricity wires. I have never seen such a thing before. From one electricity column can pass around 50 wires. What you can see on the picture below.
Nice information for polish people, 1lei is almost equal to 1zloty, so we don’t have to count money during shopping. There is also one interesting thing about Romanian bank notes – they are made with plastic, any rain or washing machine can destroy them, almost impossible to tear up. The prices (at least in Cluj) are very similar like in Poland, drinks in bars are less expensive than in Warsaw, but have similar prices to small polish cities.
And what we have learned here until now? We had 2 arrival trainings, one for few days just after our arrival to Cluj and next one in the end of November for five days in beautiful city Predeal. We learned a lot interesting things, about our EVS stage, about problems that we can face, how to be a leader, how to work in a team, also about Romania and its culture and our lovely city Cluj-Napoca. During 5 days of Connector event, which took part in Cluj we learned many methods of non-formal education, which can be useful during work with kids and youngsters. Working in our organization Support for Youth Development give us chance to organize and take part in events like: educational movie nights, discussions about youth problems with a cup of coffee, prepare intercultural evenings about our cultures, Buddhist meditations and much more. Every day we learn something new, what spread our horizons and give a chance to help others.
That would be enough for the first time 🙂
I hope you enjoy with us our Romanian adventure and see you after two weeks.
Lucy (Ludwika) from Poland
Activities in Romania 