To a nation where people wish each other things on a wildly wide range of occasions, from having a haircut to getting down to work or wearing new shoes, the Christmas and New Year wishes are highly important. Whether made over the phone, in a text message, by email or handwritten in a classical Christmas card, the winter holidays wishes go in different tones and styles. Let’s review some of them. 1) Classical & common Standard wishes necessarily include a reference to good he

It’s winter. Unless you are the victim of Ionel, a spoilt brat who poured jam into his mother’s guest’s boots (in satirist Ion Luca Caragiale’s short story “Vizita”), you should have no good reason to have in your boots anything other than your own socks and feet. Or so you’d think. Well, not if it’s the 6th of December. On that day, early in the morning, here in Romania you’re likely to find sweets and fruit, or alternatively a rod in your boots. And the “culprit” for that w

1. Can you sum up in a paragraph how you’ve come to be a teacher? I think our childhood experiences influence a lot our future choice of profession. I first experienced being a teacher when I was about 8, and my father and his friend were my first students. With a jacket on my shoulders and my mother’s high heels, I was playing the “school game”, testing the two. Twelve years later, I was on my summer holiday after finishing my first year at the University of Bucharest, and I

If you’re an expat who has lived in Romania for a few good months, you are very likely to have been told, when you got a haircut or a new hairdo, something along the lines of “May it settle well with you!” – which didn’t make much sense but sounded wholeheartedly positive. Similarly, if you’re a Romanian using English as a foreign language, you’re quite likely to have asked an English native, “What do you wish someone who’s got a new pair of shoes?” (You don’t wish them anyth

Among the trending topics recently popularised in glossy magazines and in the world of publishing there are two emotions: hygge, marketed as “the secret of Danish happiness”, a sensation of wellbeing combining a sense of comfort, relaxation and freedom [1]; and sisu, a concept which “identifies the Finnish people”, approximated as boldness, grit and perseverance in the face of adversity [2]. While the two feelings are interesting and worthwhile in themselves, what catches the

Those of you who are naturally inclined to read a restaurant menu not only for nutritional purposes but also to pick on typos, misspellings and funny mistranslations [1] are probably used to seeing entries like “ciorbă de văcuţă” and “mămăliguţă cu brânză”, as in Meniu 2 in the picture. Nothing really wrong with those, but they do make you wonder a bit: both “văcuţă” and “mămăliguţă” are based on vacă (cow) and mămăligă (polenta), to which the diminutive suffix -uţă was added

It probably takes comedian Hugh Laurie’s straight face to be able to announce serenely, “This lovely summer we warmly recommend that you go to the cemetery.” The Merry Cemetery. “Downtown” the village of Săpânţa, a little settlement perched up north in Maramureş County, close to Romania’s border with Ukraine, the Merry Cemetery is final home to around 800 deceased villagers, and a UNESCO heritage site which has made it repeatedly in the top 10 of world’s best funerary destina

1. Can you sum up how you came to be a teacher of Romanian? I became a teacher in 2000. I’m not sure that’s what I wanted to be long-term, as I thought it was a bit limiting: you see, I love travelling, changes, in short, being on the move. I used to work in the state education system for a few years, and didn’t start collaborating with International House Bucharest until 2006, only to find out that I can have it all, and that being a teacher does not limit me, but opens up n

I am not the first and will definitely not be the last to add another Dogs vs. Cats article in this never-ending debate. I will, however, try to express my own unbiased, unprejudiced, fair-minded point of view on the matter. 1. Cats use the litter box. Whether it is a warm, cold, sunny, rainy, stormy, end-of-the-world day, dog owners have to take “man’s best friend” out for a long walk at least two times a day. With a cat, it just cannot get simpler than… simply finding a box

Weekend holidaymakers and locals strolling on Bucharest’s Calea Victoriei on 1 April 2018 experienced the thrill of losing their way right into turbulent 1945 Romania. Streams of angered workers in navy overalls, suburban housewives with worried eyes under their grey scarves, young intellectual rebels sporting the ringlet curls of the trendy ‘40s, and bourgeois men in smartly tailored three-piece suits – all, swelling into the Palace Square. For handsome 24-year-old King Mich

Sensibilities have changed significantly among Romanians in the last few decades: for example, the music of the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, which moved our (grand)parents to tears, risks giving us a good laugh, today - and nothing more. Yet, there’s still this one Romanian word which calls to mind this one Romanian feeling which, whether we’re young or elderly, residents or émigrés, seldom fails to impact us: dor. If we’re here, ne e dor de (we miss) friends or relatives from far a

There was once a Roman offspring On Momma Dochia’s braided string. Handsome and news-some, Stuck to the ladies’ bosom, Love, luck and much fun he always did bring! If there’s a Romanian tradition to fully deserve an Irish limerick, that’d be the mărţişor! Because of its fine blend of clover-level luck and a spirit of merriment in the month of St Patrick, i.e. March. On Thracian edge-of-the-Empire territory, i.e. nowadays Romania, the tradition understandably and predictably s

Do you ever miss those cold winter mornings when the whole house smells of sweet bread (cozonac) and your friends call you to go out carolling? I close my eyes and I can feel that smell again… Do you ever want to be a child again, to go sleighing and snowballing all day long? Well, I do! I really miss those wonderful times! I remember all the family preparations before Christmas: cooking the traditional Romanian cabbage rolls (sarmale), pork specialties like piftie, tobă, cal

A few years ago around Christmas, a Romanian-American acquaintance I was supposed to meet for a chat and coffee phoned to put off our meeting: he’d been invited to a childhood friend’s house to have a meal of “piftie and other such barbarities.” My acquaintance, a vegetarian Buddhist from an old aristocratic Moldovan family, who was now visiting the old country after 40 years in the US, was, of course, horrified by the prospect. The barbarities in question, colloquially known

Winter may be cold but there are so many ways to make it pleasant: a good book in front of the fireplace, snow, Christmas, New Year and mulled wine with cinnamon! I know that the whole city becomes a tortuous labyrinth much more crowded than usual, full of people so irritable that they pick up a fight in a wink, but why don’t we just leave all that behind, and think about the beauty of this season, instead? Winter brings people together; it is all about love, connection, d

It is said that controversial people bring about controversial histories. And controversial histories give birth to equally controversial theories, monuments and edifices. The same debate surrounds a building every Romanian knows a little bit about, but of which very few know everything. Maybe you pass by it every day but, as it’s part of your routine, , you don’t really pay attention to it anymore. Maybe you saw it on TV or maybe you read about it somewhere. Whichever the

One of the most prominent and loved feminine characters in the history of Romania is Queen Marie (Regina Maria). With a strong personality and a sincere love for her people, Marie managed to make herself and the country known worldwide. One of her favorite quotes was ‘Character is destiny’ attributed to the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, and later, discussed by Frederick Nietzsche. In this article, we are going to see how her strong and vivid character shaped her destiny.

This light-hearted yet quite pragmatic series of posts focuses on verbal mannerisms in contemporary Romanian to give you a hint of where they might come from, a bit of an insight into the cultural implications they might carry, and an idea as to when you might want to use them, in your Romanian-speaking experience. Having tackled the nice and neat, Latin-inspired making of “hai, pa!” (Part I) and “nu-mi spune!...” (Part II), having tiptoed among some of the mysteries of ellip

For a long time, tradition and modernity were perceived as two opposite concepts. Until recently, tradition was seen as an obstacle to progress and modernization. The perception has changed as a consequence of the debate concerning the effects of globalization on cultural heritage. This debate led to reconsider our own cultural identity and rediscover the things that make us unique in the world. Suddenly, tradition was reconceptualised and became the source of inspiration fo

Sânziene - the word designates an annual festival held in honor of the fairies. Etymologically, the name comes from the Latin Sancta, Diana,