What I have learned in 6 weeks at Romania

For professional reasons I had to spend some time at Romania. Before the cache clears out I wrote some notes for posterity.

What I have learned in 6 weeks in Romania:

- Romanian is similar to Portuguese. Both are Latin languages (this I knew before). Even like that you have a hard time understanding what they are saying. Maybe with some more time and some investigation on sounds and common connecting words things are easier. The written form it is said to be easier to understand but I haven't tested this yet.
- There is no google news for Romania as we have for PT.
- The Romanian guys I knew are nice people but in their own words most Romanian are rude and poorly educated.
- Family violence seems to be even more common than in PT. And guess who wins the stats for aggression: Men.
- There are more women than men. Men have emigrated.
- Travelling in the subway is safe and nice to the sight :) women take care of themselves even for the most casual occasions.
- Food is nice, similar to Portuguese when compared. Not so healthy though.
- Fish is rare and expensive. They have a river fish and several strange species (to me).
- Plastic money are not credit cards. Paper money is made from plastic and has always a transparent part.
- Food is cheap (when compared to portugal - average meal for 7€).
- Beer is abailable at 0.5l portions or greater. No "minis" (20cl).
- S i l v a  is a Romanian brand of beer.
- Caru cu bere is one of the finest places to dinner.
- Papanaçi is a nice dessert.
- Bucharest is huge, grey and its streets are not very well preserved.
- No highways out of Bucharest, as in Portugsl 20 years ago.
- Buildings from the communist period are not preserved at all and are ugly, grey and falling apart. In Portugal owners would be notified for making recuperation in a timely fashion and If they wouldn't abide they would lose ownership to the city hall or be demolished.
- Streets do have holes. Sometimes there are craters on them.
- The house of Ceausescu is the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon.
- There is an underground tunnel from one face to another.
- There are several underground levels some of them not yet finished.
- The parliament operates on part of it.
- Buildings around belonged to some of the secret police people and are now dedicated to national institutes.
- Most of the cars are old, very old. Lots of Dacia (similar to old Renaults).
- Bucharest is a busy city (lots of traffic).
- Air polution is a real problem - I was not used to it at the start.
- There are lots of Dacia cars which now still belongs to the Renault group.
- There is no public connection by subway from the airport to the city centre.
- The Otopeni airport departures zone is small: one corridor only.
- At summer it is hot and dry. At winter it is really cold! Portugal rarely goes below zero.
- As a consequence, houses are very well isolated. Finishing details are not very well crafted for what i've seen (but for what I've seen at Macau, not worse).
- It is said that there are lots of corruption.
- August is a bad time to visit because all the bad Romanians come back to their homes to visit families and the bad guys at prison (to be confirmed).
- If you are investing or buying everyone will try to sell you something (to get a comission?).
- Cars are cheap: They are not heavily taxed by the government like in PT where they put VAT over a government tax (also illegal in the UE as it is said).
- The main church is the Christian Orthodox church.
- It is common that when crossing a church door people make the cross sign on themselves for 3 times. Even younger people do this.
- An high percentage of the population is gipsy. Lots of them are still nomads (unlike in Portugal where some of them are
- Generally speaking: Romanian girls are skinny, at least to say. And they do take care of their appearence. I've seen some fat ones but obesity is definitely not a national problem there... yet (as it starts to be in Portugal). McDonalds and other plastic junk food starts to reign there.
- I found everyone still marked by the communist period. It was only in 1989 that freedom came and as such, younger people than me are marked by those events which for me is strange. I don't remember living in the dictatorship period in Portugal because... I was not in Portugal at that time.
- During the communist period everything was produced internally at Romania: cars, equipments, etc. After the end of this period some industries were abandoned.
- During the communist period electricity was sometimes cut at night.
- In Bucharest, enormous amounts of land were kept reserved to city parks with lakes, trees, bike trails, etc.

If I remember some more things I'll post them here.
If you feel anything is offensive or not true please let me know. I might be wrong or have had a wrong perception of the things there. Also, my English could be better.