Romania respect · Courtesy in Romania
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Courtesy in Romania
Courtesy in Romania
Romanians are quite hospitable. In the countryside and small towns, they welcome foreign tourists and, occasionally, they might even invite you for a lunch. As is common with Romania's Balkan neighbours, Romanians will insist when offering something, as "no" sometimes does not mean "no," and they just consider it polite for you to refuse and polite for them to insist.
You should take some normal precautions to study tudy your host first. It is common for friends and family to kiss both cheeks upon greeting or parting. Respect towards elderly is highly appreciated and is a good representation of your character. The phrases used to greet friends and strangers alike is "Bună ziua" (Boo-nah Zee-wah) which means "Good afternoon" or "Good day."
At beaches, men wear either speedos or shorts, with the former more common amongst the over 40s, and the latter more popular with the younger crowd. Ladies tend to wear thong bikinis, topless sunbathing is becoming more and more popular.
Refrain from observations, whether by ignorance or indifference, that Romanian is a Slavic language or even related to Hungarian, Turkish or Albanian. They will find it quite offensive; in fact, as it was already mentioned, Romanians do not pronounce vowels and consonants the same way as any of their neighbours.
Romanians also appreciate foreigners who do not assume that Romania was part of either the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union (false although it was a member of the Eastern Bloc).
Also, while the principalities of Wallachia and Moldova did indeed pay tributary sums to the Turks for several centuries, they were never part of the Ottoman Empire, unlike all of their neighbours. Knowing even these basic facts about Romanian history will go a long way should any conversation on the subject arise.
Avoid discussing the ethnic animosities between the Romanians and ethnic Hungarians. Hungarians dominate in some areas, such as Translyvania, and in recent years occasionally inter-ethnic violence has broken out.
Other minority-rich regions include Dobrogea, where Tatars, Turks, Ukrainians still live today, and also in the west of the country there are small numbers of Serbs, Slovaks, and Germans. Almost all Jews have left the country since the anti-semitic campaigns in the 1950s, under the influence of Stalin.
Another very offensive misconception is making no difference between the Romanian population and the Roma people/gypsies. Romanians are a different ethnic group from them. Confusing these two can offend a lot of people because there is still a lot of prejudice towards the Roma people.
Romanians dislike Romania to be labelled as a Balkan country because of the negative image of the region.
It is not entirely geographically correct either as most of Romania, if restricted to Dobrogea, Moldavia, Muntenia and Oltenia, or the vast majority of Romania, if restricted only to Dobrogea, lies outside the Balkans.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Romania
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Romania Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.