About Romania

Last week was packed with happenings...

Just sharing my thoughts, randomly:

Hitch-hiking
Oh, that was more than fun :) The conference was at the other end of the country, so we decided to hitch-hike to save money... it took 16 hours. And we were really lucky!
I never did hitch-hiking before. We left Oradea (Nagyvarad) around 8 am on Thursday. Didn't take too much time to get a car... a CHRYSLER! With black leather seats... He took us till Cluj (Kolozsvar). I was really glad not further... The guy thought himself to be on the race track... I almost felt sick at some points. We were naturally overspeeding... most of the time... in villages, in cities, on hilly roads... serpentines...
In Cluj we got a small truck which took us down till Bucharest. It was quite convenient not to change cars too often. I took quite a lot of pictures on the way. We passed through Segesvar, Brasso, Szinaja (the best ski-resort in Romania)... then Ploiesti and the outskirts of Bucharest. We were lucky enough (again) to be close to the road towards Constanta, so in no time we found ourselves in a truck :) Quite cosy, warm enough, and taking us right to the hotel in Eforie Sud, on the coast of the Black Sea. I had to sleep a lot from Bucharest, cos the way back seemed to be much longer.
Oh, it was 3 of us travelling together; Ana, Copa and me. We could get into our rooms bit after midnight.

The way back was different, but still lucky... we were travelling also during night. We left the hotel around 3 pm. This time Adela, Adina and me. We got a car till Constanta. But it was in such a bad condition I felt it would break apart at any time... This driver was also crazy... accelerating, breaking, accelerating, breaking,... From Constanta we got a truck again. We planned to switch to train in Bucharest, but we had no chance since it was too late when we reached the city. That's the problem with trucks... they are slower than cars. And it was carrying bitumen. It was funny, we stopped at a crossroad close to Bucharest when we saw the other group standing next to the road to Ploiesti :) we used the horn and things... (they managed to catch the train later in Ploiesti). It was 7 pm.
But our problem didn't seem to be long-lasting. The driver arranged another truck for us... to Arad. It stopped right behind at a gas station. So again, in no time, we were in a truck. It was a Volvo, and very modern. The best I have travelled in :) but the driver... as if didn't have mouth. There was hardly any conversation. With the girls, we were switching places so everyone could sleep comfortably for a while. So the route now was: Pitesti - Deva - Arad. We stopped on the way twice so that the driver could have a nap too. The night was quite chilly. We got to Arad around 9 am. He dropped us on a ring or such... and another truck picked us for a short time, to take us to a more frequented road towards Oradea. The driver was a hungarian... but we didn't talk, I just said Koszonjuk when we got off. He smiled and was surprised a bit. I don't know if he thought me to be romanian talking hun... whatever. So we were still more than 140 km from Oradea. When a car picked us... And when I got out, I was only one street from home. I got there around 11 am. Ioana arrived an hour later. She took train from Bucharest.

So this is the story :)

Folyt kov...

So,

cronologically...
Yesterday I woke up early... I went to police with Anca, she applied for new passport. It seems outside everything is messed up, but inside buildings seem to be okay, at least the police station looked quite neat.
The whole town is like after bombing... reparing roads, changing water cables, gas, everything. (Not too many repaires have been done before, as I heard.) I will upload pictures. I have't had too much time to walk around.

Then went to exchange money... Funny, old LEI is still in use. I have in my purse 5 LEI and 1000000 LEI note...
But the exchange rate was not that bad.

Then I bought a sim card.

Then... we went to office... which is in the fortress... I think quite many from "western" AIESEC would deny working there. I will attach pictures. (Just enough if I say the fortress is in an even worse condition than the roads.)

Then... we went to the campus, cos we had a meeting there. First with the management only, then about the recruitment.
School here starts only in October. We still have time for planning.

It lasted quite long... then we were walking home with Ioana and discussing a lot.

Rest of the day was in the previous mail :)

Absurd day...

It was such a ... day...
I don't find the words to describe.

I would like to write down everything, but I'm too much under the effects of reading news from home just now.

I only left two days ago... and already loads of things happened! Unfortunately, politics is making it to headlines...

So many things I should read about. Getting to know the business climate in Romania (luckily there are quite many hungarian sites), following the news from home and also some functional things... want to know more about consulting, the INTERREG program of EU, etc, etc, etc... and I have the school assaignments too.
While planning and giving feedback about recruitment, promotion campaign, induction, etc, etc, etc, etc...

I stay at the LCP's place, so we talk a lot... but not just about AIESEC :-)

Since it's quite late, and we continue early in the morning with meeting.. I should get some sleep.
I will write more about this day also...

Back again

Okay, no posts for long time... I didn't feel like writing, though many things happened.

I'm in Romania now. Helping AIESEC Oradea to .. "grow" :-) What I will do here for around 2 months is mainly business consulting.

It's quite interesting and I can't wait to see how it will work. What I will learn about coaching, Romania, AIESEC, myself... Meanwhile I have to write essays for school on the topics of HR consulting, HR marketing, HR development, HR management, HR controlling.

Very diverse ;-)


Yesterday, on the train, I realized I had pretty negative feelings towards Romanians... I don't know much about them as a nation. I heard about Funar, and many nationalist romanian politicians, but have no picture about "average" romanian.
Pepez helped to raise my suspicion, too... with those articles he read about the country (by finnish tourists).

What's wrong with prejudice?
I think prejudice by itself is ok to have. The problem comes when it doesn't change... Just be felixible...

What happened with me till now?

Something interesting even before I left from home: I tried to find an up-to-date pic for Ioana... I dye my hair, so it's blonde. She believed most of hungarian girls to be blonde... :-\ Would it be so? I've never checked... I think it would be quite impossible to make statistics...

Then on the train... For many years now my passport was empty. No stamps or anything in it. We used to go quite often to Slovakia. My first ever passport was full of stamps. Then EU came, and using my ID was enough to travel. So no stamps...
Yesterday I was almost shouting at the border guard where he was taking my passport! Blaa... This is when you get unused to something.

Thanks to Pepez :-), I am aware there are dogs in Romania... Because of this information I was alert for dogs... And I saw one! Right after crossing the border. It was running around at the station in Bihor. But then I though... I haven't seen dogs too often in Hungary. I wonder if I meet any in the city.

In Oradea Ioana, her sister, Ankka, and Ankka's boyfriend, Mihaly was waiting for me. First nice surprise: Mihaly speaks fluent hungarian, though he is 100% romanian. Both Ioana and Ankka knows some... at least understands :-) And their parents also speak some...
Hm..hm.. I relized I didn't even had in mind learning some romanian... I took my finnish books with me :-/

Their house is quite nice, big... I have own room (Ankka's). And I slept really really well.

After breakfast we had chat with Ioana about AIESEC. Speaking only english again, at some points I had difficulties to concentrate. And I had a bit of headache. But I will do my best.

Ok, this is for now. I try to do sth useful... :-)

Ps: this relation between hungarians and all other from surrounding nations started to interest me lately. Since I got in contact with Juraj from Slovakia. I try to read and pay more attention if sth appears in news, translate and send it to him. Then discuss or react.
I would call this a whole new discovery! I never thought I should look at things from their point of view. Which is (as I find) impossible to do objectively. Cannot really travel back in time to check how things went... I don't know anything about the history of Slovakia or Romania... All was considered to be Hungarian history.

This is truly challanging my world-view! Challanging my beliefs... as a person, as a hungarian.