I am not going to talk about the reasons why it is not cool to be Romanian. Either social, political or economical, these reasons are all in the news, read the newspapers if you want to find them out but I guess you already know them. I am going to talk, from my point of view, about why it is so amazingly great to be Romanian.

Our grandparents live in the countryside. Romania has one of the greatest countrysides where you can experience the simple life. That means that we drink water directly from the spring without purifying it with chemicals, we bring it out to the surface with the help of buckets and wells. We can walk barefoot on the soft dust and sleep in haystacks in out back yards. We know all the domestic animals without seeing them in the zoo. We know all the wild animals too, come on, who has never seen a fox while walking next to the wheat field on their way to the forest to pick blackberries? And if there is a power outage you find yourself with a great reason to carve a pumpkin lamp, Halloween all Summer long, yey!!!

Pumpkin Lamp

We even have the Romanian equivalent of Halloween, by the way, will talk about it when the time comes. We take our vegetables from our own garden too, and fruits from our orchard. We have and use  lot of medicinal plants. Got a headache? Just ask grandma what type of tea you should drink and she will come in a second with some dry plants and make you a cup of tea that doesn’t taste like anything coming out of a teabag. And these plants grow most of the time right under our noses. Ever going barbequing in the forest? Next time take 15 minutes to gather these plants, they work wonders sometimes!

We have some of the most beautiful Monasteries in the world, places not just for prayer but also cradles of culture and history. Stories and our country’s history are painted on the walls of these monuments in some of the most beautiful colors, one of which is unique in the world: Voronet Blue. Great places for meditation, soul searching and calming down.

We have a Royal Family, I think that is pretty cool and it says a lot about the country Romania used to be. Why the Family is not leading the country, well, that’s on the “uncool” list.

Horia Tecau

We had a double specialist tennis player as a flag-bearer at the 2012 Summer Olympics, 3 times Wimbledon finalist,  two times winner in Bucharest and many other great achievements. I am sorry, I couldn’t help myself. Hai Horia!

We have great wine and amazing cuisine. Every part of the country is different from this point of view. However, I am pretty sure that sarmale and mamaliga are the same everywhere (cabbage rolls and polenta) and also cheese and sower cream with polenta is a pretty national dish (MBS on short, it stands for mamaliga cu branza si smantana). Bring on the onion!!! And try papanasi for desert (cheese dumplings). We brew our own vodka and fruit brandy, of course they are not called like this and they don’t exactly taste the same as the ones you buy from the store, they are even better: tuica and visinata/afinata.

We have all four seasons, and we get the real deal out of each: windy Spring, extremely hot Summer days some with hurricanes others just perfect to lay on the beach, a beautiful colored Autumn with lots of chrysanthemums and a 3 month, sometimes-even-longer-minus-20-or-less-degrees Winter.

Vlad Ţepes

We have Dracula. Thank you Bram Stoker for writing it and Gary Oldman for impersonating the great vampire. Too bad it took an Irish guy to get the story so popular but the myth was born from real facts and it all started with the Order of the Dragon and a really cruel Romanian Voivode: Vlad Ţepes.

Ok, this post is already getting too long so I am going to stop and come back with a second part later, maybe even a third part. If you want to find out more things about why Romania is a cool country watch this. I am only going to write about what I find cool but I am pretty sure someone else discovered other great things about Romania as well.