Oh the sun is shining and I think it’s going to be a beautiful day. Yes! It’s been rainy and cold and “Scotland” style weather here and now we’re back to NORMAL so I feel great.
I’m also listening to Nu-i pamant ca Ardealul (which means “There’s no place quite like Transylvania”) and in the beginning the guy gives a little speech which starts out:
Da, pa cum vedeti dumnevoastra, la noi in Ardeal, iarna s-o cam dus. Si bine a facut..
Which means Yep, as you can see, for us here in Transylvania, winter is pretty much over. And a good thing for that. – all said in a thick Transylvanian accent too.
It’s actually due to this exact song why I decided to start blogging here.
About a month or so ago I was in Bucharest, staying in a hotel. I don’t own a television at home and so it’s kind of an interesting novelty treat for me to plop down and flip through the channels. Well 99% of it is boring as heck but I found myself again watching ETNO TV, the Romanian folkloric music channel and so the songs started getting into my head.
Later I had some business to attend to at the embassy and I had to keep going in and out of there a few times so I kept passing the guards (whom are all Romanian) and talking to them and passing a few words, etc.
When I finally got everything done and wrapped up I was in a super good mood (going to the embassy is stressful so I was happy to be done) and then I went outside and was joking around with the guards. And one of the guards said to me, “Wow, you must be from Transylvania because I can totally hear by your accent that’s where you from.”
I was SQUEEEEEE super loving that. Just shocked and amazed and humbled and proud and everything all wrapped up together. My time in Romania has not been easy all these years and I have busted my ass to learn this crazy language and been criticized PLENTY for my linguistic mistakes. So to have a total stranger come out and say “Gee, you sure sound Transylvanian” and not “Gee, you sound like an American barely pronouncing my language” was… well for me it was pure awesome.
The next day when I got back to Transylvania, I did indeed breathe deep of that cool mountainous air and think to myself it’s true… nu-i pamant ca Ardealul :D
And I’m glad to be here!
All Things Romania 
It’s interesting that “fain” which is very commonly used in Transilvania (from German “fein”) got to be adopted everywhere in Romania just in the last decades as a colloquial term meaning “cool” or “nice”. I recall an email conversation with someone in the Republic of Moldova who was not familiar with the term, and who spelled it “fine”.
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here in RM it is usually spelled “horasha” Хорошо :)
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Well, I have a cousin who lives in the U.S. and one day he came to Transylvania. The funny thing was me and other Romanians were using quite often the word “fain” (the Transylvanian word meaning “frumos”) and he was always thinking we meant to use the English word “fine”. On his last day here he asked us why are we using English words this much. When he told us he’s heard a lot more often the word “fine” in Transylvania than in the U.S. we just couldn’t control our laughter for about half an hour. That’s when we remembered his parents lived near Bucharest before moving, not in Transylvania…
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faina poveste.
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