From a reader:

Partidul, Ceausesc, Romania was never an anthem… was just a song during communism like many other songs.
The Romanian anthem during communism was 3 Culori:

Also… you’re making a lot of mistakes in your article… you say that there’s no radio outside of the cities!? Well… that might be true in the US but not in Romania… Radio Romania works in every single inch of this country.

Another problem is that you don’t understand the rural life… does people aren’t few centuries behind as you say… (actually they are centuries ahead… but that’s another discussion) most of them have a mobile phone, and a computer in their home… but probably in the gypsy land of Cluj (judetul Cluj) things are different…

In the end I want to tell you that the best thing you can do for Romania is to close your full of lies and inaccuracies blog and leave this country because you don’t belong here and you don’t understand this country and it’s culture… and you will never do… You’ve been 8 years here and you can’t speak Romanian correctly???? That’s ridiculous!

Whew! I knew I was gonna hit a few triggers with that last one.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while then you know exactly where this reader went off the track. But perhaps you’re new or haven’t been rolling the purple die enough times :P

Yah ok, maybe it wasn’t the exact anthem, point taken. Still the P,C,R song is fairly iconic and it is the real song that I put on a cassette tape lo these many years ago and blasted out the window to some village kids.

As for radio reception, it is what it is. It’s been over 12 years since I’ve owned a car and I don’t remember much about radio reception in the United States. As for Romania, I can tell you for darn sure in the days when this story happened, I’d press “Seek” on the radio and it’d roll around in an endless loop.

Then came Radio Contact, which is now Europa FM, which has a creepy national system of radio stations which you can hear just about anywhere. If you ever take an inter-city bus or van you will, without fail, be listening to this channel, about which I will soon write an entire post called The Iron Law of Europa FM.

As for my Romanian, yeah you’re right, I speak it like a goof. Sorry I’m not enough of a cunning linguist for ya! LOL

Ok, back to the real trigger, the whole technology thing and the whole modern/ancient thing here in Romania. I really don’t want to turn this into a 5,000 word essay (although I am mighty tempted :P) so let’s see if we can say it in a more cohesive way.

Romanians feel guilt and shame over this whole concept of “modernity”. On one hand they crave the chance to be tweeting on their Samsung Galaxy at the TEDx conference and yet on the other hand they’re all one generation or less from turnip growing peasants. Every Romanian you meet with a Blackberry has a grandma stashed away with a kerchief tied around her head, I promise you.

So on one hand they’re immensely proud of their rural, low technology past and on the other hand they’re deeply ashamed of it. So anyone who disparages it sets off a trigger. It’s freaking guilt is what it is.

That’s why it’s inconceivable to Romanians that I actually lived in a village, actually have driven a horse and wagon and actually did things in the country and I did it not just willingly but enthusiastically. A Romanian will defend his peasant grandmother to the death but I’m the one who actually went around deliberately doing as many of those grandmother-type things as I could. That’s because I don’t have any guilt.

I come from a paradigm that is truly alien, and it is not the 30-second commercials you see on TV for immigrant visas to America. It’s not my blonde wife and giant house and me having fun on my jet skis. That to me is not even close to any kind of “ideal”. And using the extremely overly simplistic idea that American is some kind of “high tech” paradise and Romania is a backwards land full of clodhoppers, you’d be dead wrong in assuming I think that the situation in America is superior.

Sometimes we have to stop and think a little, eh? I mean it doesn’t get any simpler than this. If I wanted to live in America, I would, no? I mean I don’t need a visa, do I? No. A lot of Romanians forget I’m not Romanian. Therefore, for whatever reason, if I’m living in Romania then clearly I like it better here, no?

I’ve traveled a lot and I’ve yet to see where modernization, in total, has been some kind of great thing. In reality, the most modern societies I’ve ever visited or lived in were full of extremely fretful and stressed people. Frankly, modernization sucks for the most part. And just because I enjoy some gadgetry and digital entertainment at times does not mean it’s a good deal for what you have to go through to get that.

People in Romania bitch up and down about the lack of high-speed roads in this country and how long it takes to drive between cities. So? So what? Why do you have to get there in such a hurry? A few years ago I went to Bistrita to visit a friend of mine and despite its relative closeness, the only train going there was a Personal train that stopped every 100 meters.

Yeah, if I had a car and could drive it on a modern highway then I would’ve gotten there a lot faster. No doubt about it. But so what? On the Personal train I had a blast, meeting all kinds of people. Some gypsies showed me how to carry live pigeons in a kind of ninja “sleeper grip” so they trigger a kind of passive mode in the birds. I met some foreign workers from Indonesia going to work in a factory in Dej. I bought sunflower seeds and spat them everywhere with complete abandon. I got to see a pig being butchered right there in someone’s yard just meters from the train.

I grew up almost entirely in cities, which means that I learned a lot of city skills, including how to spend 24 hours a day indoors and under artificial light. I learned how to wear uncomfortable clothes that included a silk rope tied around my neck. I learned how to “work” 80 hours a week, all of which consisted of me sitting down in a chair and pushing various buttons and keys on a computer.

Those kinds of skills lead to “money” and access to high technology, that’s all true. But they essentially make you almost entirely useless as an individual person. You come to depend on someone else to do almost everything for you.

I never once rode a horse in my life before I came to Romania, nor drove a wagon being pulled by one. I never grew any of my own plants before I came to Romania. I never made my own cheese before I came to Romania. I never knew how alcohol was even made, much less seen it done, before I came to Romania. I never climbed in the mountains and drank from an alpine spring before I came to Romania.

There’s no superiority here. I’ve learned a mountain of things from Romanians, including many of the rural examples I’ve given above. I’ve also played with my first iPad here, got lost in a super sophisticated elevator in Bucharest and been turned around on the metro many times. Heck, the last time I was in Bucharest not a single one of us could figure out the flipping electronic card reader on the bus.

And I mean look at my last photo. That’s the most complicated piece of gadgetry I’ve ever seen and it’s right here in Unicorn City.

Romanians are just full of guilt and quite frankly, that’s your problem, not mine. Me and other foreigners have no guilt living here because we can see the good stuff for ourselves, including all that rural, low-tech life, and not feel the slightest guilt in our pleasure.

In fact, that’s the dividing line here, isn’t it? If you feel guilt mixed in with your pride and enjoyment of Romania then you’re missing out on a great experience, my friend. You’ve got to let that guilt go because it’s not doing you any good.

I mean think about it. I go to folcloric concerts and I don’t do it out of either obligation or pride. I just go because it’s darn good music and all the costumes are so nice. Just let Romania be what it is and everything is going to be all right ;)