Dang, I really do have a ton of stuff to do but I got an email message which neatly dovetailed into a lot of things I’ve been thinking about lately and so I said (to myself) okay let’s go ahead and write about it.

Last week, as you all know, I was being followed around by a camera crew. At one point on Thursday, the network got a phone message that Sorin Apostu was getting ready to do the perp walk down at the courthouse and so we headed down there to try and film it. This you already know.

But ProTV wasn’t depending on “my” crew to film it – they already had their normal Cluj correspondent (and crew) on scene. We were at the courthouse because they wanted to see my reaction and participation. “My” crew was from Bucharest, although the camera man grew up in the area and the correspondent had previously come to Cluj for work. But the key thing to understand here is that we were largely superfluous and definitely not the same as all the “regular” Cluj teams down there who work together all the time.

It’s what happened at that courthouse, especially in contrast to my experiences two weeks prior, that is so fascinating.

On a sociological level, Romania is incredibly interesting because it is so unique. I haven’t done enough traveling in Asia to be able to properly make comparisons but in Europe there just doesn’t exist such a large homogeneous population anywhere else. All of the big “western” countries are hugely fractured along racial and cultural (and sometimes religious) lines and/or have seething minority populations left over from World War 2 treaty shenanigans and the like. But Romania, by and large, is inhabited solely by Romanians, and it’s not some tiny enclave like Estonia but actually a humongous country of over 20 million people.

Now on one hand, as I’ve described at length (and mentioned in the recent email), you have a national media (radio, newspaper and TV) that constantly presents an image of vicious infighting, where politicians, celebrities and “comedy” shows are constantly sniping at, belittling, mocking and otherwise degrading other segments of Romanian society. It’s one giant game of finger pointing where it’s always someone else to blame for whatever is wrong in Romania.

And this mentality definitely filters down to the ordinary “person on the street” (Rom: om de rand) because I went out and spoke to people and asked them their opinions. You’ll see some of this in an upcoming episode of my documentary. About the easiest question you can ever ask a Romanian is “what’s wrong with society and who is to blame?” because just about everyone here is primed to start pointing fingers of blame.

But what I find so interesting and fascinating is what happened at the courthouse. “We” meaning I plus the itinerant Bucharest-based film crew were welcomed into the peer group of Cluj journalists down at the courthouse. Yes, we had some loose, pre-existing ties to them (I had been interviewed by some people there, the correspondent had worked there in Cluj before, etc) but nonetheless we passed whatever “qualifications” were necessary to be welcomed into the group.

And that’s key here in Romania. There is a huge difference between the “in” group and “everyone else”. Romanians have one style of behavior and expression with people who are members of their “in” group and a completely different style with those who are not.

That’s why you see Romanians walking down the street with a scowl on their face or a hostile expression. It’s why you sometimes see waiters or people in stores or other jobs involving “customer service” be surly or cold or seemingly rude. It’s that they are treating you in the manner which is reserved for others. When dealing with the wider world, those not in your “in group”, you need to be wary, suspicious, reserved and on alert for possible trickery, injury or just plain old nuisance.

After all it’s others who make the bus so crowded, it’s others who cause long lines at the store, it’s others who pollute the country, it’s others who are making an infernal racket (Rom: galagie) at inopportune hours, it’s others who screw everything up and ruin things and are to blame for all of the inconveniences and suffering that I and my “in group” have to go through.

But once you somehow cross the barrier and are accepted as members of the “in group”, as I and “my” film crew did at the courthouse, magically you see a totally different side of Romanians. Now all of a sudden we’re joking and smiling and laughing and sharing food and just having a really good time. Now we’re buddies and calling each other by our first names and all in all just getting along fantastically as though we’ve all known each other for years and years.

In America (and in many other countries), you just don’t see such a clear demarcation between an “in group” and “others”. If you walk into a restaurant or a large retail store in America, there’s someone there who starts greeting you with a big smile and being super nice to you, in essence pretending that you’re part of their “in group”. Americans freaking love that fake cheeriness but it drives Romanians nuts because they know it’s a false pretension that you and they are members of the same “in group”.

Conversely, in America even when you have a situation where people should be members of the same “in group”, say people working in the same office together, or a group of journalists covering the same story, or kids in the same class, there is one heck of a lot of sniping, insulting, jockeying for position, backstabbing and other things that you would never do if they were truly members of your “in group”. Whereas in Romania, (almost) any time you get a group of people together and convince them they’re all part of the same “in group”, they get along together amazingly well with next to no strife or discord.

But in Romania that barrier between who is “in” and who isn’t is nearly insurmountable. Besides the mob of journalists down at the courthouse there were a handful of actual citizens, ordinary people who came down there to express their outrage at the mayor’s actions. And since they were others, the journalists did not talk to them. They completely ignored them. Amongst “ourselves” we were laughing and cutting up and sharing food but literally not a word was said to these ordinary folks standing right next to us. Why? Because they weren’t part of our “in group”.

Now what makes my experience here in Romania so unique is that I didn’t grow up here and so I don’t have all these strict limitations hard wired into my brain. I actually did go talk to some of those “other” people hanging out at the courthouse. I do go talk to homeless people and gypsies and foreigners and police officers and Hungarians and the elderly and little kids and literally every other kind of person precisely because I do not have these hard definitions of who is a member of my “in group”. I speak to people on a regular basis that a Romanian would never even think to consider to speak to.

That’s why my mentality is so different. A lot of Romanians reading my stuff (here on the blog or Facebook or wherever) wildly misinterpret who I am because they know my nationality, see me writing (or speaking) in English and think foreigner. While that might make me interesting it definitely precludes me from ever truly being a member of the “in group” and so it raises a barrier between anything I have to say and them actually hearing it.

But day to day I actually speak Romanian on the streets, and apparently good enough that a lot of people don’t realize I’m foreign and therefore one of the others, and so I can cross through those limitations and start swapping jokes and being accepted and using first names and in every other way be treated as a member of the “in group” of whomever it is I am speaking to. Then I am given gifts, treated well, smiled at, not messed with, accepted and life is a lot sweeter.

That’s really the key to why I enjoy my life here in Romania. I went through the hell of learning the language and the customs in order that I could successfully cross through the barrier of being one of the others and get accepted into people’s “in group”. It’s why I am treated so well. Whether I’m hanging out with 20 year old university students or 50 year old business people or police officers or government officials or store clerks or anyone else, I have the ability to mimic certain cultural signifiers that trigger their accepting me into their “in group”. Then the person in question says “this guy is one of us” rather than “oh he’s one of the others“.

If you are Romanian and reading this, think for a moment on how well you are treated by your friends and peers who are in your “in group”. And then imagine that everyone more or less treated you the same way. Suddenly life isn’t so bad, is it? Well now you understand a little bit of how things are for me. A lot of times Romanians get confused and since they think I’m foreign (aka an “other”) and then get treated so well, they think it must be because of my status as a foreigner. Not so. I speak Romanian to all of the people who treat me well and in various other ways (sometimes subtle) convince them I’m one of them and not a foreigner.

The next giant leap that Romania is going to make as a society is when individual people begin to see their fellow citizens as members of that “in group” and not just an amorphous blob of others who crowd everything, destroy everything and are to blame for all of the problems. That’s why I support such organizations as “Let’s Do It Romania!”, precisely because they assume the mentality that everyone here is “in” and so let’s work together for “our” country. Because if we can all treat each other with the same generosity, warmth and goodwill that we reserve for our “in group” well then life is going to get a lot sweeter here.

Is that a big step for most people? Yes, I know it is. But I put it into practice every day and you can see the results :)