I took this picture of my television screen last week because at long last it was proof of something I had written about before a long time ago.
Just like in my original post, this was a news story (on Transilvania L!ve as you can see by the logo) bitching about how snow clearing in Romania is supposedly hideously inefficient and “like nowhere else”. The fact that people from Helsinki to London to Toronto also bitch about snow clearing in their own cities is of course forbidden to discuss :)
All Things Romania 
I lived in Italy for a while. I always considered Italy a “heavenly place” especially when compared to our country, poor old Romania, underdeveloped, poorly organized and always behind the times.
But when I arrived to Italy, one of the most important countries in western Europe, I was shocked to see that many Italians had the exact same attitude when talking about their country as we have when talking about Romania. They were also saying that everything is very, very bad, and when they saw something that didn’t go as planned, they would say that this can only be possible in Italy, and nowhere else in the world.
That’s when I finally got rid of this misconception about how bad we have it here in Romania.
I like your attitude, Sam, and I like your blog. Keep up the good work!
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Sam, e cenzura pe aici? de ce mi se sterge comentariul?
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Romania! Is all in one country…:))
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Romania is ……… ROMANIA !
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Romania would be a much much better place without its TV posts.
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Oh, yes… for the most part I’ve given up on watching Romanian TV 2-3 years ago. The only real exception is sport and documentaries (which are on foreign channels anyway). I prefer to get my information elsewhere.
Of course having my parents live one floor below me means I still get to experience the garbage that is the Romanian audiovisual media every once in a while.
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Alex, it happens in other countries. We are not so unique.
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Please do mention a number of highways and other important roads in Germany that were left impracticable after this year’s snowstorm. Whereas I do agree that perhaps others have faced similar difficulties, there’s no denying things could and should go way better (again, Germany sets a standard).
Just out of curiosity, did the local administration in Cluj actually get around to cleaning the not-so-important streets, for instance at the outskirts of the city? For in Timişoara, they never did. Numerous people did their part and cleaned the sidewalk, throwing the snow on the road; that’s where it was left to thaw. Also – does this happen often in other countries? I’m quite curious.
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I ‘m not Romanian, but I was in Romania the past week and I actually saw it as a very efficient and well put operation. People will always complain. There are some really hard stories, like the people that were stuck in a train for 50 hours (I really can’t understand how that happened) but all in all the roads were ok. It has been a very hard winter and resources are not infinite.
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you’d be (or maybe not) surprised to find out that this phrase has been use for this exact purpose as far back as the interwar period in Romania. I, myself, have found it several times as the of in some very sketchy cartoon from a paper ironizing the perceived competence of the liberal government ruling at the time. it never gets old, that’s for sure.
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