It seems just about every visitor to Romania ends up noticing the vast plethora of pizza restaurants in this country – simply put, they’re everywhere. In fact, if you’re in a small town with just one restaurant, chances are pretty good that they will serve pizza. The quality of pizza you will find ranges from barely edible to absolutely heavenly and if it’s a dish … Continue reading Pizza!
One of the easiest and most colorful slang words in use today in Romania is mișto (meesh-toe), which is an all-purpose adjective meaning “fun, nice, enjoyable” or sometimes “funny”. I think if I had to choose one English word to universally translate misto as, it would be “delightful” although “cool” would probably be equally common. This is a direct borrowing from the “gypsy” language (rroma), … Continue reading Slang Word of the Day: Misto
Although I’ve written about politeness and being on the receiving end of unexpected rude behavior, I thought I’d correlate all of this together in a more concise way. Over all the years I’ve lived here in Romania, traveling everywhere from Bucharest to living in a remote mountain village, I’ve been treated incredibly well. Yet often I hear many stories of visitors who come here and … Continue reading Rudeness
Sometimes words in Romanian are right on the cusp between slang and “standard” use, a blend between being considered informal, perhaps even vulgar use and an ordinary, common word. You wouldn’t use these words in a job application but it wouldn’t shock your grandmother to say them. One such adjective is the Romanian word fain, pronounced exactly like the English “fine”, based on a similarly … Continue reading Slang Word of the Day: Fain
Although I have unabashedly written many times about tuica, it’s time to dedicate a whole post to it. I grew up in cities and to me, alcohol was something other people made in some far-off place and then bottled it and shipped it to a store for me to buy. How alcohol was made was a mysterious enigma. In Romania, however, making your own alcohol … Continue reading Tuica, Palinca and Horinca
