One of the great difficulties in learning any foreign language is when there are two words in the new language for something, but you only have one word in your own. Nearly 20 years ago now (my goodness, how the time has flown!), I remember asking the woman who taught me so much about Romanian cooking what the difference was between brânză (bruhnzuh) and cașcaval … Continue reading Brânză vs. Cașcaval
Here’s a question for you – What if an international film star traveled to Romania to shoot a movie and nobody cared? Well, of course, that’s exactly what happened last week. As far as I can tell, the entirety of the vaunted Romanian press paid zero attention to the fact that a scene for a major movie was being filmed in the country except for … Continue reading Spyder, Spyder, Burning Bright
The biggest non-Hungarian statue in Cluj-Napoca is of Mihai Viteazul, known as Mihai “Bravu” in the southern regions of Romania and “Michael the Brave” in English. Today, there are statues of Mihai all over Romania and several villages bear his name. His incredible claim to fame is that, in the year 1600, he united all three of the majority-Romanian lands – Transylvania, Moldova, and Wallachia … Continue reading The Ballad of Mihai Viteazul
One of the most interesting periods of history that very few people on either side of the Prut River remember today is that there was a Soviet Moldovan Republic long before Romania ceded Bessarabia without a fight in 1940. It took several years after the 1917 “October” Revolution in Russia before the Soviet Union was able to exist as a coherent polity. Some of the … Continue reading Yes, MASSR
Unfortunately, this tongue-twister of a word is not some rarely used, technical word like jhgeaburi. Instead, it is literally a plague of a word to learn, and if you spend any time in Romania (or Moldova), you’ll definitely have cause to try to wrap your mouth around this particular bon mot. You can’t blame Romanians for creating this word out of thin air like they … Continue reading The Hardest Word to Say in the Romanian Language (for English Speakers)
All Things Romania 