Romania (all)

Romania is an amazing country. Most people imagine the country as rough, poor, violent, dark, or even asiatic. Dracula remains to be the first association with the word Transylvania [...] the black images linger in the minds of people who never were there, and don't consider ever going there. Maybe these pages about this special Eastern European country will enlighten a few of you, and convince you that Romania is a country to be experienced. Travelling there is partly stepping into another concept of time. Things seem to go slower than in our hurried West, and some regions seem to have decided to stop altogether for a century or two. Still, Romania is not a large open-air museum; it is on the move, and sometimes more dynamic than we'd expect. Since 1989 the inhabitants have got acquainted with the concept of freedom. Even though lots of people I spoke to were worried about their economic situation, most were happy to be able to speak aloud again after fourty years of pretty awful repression.