Romanian Mission: Completed!

After a pause from blogging lasting more than one month, during most of which I was trying to spend every moment studying, the Romanian mission is successfully behind me. In the middle of August I quit in the water park and turned my dorm bed into a battlestation equipped with bunch of books, a dictionary, my mobile phone and the internet connection. I dove into studying.

The C2 exam was awaiting me on 14 of September in Bucharest. On the 13th, I said goodbye to all the people that I became friends with in Constanța and left this city that had become my home for three months. After spending a night at a very nice and cheap Happy Hostel (guys, you were great, I am sorry you are closing down), I went for the test. And I am happy to announce that I passed and am now an owner of the C2 certificate in Romanian!

All these people wanted a certificate! From left to right:
Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, 3× Romania, Spain

Then I was just enjoying. My friend Roman came from Brno and we had a beautiful ride back to Slovakia/Czech Republic through pretty places of Romania. We tasted the nightlife of Bucharest and took some pics in front of the royal palace of Peleș in the Carpathian mountains (they did not let us in due to some exhibition—as if that was more important than us). We spent a very pleasant evening in Brașov, a medieval city with part of the city walls reconstructed and a Hollywood style sign shining over it, passed through Transfagarașan—a mountain pass coming very close to the highest point in Romania—Moldoveanu peak.

Bucharest!

Bucharest: The Unity Square (Piața unirii)

Bucharest: Casa Poporului (The House of the People),
the second largest office building in the world after Pentagon,
Ceaușescus's heritage

Peleș castle

Czech and Slovak tourists in Romanian mountains.
Only socks in the sandals are missing.

The last stop was Sibiu, where we spent another night. Sibiu has a beautiful medieval city center and is becoming one of the most important industry centers in Transylvania. Interesting enough, the hostel in Bucharest was half the price of the hostel in Sibiu (7 euros vs. 12 euros). In Sibiu's hostel, there was a Dutch manager, who lived there for several years and did not really know much from Romanian. That kind of made me feel good about my progress and made up for all those moments when I felt I did not improve at all and that I could not possibly get to the C2 level by the end of the summer.

Then, we set off for home. One thing worth noticing was the tempo of highway building we have seen on our way back. There are huge parts of the Romanian A1 highway that are being built now and by the end of 2013, Romanians want to finish new 550 (!) km of highways. And they are really progressing fast. Might be because of the laws they passed, but it still looks pretty impressive, especially compared to the Slovak tempo of highways' construction.

Anyway, back to the main point. In the beginning of the summer, I set in front of myself a goal. A goal, fulfillment of which I did not really consider probable. I knew it was doable though, so I went for it. From the beginning, I was willing to fail. Failure always have to be an option. For me, it would have been better to have tried and have failed C2 than to have gone for B2 and have won it. But I studied with the idea of success in my mind, and worked my ass off, trying to subordinate my every daily activity to this goal in the last three months. And to my surprise, here I am, C2 in Romanian. A little-big victory of mine that strengthens my believe that anything is achievable and our only limit is our own imagination. I am happy, thankful and keen for more!

Constanța

The city of Constanța [konstantsa]. According to the Romanian wikipedia, has around 310 000 inhabitants and the biggest port in at the Black Sea. I dare you to read more, you will learn more that what Wikipedia offers.

Constanța in Westeros?

If I am to find a city that Constanța resembles a lot, all I can think of is the fictional city of King's Landing from the series of books A Song of Ice and Fire by R. R. Martin. Very well made TV series "Game of Thrones", named after the first book of the book series made this fictional world global-known. As well as King's Landing, Constanța is a port city (on an eastern shore :) ). Both cities are crowded and stink. In both there are huge social differences (e.g. huge 4x4's parked next to old Dacias). By the number of leaflets on the sidewalks of Constanța, the brothel industry flourishes in both comparatively. And they both pulsate with life. From the architectonical point of view, the prettiest times of both lie in their past. There are many awesome buildings that wait for their reconstruction.

Architecture

The history of the town, full of conquers is visible also at the demographical content: There are many Turks and Tatars, although they all speak Romanian. There is a mosque next to an orthodox christian church and a synagogue. Big boulevards built in the French style. Beautiful buildings built at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, with the Casino of Constanța, the symbol of the city, being the prettiest. And also a witness of how the historical center on the Peninsula of Constanța deteriorates.

Constanța is, when it comes to size, comparable to Bratislava. Also, when it comes to the area of the historic center. But in Bratislava, most of it (not all of it, until now, which is a shame), was reconstructed during the 90's. In Constanța, nothing on that scale happened and many buildings are literally falling apart. I understand that the crisis stroke hard in Romania, but still, there are many construction projects on the ourskirts of the city and on Mamaia (resort close to Constanța), but nothing big in the city center. That it sad and the reason for this I do not yet know. Stupid legislation? Corruption? Or unwillingness of inhabitants of the old center to make money on renting their houses? Hardly the last one.

Ship at the entrance to Mamaia

Romania is full of communistic blocks, but there was
much more architectural effort put into them
than into Czechoslovak concrete cubes

The building on the right is influenced by the traditional
Romanian family-house style. Beautiful.
Also notice all the wires in the air. The unused parts of wires
 just hang on the columns.

The Turkish/Otoman influence on the architecture

The famous Casino of Constanța

The mosque at night. Like from a fairytale.

A gypsie child sleeping close to Aqua Magic.
Not a common sight, but still, one can encounter it.

Skyline I: There is a tower of the mosque on the left
and tower of the museum on the right.

Skyline II: Pretty communistic round building on the right 

Beaches

Beaches directly in the city are almost empty. Consțantians go have fun to Mamaia. Mamaia is a conglomeration of hotels, restaurants and other touristic facilities that spawn the long sandy spit between the Black Sea and the Siutghiol Lake. The city beaches have improved in services and appearance in recent years, but still would deserve a bigger attention.

Once I woke up really soon, so I went to watch the sunrise

The Borsec mineral water should pay me for this pic

My language learner T-shirt. Thanks a million Ann!

To come or not to come?

Constanța is definitely worth visiting. Everybody tells me that Bulgaria has prettier resorts and they know how to attract tourists better than here, in Romania. The truth is I have not seen many foreigners around here. Constanța and Romanian seaside are still used mostly by Romanians themselves. Well, we will see how that changes in the future...

My Progress in Romanian After a Month + Video

So it is more than a month. If I am serious with my C2 goal at the end of summer, there should be already some progress visible. I have not mentioned it before, but a huge inspiration for this blog was the blog of Benny, the Irish Polyglot: http://www.fluentin3months.com/. One of his advices for language learners is to make videos. So I made one. I know I did not post a video in the beginning of my trip, so you cannot really compare, but still, here you are. A video of me speaking Romanian:

I can hear how many mistakes I made. Mistakes are good, because I can learn from them. There are English and Romanian subtitles available. In Romanian subtitles, some of the mistakes are pointed out.

In what state was my Romanian one month ago and how is it now? Before, I would describe my level as being able to make myself understood. I had problems with grammar (personal pronouns in dative and accusative, for example), plurals. My vocabulary was not something fancy either. The area in which I improved after this month is vocabulary. On the other hand, I did not advance in grammar almost at all. I did not put much time into it. There are things like Romanian imperfect or past conditional that I want to get better at.

There is also a big difference in the quality of my speech, depending on if I speak in the aquapark, or talk to somebody above a beer. In the park, there is a loud music and if somebody jumps at me and starts speaking Romanian with a strong Italian accent, it is hard to catch everything at the first time. On the other hand, if I can speak for longer intervals of time, in a dialogue, my Romanian sounds much better. I go into a more advanced vocabulary and there I get a little stuck, but it is still better than exchanging a few sentences over the loud music in the park.

I know I need a bigger vocabulary, so that I can catch more keywords when listening to somebody, which will, in turn, lead to less requests to repeat the sentence for me. So I read and look up words I do not know. I feel that I am missing longer dialogues, as the work in the park takes a lot of my time and I have to decide between reading, revising the vocabulary, or going to talk to somebody. And I think that watching more TV in Romanian, or listening radio in Romanian would help. I will try to find a balance between these sources of language training.

And at the end, a song, which I usually put in the beginning, but now I put there my video. This lyrics of this song I learned by heart. Another excellent way of learning vocab. But more about that in one of my next posts.

România - 5 Likes and 2 Dislikes

Romania. What is the country like? What is good and what is weird for me? Some of the things I mention here will be a specific comparison with Slovakia/Czech Republic, so keep that in mind while reading this post.

What I like about Romania

Opening hours

There are so many shops with the basic groceries everywhere. And they close at 21:00 the soonest! A fifth of them are non-stops, so if you decide to buy yourself a chocolate in the middle of the night, no problem. The Czech word "Večerka" (a shop open in the evening, some of them only until 19:00) sounds so funny compared to this.

Food

Mămăligă, brânză, ciorbă ardelenească, salată de icre. All delicious pieces of Romanian cuisine. And of course: semințe (roasted, salty sunflower seeds)—my addiction, because of which I came to Romania.

Semințe, salată de icre and white Romanian bread

Shaking hands

People really do shake hands here when they meet. Every day. I love it.

Romanians know how to drink

Although the streets of Romanian cities are sometimes full of pieces of paper, cigarette buts and so on, you will not find any single puke on the sidewalk. People do not need to get drunk to unconsciousness to have fun.

Appearance of the restaurants

An example of a restaurant in Constanța

This might be specific only to the seaside, but the restaurants and pubs have beautiful seats in various shapes. They look interesting, each is different. A big contrast to the dull average look of a Czech or a Slovak restaurant.

What I did not get to be fond of in Romania

Fițe

This hardly translatable Romanian word means something like snobbish. Guys with bald heads, big arms and big bellies that try to look like mafia way too hard. Blond girls with 10 cm high heels. And Mamaia, the most famous resort here is for these people no longer a place to have fun, but to show up. They are not a majority, but they are still very visible.

Bread

This will be very Czech/Slovak specific. Actually, compared to the rest of the world, the Romanian bread is not that bad. But there is nothing in the world like freshly baked, heavy loaf of Czech/Slovak dark bread. I found pâine de vatră ("bread from oven") and it comes very close to CS bread, but it's still too light, still too much yeast.

Among other (more liked than disliked) things I have to mention: Girls and guys dress up here. When they go out, they always dress nicely, girls put make-up on. I was suprised, when Izabela, one of my newly acquired friends from the dorms put pretty clothes and make-up even for a late-evening walk on the beach.

I met very stupid people and I met very open and helpful people, just like everywhere else. All in all, I like it here. So far, it seems to me, that Romanians complain less, then people in Slovakia, where complaining is a national sport. They are used to the fact, that they must help themselves if they want to live better and they are willing to work hard for it.


Questions? Put them in the comments!

Romania—First Week

It's a week and it feels like a month already. Since my arrival, I managed to find accommodation, work and some fun people around. I left Kúty with my car, went through Hungary (Budapest, Szeged) and Romania (Arad, Sibiu, Râmnicu Vălcea, București) and arrived in Constanța, on Saturday, 16.06.2012.

The Valley of the Olt river

Thanks to couchsurfing.org, I spend first three days at a couch of Lavinia Lavinic. Now the mission was to find some permanent accommodation. I went to ask in the student dorms, met a nice guy in charge there, with name Andone, who, after hearing my story, told me that he would help me.

Lavinia—my first ever couchsurfing host

In between I bought newspaper Telegraf Constanța and called to all the numbers from reality estate advertisements that were promising a place for something below 200 euro. So many times I heard "Ofertă nu mai e valabilă" ("The offer is not valid anymore"), that I will never forget that phrase. I stopped at dorms again and they told me, the price will be 250. Luckily, it was in lei, not in euro (1 euro =~ 4,4 lei; 1 leu =~ 6 Czech crowns), as I originally thought it had been. I could have saved myself some phone calls, oh, but well, I had more choices in the end. I could choose between flat on my own with three rooms for 250 euro per month, or student dorms, where I share one bedroom with 4 people, but for 60 euros. I chose the dorms, it will save me some money and I can socialize more. The more I speak, the faster I improve.

The day I was to leave Lavinia's flat, I still did not have a place to go. The god of good luck wanted it that a Czech girl, Markéta, living here with her Czech boyfriend Honza wrote me via couchsurfing. I stayed with them overnight, they had a beautiful flat with a view on the sea. We talked about all sorts of things before we were too tired to do anything but sleep.

Honza from Constanța, the grillmaster 

Markéta with all the goodies that we made

Finally I moved to my room in the dorms. In between, I found out that the boss of the only place I left my CV at, a photo-center, wants to talk to me. I got a job! And again, it will have the smell of hot concrete and chlorine. I am now a photographer at the local water park, Aqua Magic. Take pictures of people for money, some pictures also go to the park for their facebook page. For 40 lei a day. Not much, but my boss does not know that he is actually paying me for a language course.

My boss Alex, with his son Andrei at the photo-center

Lazy River in Aqua Magic

Aqua Magic water park, my new workplace

I bought sci-fi novels in Romanian (only for 10 lei!) and a textbook of Romanian. At 8:00 I go to work, I am there until 16:00 or so. During the breaks, I go for the water slides. After work, I usually go to swim in the Black Sea. Then, I read, or talk to the guys here at dorms, or go out with some couchsurfers. This is how my days pass now.

Beach at Mamaia, near Cazino Mamia

Beach at Mamaia. Task: Find a Slovak

So much for the first week, see you with reports of my progress in Romanian.

Dream with Romanian in It

Ok, this will be a small post, but I have to write about what has happened to me. I had a shaworma yesterday at midnight, so my dreams were little more vivid, than usual, but I clearly remember that in my dream, I was thinking (or speaking, in dreams it is hard to make a difference) in Romanian! My inner voice is not entirely switched to Romanian, although I am trying to help it as I can, for example trying to think in Romanian. The entire dream was not in Romanian, but dreaming in Romanian after a week really surprised me. Cool, I am curious what will be next :)

Romanian mission

Done with the school, done with the work, now it's the time to fulfill my dream—to travel and to learn languages. I have a list of things I want to do in my life. And travelling and becoming fluent in several languages is one of them. For that, I needed to change my life a bit, leave behind work that I really liked: working on the Masaryk University Information System. I will miss friends I found there, some of them were the closest people to me.


My first goal is Romania and Romanian. That's why I decided to move for three months to Constanța, Romania. Why Constanța?

1. I have been there before, so I know it a bit
2. Constanța is a touristic center—really a great place to spend summer at

Why Romanian? I can communicate in it and I want to get it to C2 level. At the end of my travel, I will sit for the C2 certificate exam. I am telling you because public accountability will kick me into doing it in the end. I would feel really stupid promising something publicly and not doing it afterwards.

So stay tuned and fly with me!