A recent talk to a Romanian cab driver revealed a thinking pattern of Romanians who work abroad. 

Talking to cab drivers in any country is a window to discovering it. The same goes for Romania. Of course, knowing the language helps a lot in this respect, as it increases the chances of getting the correct information – not the spiel intended for tourists – and decreases the odds of getting the scenic route to your destination.

I recently discovered I like talking to cabbies. I never liked it in the past, but somehow things clicked a while ago when a smart cab driver engaged in sparkling conversation and got me out of my shell. Then I started talking to cab drivers with whom I would have blocked conversations in the past by always giving monosyllabic answers.

In a recent conversation to a 40 something cab driver, I found out that there are Romanians who perceive Romania as a second – rate country, where unfortunately they have some family ties, and where they need to come back now and then to solve administrative issues.

This cab driver I was talking too was in his two-month break in Romania, and while searching for a new job abroad, was making some money as a cabbie. He'd been working temporary jobs, project based, in Northern Italy, Switzerland and Belgium. He could barely stand the sight of Romania anymore, but had to come back from time to time, now to solve some family matters, other times, to stay somewhere while searching for his next assignment.

That view troubled me, but I could understand his rationale. “I work just as hard here as I do abroad, I am as correct here as I am when working abroad. I sometimes even work harder here than I do abroad, as it is more of a jungle here. But I am not respected here; employers, the state, they don't respect my work,” he explained as I asked why he did not like it in Romania anymore. He also hated how much Romanians break the rules about anything. “You know what? There are the same rules more or less in Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, in all the places I have been, but there people actually respect them. In Romania, everything is open, and the rules are there just to show the EU we have them”. His common sense was a breath of fresh air.

This guy was unlike other cab drivers: his driving was calm and correct, no crossing lanes at high speed, jumping in front of others, no cutting our the queue by using the side walk or the tram tracks. “In Switzerland, if you do any of these, other people in the traffic would call the authorities letting them know what you did, giving your registration number, and in ten minutes the Police would be chasing you. They'd fine you, tow your car for a few days, so you'd not want to do that anymore,” the guy explains.

As we drive past the first car equipped with devices that wash the sidewalk and the street, he reminds me of the thick layer of dust which covers Bucharest – wash your car, park it on a large boulevard in Bucharest, and in two hours it needs to be washed again – and tells me about the garbage collection system in Western Europe. 'What we have here in Romania is a joke, again pretending to be following the rules. They'd fine you big time in Belgium if you threw garbage outside the designated areas, and if you did not selectively recycle.” This reminded me the recent troubles I had in finding places where I could recycle furniture, textiles and all sorts of items from an old house I ended up renovating.

We move to how the city looks like, and how many Romanian villages look like. He concludes that people have been erecting houses, and offices hectically, but it is not their fault, it's the authorities that do not impose rules. “It Italy, and in Belgium, for example, you are not allowed to paint your fence on a different color than the rest of the houses on your street. If you did for some reason, somebody would sue you, and they'd win,” he tells me. Truth be told, I don't know a lot about design rules in other countries, but I know there have been endless talks in Romania to impose certain architectural styles for certain area, but to no avail.

“So why do you still come to Romania, if you dislike it so much?” I ask. “What can I do, I have family here and until I can afford to take them all with me, I need to get back now and then,” he explains.

Upon getting out of the cab, I start to worry that Romania will become that old house in the countryside where your old parents live, or used to live, where you only return now and then to mend a fence and say hello, or that is taken over by weeds and eventually collapses.

Corina Chirileasa, corina@romania-insider.com