64th

Romania has come in 64th (out of 177 countries studied) in the UN Development Program's Human Development Report. (Click on the link marked "Human Development Indicators" for the rankings). This is some kind of complicated index that takes into account GDP, health care, life expectancy, income, education etc.

As far as the Romanian press are concerned this means Romania is the worst placed country in Europe - though they then proceed to add the proviso "if you take out the former Soviet states and countries such as Albania and Bosnia", so it's a bit like the UK press stating that "The UK is the worst placed country beginning with U in Europe if you ignore the Ukraine". Mind you it does mean that Romania is less developed (by this measurement) than Macedonia and Bulgaria (for some reason Serbia and Montenegro is not one of the 177 countries included). Other countries which are better off than we are include: Russia, Libya, Cuba, Mexico and Brazil. Which sounds pretty bad, I have to say. Mind you, for real low results, and to make themselves feel better Romanians need look no further than neighbouring Moldova which is down in 115th place, below Vietnam, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Cape Verde, to name a few.

Norway is top by the way. Followed by a top ten of Iceland, Australia, Luxembourg, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, and the USA. (The UK is 15th).

Fairyland

Many people here had told us about this mythical land over the mountains where doctors were nice and talked to their patients as if they were human beings, but we had laughed off their fanciful stories and imagined that the positive bedside manner was a couple of decades away from Romania yet.

But pressed and cajoled by happy pregnant women who had made the trip over to Udvarhely (Odorheiu Secuiesc in Romanian), we finally were persuaded to make an appointment. At the very least, we were told, the doctor we were seeing had a better scanner. Last night was that appointment, so after work we set off over the Harghita mountains to Udvarhely, the most Hungarian town in Romania (98% Hungarian population).

It was, indeed, a revelation. All Ob-gyns in Csikszereda (and we have probably seen most of them) are sullen, uncommunicative, unhelpful, dour, non-committal and generally unpleasant. I have no idea of their medical abilities, but as empathetic human beings they're rubbish. All through her pregnancy with Bogi, Erika got mere grunts out of her doctor and when she finally plucked up the courage to ask "Is everything OK?", the response was (always) "It seems so". And that was it. This time around we've been a little bit more forceful, and had a slightly better doctor, but we've still got very little information handed to us, and what we have squeezed out of her has been grudgingly given. So, when Erika went into this doctor's office she expected something similar, just with a better machine.

But no. He (and his assistant) were kind, solicitous, and informative. They asked all sorts of questions, talked to her as if she were a human being (imagine that) and asked her (twice) if she was happy with the service she was receiving. Customer care! In a Doctor's office in Romania! (I know this isn't surprising to anyone else, but it was amazing to us). He even asked Erika whether I would like to come in and look at the scan too - in Csikszereda I once went in and was looked at as if I was some kind of alien (In this case I couldn't go in, because Bogi had got bored and I had gone off for a walk with her so I wasn't available to accept the invitation). Anyway, he told Erika that everything is fine with the baby, who, I can exclusively reveal is a girl (despite folk wisdom telling us all along that it was a boy). And even talked her through some of the things that other doctors should have talked us through long ago. We have a picture of her too (the baby that is).

All in all it was a great visit and has left us with the wish that we had been going there all along, and the certainty that from now on we will. The only slight drawback is that Udvarhely is over the mountains across a pass at 1000m up, and with the baby due in December, there is obviously a slight concern about conditions. But we'll have it here if need be.

All that remains now is for me to plough through the girl's name half of the Hungarian names book that we borrowed. I'd already done the boy's side and identified names that work in both Hungarian and English and which I liked. Oddly the list was littered with classical Greek and Roman names which would have been amusing, but a little unfair on the nipper. Agamemnon, for example, was there. I wonder if Medusa is on the girl's list? Or Cleopatra? Hmmm.

Who are Romanians and what do they believe?

"Romanians believe they show less positive personality traits than the “European person”. They even admit having outright negative traits such as being somewhat insensitive to others, leaning towards aggressiveness, and authoritarianism, behaving like followers rather than leaders, reacting tensely, walking on the thin line between honesty and dishonesty, being rather disorganized, idealistic, superficial and conservative."

This is one summary statement from the fascinating study Romanian and European values and beliefs: are they different or not ? which was published in June apparently but has only today come to my attention. (It's a pdf file and rather long at that, so be prepared for a wait).

The survey looks at the (self-perceived) differences and similarities between Romanians and Western Europeans, whether "European values" are respected in Romania, to what extent "non-European values" are accepted here, what Romania's agenda should be, and the perceptions of the EU, acession, and various public figures. It's all pretty interesting stuff.

There are some horrifying statistics contained therein - 38% of population believe that "Homosexuals are hardly better than criminals" for example, and 46% think "Superior and inferior races are a reality". Some surprising ones - 64% say that there are "Too many foreigners in the country at the expense of Romanians" (in truth this may only be surprising to someone like me who lives in a town with practically no immigrants). Some pleasantly surprising ones - only 42% think that there are "More lawbreakers among gypsies than among Romanians" (I would have expected it to be much higher), and at least one extremely misinformed one - 62% think that "Ethnic groups should be obliged to learn Romanian". (They ARE for god's sake! I live in one of the few towns where you could theoretically get by without learning Romanian, but everybody who wants to graduate from school, to obtain anything resembling a reasonable level of education or to be able to survive in the country as a whole must -and does- learn Romanian. It's stunning to me that there are people in this country who think that the ethnic minorities are swanning around NOT able to speak the national language.)

56% of the population are hopeful about EU accession with 39% worried, with the majority seeing that accession will bring short term drawbacks with long term advantages (that's pretty much my view too).

The best bit is tucked away at the end, where various "potential communicators" are ranked according to how aware the public are of them and how competent they are perceived. The two most competent are seen to be Basescu (100% awareness) and Jonathan Scheele (37% awareness), who is (as far as I know) the chief EU bod in the country. The least competent? Gigi Becali (94% awareness). Hah.

By the way, when reading through the list of traits of a Western European as compared with Romanians (by Romanians) it's fairly clear that most people interpret "Western European" to equate to "Western and Northern European", which is interesting. (Western Europeans are perceived as cold and reserved for example).

Anyway, probably very interesting reading for any Romanian readers, but not especially interesting for anybody else.

Crossing the border

In October I have to go to Kiev (or Kyiv, whichever you prefer) for a few days. I've just been investigating how I will get there. Now given that Romania has a sizeable border with Ukraine (in fact it has two borders with Ukraine with Moldova surrounded by the two countries), you'd think it wouldn't take that long. But you'd be wrong. Either one can go by train on a journey that takes 30 hours-ish via Chisinau (and I know for a fact that Ukraine has a different gauge railway from non-Soviet Europe and that they have to spend a few hours lifting the train off one set of wheels and putting it on another. Why they don't just ask you to get off and get on a new train is beyond me). Or one can go by plane. Via Vienna, Amsterdam or Frankfurt. I mean really. The cheapest option I've so far found involves me flying all the way to Amsterdam so as to fly all the way back again.

It's insane. Really. You'd think both countries would be united in some kind of post-2004 Orange revolutionaty fervour. But I might as well be going to Gabon for all the ease of this journey.

Salt of the Earth

Every time we go to Marosvasarhely we pass through the town of Praid (Prajad) which has at its heart a large salt mine. I didn't really know much more about it than this, and the fact that you can go there for treatment of respiratory ailments. In fact, its mere existence on our doorsteps seems to mean that if you have so much as a cough the doctors here will prescribe a week down the salt mines.

Well, yesterday we actually went there. And it is not exactly what I expected. First off, you buy your ticket to go down and then wait for a bus. I expected just to wander off down some stairs or take some kind of lift, but no, this is a bigger operation that I had assumed. So the bus shows up and you climb on and then are transported into a tunnel which descends at an angle through the mountain side for about 10 minutes, before arriving at a door, where you are chucked out. Then you do walk down the stairs and finally arrive in this vast hall. There are play areas with swings and slides and the like, churches carved into the rock, shops, cafes, a museum and a hospital. It's stunning. It smells kind of weird, like being under the sea without the drowning problem. And the salt looks like marble. It's polished and shiny and, well, marbled. It's quite amazing. Bogi loved it, running from slide to swing and angling for a game of ping pong or billiards. All of these things are there because if you go for treatment you have to spend weeks underground (well, you do come up every evening, but you spend all day every day down there so I guess they need to create something for you to do). After a while you start feeling all heavy legged. It's dead odd.

There's enough salt there to supply all of Europe for 100 years. That's what the sign said anyway. No idea what that means. Does it assume a relatively static amount of salt use continent wide? Have trends in greater or reduced salt use been factored in? If there is a future gastronomic fashion for Portuguese style bacalhau, will they have to revise that figure down to about 90 years?

I think it's probably indicative of the modern world when a salt mine has a website. It's here if you're interested. Though I ought to warn you that the translations on the English language pages leave something to be desired.

The storks are not what they seem

Earlier this week Erika got a call to see if she could help the New York Times SE Europe correspondent file a story about the floods last week in Udvarhely, and the contribution that illegal logging may have made to their severity. Anyway, she was able to fix him up with a fixer (an item of vocabulary I learned today) and he is still there having shot a film for the Beeb as well as writing a report for the NYT. So anyone with access to the BBC may still get to shortly see a report on the floods in Harghita County. I'll keep an eye out for it on the website and link if it comes up. The NYT's SE Europe correspondent (Nick Woods) lives in Ljubljana which much mean he doesn't make it over to Romania and Bulgaria that often at a guess.

We're going to have a good late summer/early autumn. I am told this is certain because the storks are still here. Apparently last year the storks left on August 20th (All of them on the same day? No idea.) But as of yesterday at least they were still in the area hanging round in those massive nests they make. I'll let you know whether this is true or nonsense as the season progresses

Maternity Leave

In Romania, maternity leave is two years. (It’s actually the only visible sign that Romania has ever had a government supposedly dedicated to working people). Two whole years! It’s brilliant. During the first three months off your employer has to pay you some percentage of your salary, and after that the state takes over. The 21 months of state payment of this maternity salary is done at a flat rate (currently standing at 9,000,000 old Lei – about €250 a month). Now this may sound like an absolute pittance, but for the sticks it is a pretty good deal. (I imagine for people in Bucharest it really is a pittance and amounts to an incentive to get back to work as soon as possible). Two women in Erika’s office are currently off on such leave and are earning close to what they were earning before. For Erika (and thus for us) it will be a pay cut, but that’s because she’s the boss. For most people it really isn’t one and for many it’s actually a pay raise. Probably one condition of EU accession is they get rid of such a progressive and socially liberal policy.

A Wunch of Bankers

The bank we have been using (until now) has just started charging us to use their services. I hate banks, they act like you need to be beholden to them and that they are doing you this massive favour. Any other business treated its customers that way banks treat theirs and they’d quickly go out of business. If shops made you beg for the privilege of buying something or decided that they were going to charge people a fee for squeezing the tomatoes, no-one would go. There’s a reason why bankers rhymes with wankers.

Anyway, to get back to the point, they (and I think I can reveal the fact that it is BCR, pronounced Bay Chay Ray, and short for Banca Comerciala Romana) have created a raft of fees for various transactions. The most fascinating of these is the commission charted for withdrawing money. Everytime you withdraw money from them, the bank now pockets 0.05% of whatever it is you’re taking out. This really isn’t a vast amount of money, but it’s the principle of the thing. But there is a weird catch. They ask you if you want notes only or would be prepared to take some of the money in coins. If you take some of it in coins it remains at 0.05%. If you insist on only notes, and I swear I am not making this up, they charge 0.08%. It sounds like the kind of policy instituted one night by a couple of high ranking accountants who were high and started trying to outdo themselves. “Hey man, what do you think? We ask customers to pay extra unless they agree to walk away with 1 kilo of coins?” “Oh, like, that is so cool, dude. Let’s put it in the new policies”

We’ve moved to a new bank as of today.

Inundated

It's been a bad year for flooding here (at least I hope and assume this qualifies as a bad year). As I got back from parched and burning Spain, Romania was being hit again, this time much closer to home. We drive through the village of Farkaslaka (Lupeni) every time we go to visit Erika's family, as it is just on the other side of Udvarhely (Oderheiu Secuiesc), which is the nearby town just over the mountains to our West. On Tuesday night Farkaslaka was hit by a flash flood which swept away 16 people. On the news they showed a picture of a bus in the river. Some relatives of a friend who live in another nearby village said they woke up on Wednesday morning to find two more houses than there had been previously on their land. I don't know if they started charging rent. Harghita county is in a state of emergency, and various politicians are visiting.

In another piece of news, which I cannot yet find English language information on, a Hungarian woman from Romania who has access to political power in Hungary (there are fairly lurid rumours round these parts as to what she did to get there, but not knowing what the situation is regarding libel and random bloggers, I'll steer clear of repeating them). Anyway, she has just been charged (at least in the Hungarian press) of spying for Romania. I really want to find out more about this as it sounds fascinating.

Not news, but I just wanted to point out that at Barcelona airport, which is like a vast shopping mall, they have opted to go for the standard trick at such shopping places and removed all clocks. Obviously believing that those people not burdened with time will more likely spend money and browse longer. All very well, I suppose, but it doesn't work quite so well at an airport where keeping people aware of the time is fairly important. I'd love to know how many people have missed flights there due to this, frankly, stupid arse policy.

Bandwidth

What exactly is bandwidth? The reason I ask is that I'm here working in Barcelona and the apartment I'm staying in, aside from being very nice, apparently has free Internet access. I turned on my laptop in order to plan my workshops and there was this little blinking icon telling me that there was a wireless network in range, which I of course connected to. So here I am posting this on someone else's internet connection.

I have a firewall (whatever that is) which means I reckon I'm pretty safe from whatever unscrupulous things people can get up to on people who don't have such a thing (the little warnings that Windows gave me led me to worry that this entire network in some residential quarter of Barcelona had been set up merely to entice suckers like me into connecting to it at which point the online bandits controlling it would swoop in and steal my powerpoints on project management or organisational behaviour).

So, as far as I can tell, this is basically a victimless crime. The only thing I am stealing is this mysterious "bandwidth". Will this band now be narrow? Will some irate punter come knocking on every door in the area until he finds the thief responsible for his internet surfing experience opertaing at only 95% of full speed? Frankly no. So, there's no reason to be concerned about this, I'm assuming. (Also the network is called "3Com" which as far as I know is that company that makes post-it notes). [Rest assured I am not downloading the full Directors Cut of "Once Upon a Time in America" or something, merely checking my email and the message board I frequent.]

Meanwhile, some websites for your viewing pleasure:

First, you may remember last year my post about Numa Numa Yay the famous Romanian song which was sweeping the continent (and it appears the world). Well, that particular post is the one on this blog that gets the most hits, and I was inspired to google up why. At which time I found the following lego version of the video. Lego-zone. It's bloody brill. (Apparently the reason I got so many hits was this video of some kid in the US singing along to Numa Numa Yay -real title Dragostea din Tei- which has become what they call an Internet sensation. That video is actually here, but I reckon the lego thing is better)

On another tack entirely, if this website is to be believed, Chistopher Walken is standing for President in 2008. Better than Arnie, I suppose, though the quote at the top "If you want to learn how to build a house, build a house. Don't ask anybody, just build a house", sounds suspiciously like some half-arsed philosophy you could imagine Dubya living by. "If you want to learn how to piss of the entire world, piss off the entire world. Don't ask anybody, just piss off the entire world".
[Later edit: I have discovered that this is not actually for real and is a hoax by a bunch of hilarious pranksters called General Mayhem. Sorry for misleading anyone]