The Flying Romanian / Romanul Zburator

  Romanians, at least in my experience, have a very superstitious rapport to others. From early days, parents teach their children to be aware of the others' evil thoughts and intentions (aka “the evil eye”). This warning concretizes itself on their newborns’ bodies, under the form of a red thread tied to their wrists, that they would keep on until they become toddlers. This thread is meant to protect them from the evil eye, at least as long as they are the most fragile. This custom was probably built to circumvent young children' mortality, due at that time to lack of a healthcare system. But when one believes in something it becomes true, and parents are relieved to be able to protect their children from the others' envy, if not from all the rest of bad things which can happen to them. When children grow up - they don't wear a thread anymore - they are taught not to be very show-off or else they might get exposed to evil actions from the others. We...

If you're reading this post you're either Romanian and you already know what that means or you're not and simply curious about how that could be. Or that you’re nostalgic about your holidays period. I've just (2 weeks ago) come back from 3 weeks in Romania, the longest holidays I've spent there since my college years.   Out of these, 1 week was spent on the road: getting there, leaving and   travelling from one place to another. For those who know the country a bit, my family doesn't leave in the capital nor in a highly touristic place: as I like to say, they're 250km away from everything (the mountains, the sea, Bucharest - the capital). Therefore based on my "broad" experience of travelling to and within Romania, I wanted to share some tips with you, Romanians and/or curious about travelling to Romania: 1/ don't trust Google maps for taking you from one place to another. They didn't even seem to have noticed the best roa...