The Flying Romanian / Romanul Zburator

"You won't make it”. I don't know about you, but I hear that a lot around me. Or told to me. Implied : “Don't do it, it's too risky”/ “Don’t do it you might fail”/”Don’t do it you might suffer” etc.etc. Of course, our internal voices are telling this to us all the time. But when there's - on top of it- a figure of authority saying it, it becomes much more complicated to NOT listen to it. The problem with this statement is not its intentions (to preserve us from something, an indefinite bad which might happen). It's the results - or lack of results I should say. Because experience shows that once you try to do something, you might fail or...you might succeed.   In both cases, experience comes with a key learning : either that you can try, fail, and still feel good about the whole trying experience, either that you can trust yourself because you have proved you can succeed in the past. So, my advice: listen to other people’ advice. But ...

In one of my previous articles, I was addressing the widespread question of "are all Romanians beggars and thieves" ? I will let you re-discover the answer to that . However, despite that, and when living in France, one doesn't stop being confronted continually with the topic, even in the "intellectual" media. For example, on November 19 th France Inter talked during 5 min about the tragi-comical destiny of 7 paintings stolen a couple of years ago in the Netherlands.  Of course, the thieves were Romanians, and of course they were so unprofessional that they were quickly caught (they left their fingerprints on the crime scene). But the story continues when one of the thieves' mother realized her son had brought the paintings home. She quickly burnt them to clean the scenes. So, besides beings (unprofessional) thieves, Romanians are also uncultivated! One could not find a better example to fit the stereotypes. But when you hear that, don...