Part I - The Historic Timeline I am writing this at the request of some friends from Renderosity. I quite understand why: being Romanian makes me exotic somehow. So let me tell how it feels to be Romanian in the XXIst century. The first things we learn at school is that we are related to the Romans because they invaded our country. Unbelievably, we are proud of that. I mean emperor Trajan himself conqered our Dacian ancestors. That is something! Afterwards, during all the space of the Middle Ages, we were continually invaded by the Turks, but we managed not to be invaded. That is something, considering they were 20 time more numerous than us. After that we were partly conquered by the Austro-Hungarians. The horrible damage they did to us is that they taught us order, discipline and hard work. The scars of their occupation still exist in the Western part of our country - all the cities are clean, well-kept and the people are polite. I don't mean to say we are chronically lazy, dirty and impolite. We just like to do things at our own best convenience - that is, not right now. That is an important thing to remember about Romanians: if you ask them to do a thing and they say "yes", it means "yes, tomorrow", or "yes, later", but NEVER "yes, right now". Coming back to the historic timeline. After the Austro-Hungarians, nobody wanted to invade us anymore. I guess we weren't interesting anymore. Then came WWI and it was bad. Afterwards, WWII and it was worse. Worst of all was after WWII, when the Russians came to "rescue" us from the Nazis. They liked it here so much, that they didn't want to leave anymore. So they stayed on for years, made us all Communists, starved us and sent the rebellious, anti-national elements like intellectuals, writer, poets, scientists to prison and killed them there. It took us about 45 years to realize we didn't like things as they were and made a revolution. So, from 1990, we have a democracy. But make no mistake: it is a Romanian democracy, 100% original and without even the faintest resemblance to other democracies. In 15 years of democracy we witnessed 5 or 6 bank crashes due to corrupt management, some really bad strikes (ask any Romanian about the miners' strikes, Miron Cozma and be prepared for a day long story). And then the usual stories about the underworld, drug deals, prostituion, juvenile delinquency, execution style murders, bank robberies and so on. But we gained some valuable rights, like the right to complain about everything and do nothing about it, the right to be unemployed and (for the women) the right to kill our unborn child and go for work in foreign countries as striptease dancers or prostitutes. I know, I am malicious. We have excellent professionals in the IT field and other branches of science, but somehow they don't get into the news. Probably they are rather boring for the Romanian sense of national pride, doing some unremarkable job in an office. Remember, we are the descendants of people who chased Osman Pasha out of the country stark naked (so the legend says). We expect a lot from our role models! At the present we managed to get into NATO and hope to get into the European Union as well. We really don't know how this is gonna help us live better, but we're darned if we don't get in the EU. I mean, we're Romanians, don't mess with us! We can turn really nasty if provoked! In the next chapter, insights into Romanian humour and folklore. Stay tuned.