Part II - Romanian Humour and Folklore In part one I outlined our history. Now, it is important to understand why we managed to survive after so many invasions, wars and occupations by foreign people. Well, there is a good Romanian anecdote that explains it all. Here it is: One day, God gathered all the nations in the world to distribute His gifts among them. First came the Germans and they got discipline. Then the English and they got traditional values and a stable monarchy. The French got good food and wine, the Italians got wonderful music and so on. Late at night, when God was preparing to leave the people to their world came the Romanians, tired after the trip. God looked at them and said: "Well, my dears, I almost finished all the gifts, in fact I have only one left, so I give it to you. You will have a hard life, but it will seem easy because I give you the gift to see the funny side in every thing and get over troubles with a good humour." So, that is the core of Romanian humour: being able to find a funny side in any situation. And everytime something bad happens to us, we remember how something worse happened to someone we don't like and find things easier to cope with. Romanian humour is linked with Romanian folklore and spirituality. We are basically a jolly, happy-go-lucky nation. We stick together when there are troubles. We don't get along with our neighbours, but keep it at the level of a good-humoured banter. We never sue neighbours because their dog barks too loud. We never sue our parents over some blasted bank account. We just realize that you can't have it all and get on with our lives. Telling jokes is a great way to socialize, just like the British discussing weather or sports. You can be a perfect stranger to a group, but if you know some great jokes you instantly become one of the party. We even had a TV contest for telling jokes, with great prizes. It was the show with the highest audience of the season. Jokes are very important to us. We can be a bit cynical or sarcastic in our humour, but never cruel. We don't joke about religion, family and disabilities. We dont have dirty "Little Johnnie" jokes. Oh, we have saucy humour, usually told at parties after some glasses of "tuica". "Tuica" is one of the most important things for a Romanian. It is our national, patented plum brandy, produced from times immemorial in every household that has at least one plum tree. Our folklore is very old, some myths being maybe as old as our nation. It is all about realizing who you are, and growing up, from a naive, inexperienced youth, to a mature, experienced person. Ou fairy tales tell about princes and princesses, and every time the prince has to fight against something or someone evil who tricks him in the beginning and leaves him in the middle of nowhere. These are not just fairy tales: they tell us that it is OK to be young and scared because you don't know the world. Young people nowadays are thrown out into the society without much preparation. They are just like those princes, left to fend for themselves. But deep inside we remember that, at the end, the prince won his lady's heart, the throne and they lived happily ever after. So we shrug our shoulders in front of bad times, say a good joke and move along. In the next chapter, how we were children during Communism and teenagers in democracy. Stay tuned.