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Comment by codeshaman | Hacker News Reader

The essence can be reduced to this quote:

"He sees it as a sport. He would like his daughter in Romania to grow up well, so that she can go to college later and live in a nice house. If he obeyed the German rules that wouldn't be possible. So he does what he must. And Germany does what it must. And Europe too. "

This article is too dramatic and generalizing too much. Of course fewer and fewer Romanians are like this, things have changed there. And it's one of the most beautiful countries in Europe.

Romanians I know are programmers, start startups or work at Microsoft or Google, are quite hip, go to music festivals, take acid and travel around the world.

It's all a matter of perspective (and selection bias :).

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"Romanians I know...take acid... It's all a matter of perspective."

It's all a matter of selection bias.

A similarly biased selection of Romanians I've met in western Europe include an architect (UK) and a bank manager (Loire region of France). However, I actually spent a month cycling around Romania in 2010 and never saw any crazy vans. It was really pleasant, never had any problems, lots of educated people with perfect English, great food, wine and beer. Highlights were cycling up this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transf%C4%83g%C4%83r%C4%83%C8%... - Brasov and Rasnov, plus the old tumble-down mansions on the backstreets of Bucharest, once known as the Paris of the East. Great country!

Those vans typically drive on the Bucharest-Pitesti-Catiulata-Sibiu-Deva-Arad-Nadlac route, outside of that you won't be seeing them but on that road they're impossible to ignore.

That's also a road on which you simply should not cycle.

Now that the M1 is open on a large part of those stretches it has gotten a lot better, there are still three dangerous segments left (along the river, up the black mountain and near Lugoj).

Yeah, Romanians do all kinds of stuff like everyone else, but none of that changes the fact that you're lucky if you're making 200-300 euros a month in Romania and that's simply not enough to live off of.

Same situation in Georgia (outside of the tech industry), but at least you're in EU (unlike Georgia, yet...) ;)

As for corruption, the low-level part of it (e.g. cops taking bribes) is eliminated here, fortunately.

I completely agree. This is just one part / one face of Romania, and unfortunately this is how Romanians are known..

When I went to holiday last time to Spain, I figured out very quickly that I am treated much better when told to be from Hungary instead of Romania. There is a big disinclination toward Romanians in western Europe, probably because the mismatch with gypsies.

Its probably because the majority or Romanians that you will encounter are gipsies. And they have a bad reputation.

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