R O M A N I A
I
'What do you expect...Romania...'
You know, that sort of attitude and I find it so unhealthy and it irritates me something awful to hear them talk that way – what do you mean, that our country is bad? No, it's not. We're behind on some things, agreed, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
I've heard a lot of people say they're embarrassed to be Romanians, that when they go abroad they feel bad about saying where they're from. I don't, I never have. If someone looks down on me for being Romanian, it reflects badly on them, not me, and I'm aware of that. But many of these young people are not.
It's become very popular to diss our country and act as if nothing good happens here and as if our country was a terrible place. It's not. Act as if we should feel ashamed because we were born here, but we shouldn't. We have a fascinating history that few of us ever bother to learn about, we have a beautiful country that we rarely bother to visit. After all, it doesn't really sound cool to say you went to the country for your holidays.
Many of us have come from that very same country, from the poor villages, from having the toilet in the backyard, from cold and no electricity. And now we run from that, we act as if we're too good, as if our own origins are below us. We've been Westernized to a fault and what I find most strange is that many of the people who are most ardently in love with the west were not even alive during the Communist era, because maybe then that would be understandable. For a long time, Romanians believed the West was the golden shore, that anything and everything that existed out there was immensely valuable and worth copying. And it's understandable why they thought so, there was a lot of misinformation in my country during that period and the living conditions were not happy.
But many youngsters seem to have retained that belief. Now, it's only fashionable to dress from H&M and Mango and other foreign brands. We eat out, at American joints, or sushi places...even if we want to eat some traditional Romanian food, we go to some “authentic” restaurant that leaves deep holes in our pockets. All for the illusion that we're like those in the West.
Many Romanians are trying to ditch their country, as if it's her fault she was conquered by communists, her fault that she couldn't develop at the same rate as other countries. We're ashamed of our country, or at least that's the general consensus.
We listen to foreign music, wear foreign clothes, watch foreign movies, eat foreign food.
And it took me a long time to see what was wrong with that. I too used to think only things from outside were worth my time and attention. And I don't know how the change happened, where exactly I realized there are a lot of beautiful things right here at home. But it did. I guess Romanian music was always an exception – or at least Romanian rock, as I still can't abide our traditional songs. But those are a part of who we are, too. We scoff at the older generations who listened to folk music, which we find to be tame, boring, simple. It's not.
Then there's literature. We've had, in Romania, some of the most talented writers of the last few centuries, yet we easily go past them, rarely mention a Romanian book as our favorite, while in conversation. Particularly not with foreigners – after all, we wouldn't want to seem simple, would we?
We don't want to be those daft little Romanians who only know of Romanian things. No, and whenever we're speaking to someone, we do our best to show how much else we've learned. We're leaving behind our origins and that to me is a terrible shame. We should be carrying these things forward, making sure they're remembered in the books of time.
Nichita Stanescu, Tudor Arghezi, Marin Sorescu...you haven't heard of them, have you? And how can I blame you...when we so rarely think of them ourselves. We who should see the beauty in their words, but don't because we feel they were born in the wrong country, as were we.
Lately, national identity has become a sin. We're pushing toward unity, toward becoming one great border-less continent, which seems to work particularly well with the poorer countries, such as my own. The rich folk in the west want to become one with us? Joy! Let's do that, let's leave behind our grandparents, our peasant ancestors, and become one cultureless world.
Forget the borscht our grandmothers used to cook us, we'll just eat at Subway. I was going to write 'soup', but it's not fucking soup. Forget the wool jacket that used to keep up warm in the cold winter night, we'll just buy a cute little blanket over at Zara. It's more fashionable.
As I was contemplating this post, I was out walking, admiring the beautiful city I live in. It's not London and I don't want it to fucking be. I wouldn't change Bucharest for the world. And I was listening to a song, in Romanian as it happens and the lyrics struck me as particularly meaningful.
Raised with love,
With Prince Charmings and beasts
Only that's not how it really was, of course. The actual words were:
Crescut din dragoste
Cu Feti-Frumosi si bestii
It's a reference to the stories we read in school, to the fairytales and the heroes of our childhoods. But they were never our heroes, we were too busy looking at the likes of Hannah Montana to ever notice our poor old Ileana Cosanzeaza, weren't we?
Fat Frumos is not Prince Charming, he's more than that, he's more complex than that, but for lack of a better name, I suppose this works.
These lyrics sum up exactly what I'm trying to say here – we were raised with love, with the love of a country, of a culture that is beautiful and unique. Our own. So what if it's not a popular story? At least it's our own, our folk tales, our myths, our heroes, our songs, our beliefs. We come from this country, no other. And the old grandmother who used to take the cows out to graze, you wouldn't be you without her. That awfully embarrassing music I used to so hate – I wouldn't be who I am if that wasn't part of my ancestry, of our Romanian culture.
We look away when someone asks us who we are, and in that look, we're betraying our ancestors, the Romanian people of a hundred years ago. You should be proud of where you were born and that goes for anyone. And while you should discover new things, fall in love with foreign countries and new languages, your greatest love affair, country-wise, should be with your home. With the place you and your parents were born.
Don't sell out. Don't sell your family's memories over a piece of apparent superiority, over a vague feeling of being someone you're not. I don't know, maybe it would've been nice to live somewhere else, to be born somewhere else, but you weren't. You were born right here and you should embrace that, because if we don't, who will?
Someone out there is fighting to erase the very idea of national identity, of who we are as a people (not just us, any country) and you're all-too-willing to help. But if you let them take that away, the songs and the poetry and the dances and the old sayings that embarrass you because it sounds like something grandma would say...if you do that, we're lost. We're no one without our past, we're no one without the food our ancestors ate to survive, without the songs our peasants would sing after a long day.
They embarrass you now, but you know what would be even more embarrassing? If they hadn't lived to sing them at all. Be proud of who you are, stand up tall when you say your name.
Don't be ashamed with your country. It's not perfect, but then what is? Good people, hard-working with a beautiful language, and with stories. We are.
Thank you for reading,
