I wrote this letter a year ago, under the impression of a growing anti-Romanian opinion in all Europe, in the shadow and as a consequence of some co-nationals actions. I wanted to point that they are not representative, that I am a real person and I’m very much alike any normal, decent European citizen. Ant there are thousands like me.
Dear European citizen,
I am writing this open letter to you just to introduce my self in a few rows. I do not intent to generalize anything, I will let politicians and mass media do such mistakes. I will just tell you about me.
I am not ashamed, nor proud, nor humble because I am Romanian. I was born here and anywhere I’ll go this will be my country.
I am a mother of two girls of 17 and 7 years old. My oldest daughter loves Dostoevsky, Salinger and George Orwell and Camus, she reads a lot of English literature. My daughters are thought not to trough out any piece of packaging paper on the street, I better keep it for days in my bag.
I work in IT, most of the time I’m dealing with SQL databases, but also with system analyzing or implementation. After my graduation I struggled a lot to keep me on the wave, in this always changing and challenging domain. I am still learning. Vfp it’s my favorite medium now, it’s a wonderful tool, and I believe I can do really useful stuff with it.
Our car is a VW. We are very glad that we could afford it, three years ago. Since then, we benefit on it making
every summer wonderful vacancies in Europe. I am using a HP laptop, for my job and also programming. I am somehow addicted to the Internet, not for games, but I am using it like as a toll, an endless source of any kind of information.
I was one of the first one among my colleagues who trusted, many years ago, any on-line transactions. I am currently using Internet banking services, I pay almost all my bills directly on-line, I make any research and reservations for our future vacation only trough the Internet. I am used to gather as much information as I can about the places we will visit, especially about culture and history. I am not exactly a fan of the typicaly guided tours, I am very curious to learn by my own about every place’s culture, to see and taste the real atmosphere of any new town we visited.
My youngest daughter loves horses. She wants a new doll for the Christmas ( A totally Spy Doll), in spite that she has dozen of dolls. She will get it,we can afford it, there’s no problem, and. It’s a hard time for her, maybe the most challenging period of someone’s life: learning to read and write. Now we are spelling, she learned 4 letters until now, we are working hard every evening, she has some difficulties in identifying sounds. Anyway now she knows how to write “mama” . That’s me!
Our street, as many others in our town, is again in reconstruction. It’s very annoying, every day on my way to the job and back. But I know must have patience, soon there we’ll have a completely renewed water system in our neighborhood. And this is a step forward, isn’t that?
We are shopping every Tuesday or Friday, at a supermarket. More than 35% of our wages goes on food, unfortunately. I’m sad that I have so little time left for cooking. I have two jobs and I’m working more than 10 hours a day, mostly in the front of a computer. Sometimes my husband surprised my with a good diner. I hate to do dishes, but I have to this, every evening, after I put my little girl to sleep. I have to wash laundry every weekend days. My washing machine is Whirlpool, and I am addicted to it, it’s 7 year old, but I know I couldn’t survive without it not even a week.
We love to drink coffee every Sunday morning in our small green backyard. I also enjoy listening Bryan Adams, Joe Cocker, Beatles, Mozart and Vivaldi.
Sometimes I meet gypsies begging in front of churches or supermarkets. I never give them money, only an apple or a croissant sometimes, if there are kids. I am annoyed, ashamed, embarrassed and feel bad in the same time. We have an old house, inherited from parents, nobody is living there in the last 5 years. We indented to modernize it, but we don’t have enough money yet to start the constructions. Last months, some gypsies families jumped the fence inside, and staled some old things and furniture. Three times in a week. Police couldn’t do anything about it. They recommended us to install an alarm system or to rent the house. How do you think we felt? It’s not fare!
The aversion of the peoples, no matter they are Italians, English or Romanians, against gypsies has nothing to do with the racism. It is the aversion of any honest and hard working peoples against thief, against peoples who prefer stealing or bagging for living. It’s not my fault, nor the society’s fault that they are dishonest, lazy, dirty. There must be solutions, I will let others to think about them, but I do proclaim my right not to be confused with them.
I went at every voting since last 17 years believing that things must change and will change in our country. I was expressing my political opinions trough vote, for the major, for the locals, for the parliament, for the president. I am so far to be satisfied by our political class, but it has to be an improvement, learning democracy game isn’t so simple.
On 1st Jan 2007 we were so happy because of the Romanian integration in the UE, not for any material advantage, but for the proud of being, finally, considered equal. It was more a feeling of moral justice, after so many years of dark communism.
A few years ago, I saw in a museum some Brancusi sculptures near Picasso, in the same room. I had tears in my eyes. Maybe we are not provincials! I can realize you have no information about Brancusi, about Mircea Eliade or Lucian Blaga. We do love real art and poetry as you do. It much easier to judge a country by some TV news or some scandals in a newspaper. But, please, think twice…
I consider myself a privileged person, because I could see so many places, I could get in touch with other
cultures and peoples. We where in our last vacations in Greece and in Croatia. We where basically for the beach and relaxing, but we couldn’t miss Athens or Dubrovnik. A real piece of Greek and Roman Civilization. It was a great feeling. We also visited Vienna twice and two years ago we had the opportunity to visit for one week the incredibly green Switzerland. And I also got, last summer ,just me and my daughter, a dream-week in Paris. It was a budget trip, planned on every detail three weeks before, on the Internet. We flow with a low-cost airline, stayed in a budget hotel, we eat very little and inexpensive food, no shopping at all, but we had a lot of cultural feed and joy.We were walking on the marvelous streets, breathing culture in the museums, impressed by the overwhelming architecture. Next summer we planned a vacation in Rome. I want to show to my daughter Michelangelo masterpieces, the Colosseum, The Roman Forum, the Column of Traian, Borghese Gallery, the Vatican Museum and many others. Usually we start making savings for the vacation in March, and until November we are covering the expenses.
My mother lives in a village. She is still hard-working the land for the living. You are welcome here in Romania, and you will be surprised how simple, warm and honest most of the peoples are. Go anywhere, in any small village, go in Apuseni mountain, in Bucovina, in Maramures County. And you’ll see they will ask you come inside and share with your their piece of bread. No matter their children hast to walk every day 8 km to the nearest school and that they can not afford new shoes every year. Go in Timisoara. You’ll find the most tolerant, calm and civilized people. You can speak German or Hungarian, nobody will be surprised. And, by the way, on any street of a Romanian city you can ask any teenager in English, he will answer you with no difficulties
Here is just a slice of my live. Does it sound familiar to you? I don’t want to go anywhere in Europe next summer and be ashamed to talk with daughter in my mother language in any metro station.
I do respect all the European cultural heritage, but I love my country as much as I love my mother hands. I am not a rrom, I am not a gipsy. I am as much as you, who are reading my rows, are.
Maybe, we share the same worries and the same dreams…
I am ROMANIAN.
