Me, myself and Romania

Today, I want to talk about something that has been on my mind for some time now. Since I have reached Warsaw, I met a lot of students from Italy, Spain, France, Germany, China, Japan, North Korea, Indonesia and so on. What strikes me is that I know a bit, about of all their countries. I mean, I may not be acquinted with their entire history, their ancient legacy, their customs, but I do know at least a few things about them, whereas they, generally have no idea about the place I come from, meaning Romania. Generally, because particulary (not all of them:D), the Italians and Spanish tend to hate us due to the massive imigrations done in their countries and I think that they blame us for their falling down economy. The French have no positive feeling towards us due to the Gypsies that beg in their streets and the Germans aren’t friendly because they think, we, as a country shouldn’t be in the European Union. What they say is true. Many people have emigrated in other countries looking for a better way of life, gypsies do beg in the streets, but what they do not know is that we are not proud of these things. I mean, although, I know it is not my fault that bad things happen I can stop feeling ashamed when I see on TV what the european citizens think about Romania.  

I guess this is the process of life. Nothing is perfect and I am more than sure, that if we start to look closer and closer in the insides of every piece of land we will find something disturbing, something ugly. Like an old saying goes “there can’t be extreme beauty without extreme ugliness, for, if you take one and make it vanish you won’t have any comparison scale”. But this is not my interest now. I want to tell you why for me the name “romanian” doesn’t bring shame, why it gives me great pleasure and honor to be called Romanian and why I honestly hope that I can do my best to make a difference, to honor my forefathers, my ancient roots. 

Our journey will start in the year 44 BC.

We are in the lands of what is called Dacia. The ruler of this land is Burebista, the first king of the Geto-Dacians. An unspecialized eye would say, why Geto-Dacians? Where there two type of tribes or what? Well, we were known as Getae by the Greeks and as Dacians by the Romans. The kingdom of Burebista spread from the Black Sea and Bug in the East, Bohemian Quadrilateral, Pannonian Danube and Morava in the West,  The “Foresty Carpathians” in the north and the Haemus Mountain (from the Balkan chain) in the south.  It was quite big for that era.

Now close you eyes...
Endless meadows of green grass, rivers running close by, the view of a tall mountain, white, black, brown, wild horses prancing around, deers in the thick woods, bears and bees fighting for honey, trails that lead to waterfalls, an amazing sun, shining from a white-blue sky, the moon tied with a string to a tree or punished to look at her face in the mirror of a magical lake, high hills where people fish directly from the sky, great riches in the ground, gold, silver…

Beautiful, isn’t it? Well, that’s exactly what the Roman Empire thought.  After Burebista’s death, the next important ruler, Decebal had the hard task to protect Dacia from the romans. Wanting our riches, they attack Dacia between the years 85-89 BC, but the conflict is solved with a peace treaty. The geto-dacians renounce to some territories and pay the romans, tribute. 

(The history is very vast and thoroughly detaliated, but for the purpose of our story I will talk only about the most important eveniments.)

The birth of contemporary - me

Soon, the romans aren’t satisfied with our tribute and the geto-dacians are sick of paying, so a war starts. The first one is between 101-102, the romans occupy a part of Dacia. Peace comes again, until the second war 105-106, when the romans under Traian, fully conquer Dacia. Our ruler, Decebal commits suicide, not willing to surrender to the new power. This is the turning point for the geto-dacians, from this point on, they change. The romans tactic used to submit the will of every land they conquered was to transform the territory, to make it in Rome's image, as much, as possible. The emperor, Traian implements, here the roman administration, the roman language,  the roman customs, he brings many soldiers and learned roman people. In one word, he does what he can to make the geto-dacians accept their defeat and change their lives by completely redefining their existence. They stay in our lands enjoing our riches, until the year 275, when the “Aurelian Retreat” is ordered. By this time the geto-dacians mixted with the romans long enough to create a new nation, me – the contemporary Romanian. 

Now, you can see why I am really pround of my roots and of my name. I come from two great nations, the geto-dacians, renowned in many books and writings for their outstanding courage, being people that could go through hell and back in the name of their belives, and from romans, the great romans that conquered almost the entire world.  

Always attacked

Dacia transforms it self and soon, new territories are formed. They get new names.

We will go through history really fast. Now we are in the period when Moldova, Transilvania, Tara Romaneasca and Dobrogea form our lands. From this point on, our history becomes more and more interesting, we fought a lot like a nation to make our oppressors go away. And we had many enemies, the Turkish (the Otoman Empire) and the Hungarians, being two from a long list.

Why did other nations continuously attack us? Well, as you can imagine they wanted our wood, our gold, our silver, oil, etc, but most of all they wanted us under control due to our geographical position. If you check a map you will see that Romania is like a gate, a gate to many countries.

1859. Finally, we managed to unite some of our lands, Moldova and Tara Romaneasca.
1918. We manage to unite all of our territories, Moldova, Basarabia, Tara Romaneasca and Transilvania, becoming officially recognized as Romania.
What I just shortly expressed in those two sentences before, took us a lot of time, sacrifice, lost lives in the name of the greater good, almost never ending fights with many nations, great strategys, brilliant leaders and a lot of pain and sorrow.
And if think everything was better after the "Great Union" you are wrong. A greater evil came.

1939-1945. Romania participes in the Second World War with the only purpose of getting lost territories back from the Russians (Basarabia) and the Hungarians.
1952. Comunism is the next stage through which the country goes. 1965 - Nicolae Ceausecu rules over Romania, implementing by force the communist regim. At first it was not so bad, actually the country flourish, but soon Ceausescu wanted Romania to treat him like a “God” (the cult of personality) so his politics turned from slightly negative to "dark" worst.
1989. The Great Revolution frees the country, once more from its oppressor. The era of democracy starts.

Road to "nowdays"

If you reed this small and unsuficient “article”, you can easily see how troubled my history has been.  Bare in mind, that what I just told you is a tiny, tiny, tiny part of what happened through the nearly 2000 years since we have been wondering these lands. 

Contemporary Romania. How does it look?
Beautiful women, wonderful sites, still green meadows and forests, nice and warm people, good and tasty meals, old and fascinating churches, castles, history of queens and kings, interesting architecture, big parks, lots of internationaly known writers, painters, sculptors, inventors,actors,actresses, directors and singers.

What is the problem with Romania? Bad management. After the communist era, lets just say that, the leaders that followed were not so kind hearted. They poorly managed the sistem and democracy was implemented hard and improperly.
I can say that, today we are on the right track and that things will pan out. I think that Romania is starting to be a democratic country now, so it will take us some more time to learn how to properly use the power of democracy. Nonetheless, no matter how much time it will take, despite all of the problems that we face, I am proud to be Romanian! Really proud!

I think that every person should be proud of their legacy, their heritage, because we need to know where we come from to know were we are heading to…

For all of you out there that want to learn about us, just a bit. I will post some links, so you can acces and enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dZGDy45ZeI 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yn_t3Gi1Bg&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLh5NE09iLo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=m_Z7M1mgDQI&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQZOh3O4Svs 

http://www.rotravel.com/History/Introduction/

http://www.rotravel.com/History/The-Geto-Dacians

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