What's so similar between Portugal and Romania

Bucharest and Porto are the capitals of two countries situated at the very East and West of Europe. Although situated at opposite corners of the continent, Romania and Portugal are not as different in culture and local’s behavior since they are both part of the Latin descendent countries group that also includes Italy, Spain and France. So, not matter in which of these 5 countries you go, you will still find a certain level of Latin like behavior or influence around you.

Since I have already been living in Porto for one month, a few aspects have caught my attention, some funny, some maybe quite obvious, but still worth a read if you are considering choosing one of the two cities to be your next Portuguese or Romanian Erasmus adventure.

The food

The food is great in both countries and both have their own specific recipes, but 2 main ingredients are most commonly found in both cuisines that made me find a little bit of home in Porto as well: garlic and onion.

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Also, as long as in Porto you can try meat based traditional foods such as the most caloric dish in this country: Francesinha (a sandwich made with toast bread and multiple layers of steak, sausages and ham, covered in slices of cheese that also melt in a sauce that has probably some tomatoes and Port wine in it), you can also most probably find the same ‘caloric’ standards in Romania too, given that we have meat and bread and cheese in most of our main dishes: ‘tochitură’ (a mix of different meat pieces boiled together in tomato sauce with onion, garlic and herbs) or ‘musaca’ (layers of potatoes and meat, covered in tomato sauce and cheese that are usually slowly cooked in the oven).

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When talking about desserts, Portugal’s most popular one is without a shadow of a doubt Pasteis de Nata (the God given custard tart, a dessert that is a mouth-size pastry tarte filled with vanilla, milk and egg cream you will simply fall in love with from the first bite).

Given that I had the chance to live most of my life in Romania and also be a dessert lover by nature, I can say that we love for sure anything with a good milk cream just like the one in the Pasteis de Nata: the vanilla cream cake (We even call it 'Snow White Cake') is one of the most common cake you can find on a Romanian Christmas table or… any other special occasion really.

The People

The similarities here are quite obvious given the Latin roots, but some people would not really expect Romania to be in the spotlight here for some reason. Maybe we are more modest in talking about how welcoming we can be, but as far as I have found out from some international friends doing their Erasmus in Bucharest, Romanians will prove to be very kind and caring, especially with internationals.

We have this innate urge to show we are taking care of our guests, so most of the times you’ll be surprised by the openness the people will have to show you the way somewhere instead of just talking you through the directions to a certain place, just to be sure you arrive there safely.

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Of course, as a Romanian-born, I can also highlight the fact that although we can be just as loud as Spanish and just as close to our families like Italians, Romanians seem not to belong to a certain cultural behavioral style. So, I can only advise you to go and visit the land in the far East and decide for yourself if the openness, kindness, stubbornness and simplicity are really what define us, because I think we might share a lot of these with the Portuguese too. A fact that I found, surprisingly enough, in Portuguese people too.

My impression about Portuguese people is that they are quite polite and helpful; two things that would make any foreigner feel welcomed without a shadow of a doubt. As I mentioned in some other articles, I had experiences where some countries have proven to purposely make me not feel welcomed – an impression confirmed by others too.

Also, Portuguese love animals for sure more than we do and especially big dogs. I have seen so many people walking them on the streets and I have quite a lot of friends sending me pictures of their Labradors too. Not to mention that our garden, balconies and even home are invaded by 5 cats daily. Some of them even follow us inside our house when we come back from school. It’s such a cozy feeling knowing that there are so many animal lovers around.

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Last but not least, Portuguese tend to underestimate their country just as we Romanians do. Apparently both countries are always in crisis, or badly managed, with lots of bureaucracy to be done in case of anything, but in reality, after spending enough time in both countries, you can actually enjoy your life with reasonably priced clothes, food, transportation, rents etc. And what I found the most striking is how both people want to escape to other countries while everyone seem to kind of want to stay in.

The English

Having at least a conversational level of English will help you make your way around faster, but when the people in the country you’re currently in are struggling to explain to you simple directions, then you will face some challenges.

Romania and Portugal both have their movies without voiceovers, so we both use subtitles for the translation of the movies while the voices remain the originals. Thus, the average Romanians and Portuguese speak more English than you might expect and I think the movies play a big role in this, since it is more easy and natural to learn English while doing such a normal activity. We basically didn’t even notice we were unconsciously getting used to a foreign language.

I might have my own theory about this but in comparison to France, Italy and Spain that use their own actors to dub the voices, I can easily blame it on the voiceovers for them not being that much into developing their interest in English language (among other factors of course).

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Understanding other Latin languages

What I also found to be interesting is how Portuguese can understand Spanish and Italian just as easily Romanian can too. The funny thing is that it doesn’t really work the other way around too. Apparently the native Spanish or Italian speakers do not have this ability. So, you will see perfectly fluent conversations between Spanish and Portuguese in their own languages with questions asked in Spanish and answers given in Portuguese.

The history and the influence on how we dress

Given that both countries went through a revolution to change communism into democracy not so long ago, you can see some similarities here too. Even if Portuguese had their revolution almost 25 years before Romanians, in 1974 and us in 1989, and despite the differences in the type of communism regime (they were left, we were right-winged) you can easily notice that in both how you dress matters - at least dressing correctly.

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Displaying too much skin still attracts criticism because it is viewed as a lack of respect for the others. Dressing up too much in a business or elegant-like clothes will also build a little bit too much superiority around you so people might not view you very friendly either. Social rules like these are part of our countries values so as a result, there is a specific wardrobe with women mostly wearing wedge heels, skirts or long lined pants, but casual and nice tops, while the men would mostly wear long trousers and shorts with collars.

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The time

You might find this one quite odd on this list, but Portuguese time is different from the one in Romania in the sense that in Bucharest I always felt the American way of living “Time costs money” so I grew up learning that arriving 5-10 min before the agreed meeting time shows a lot of respect and also says a lot about you and about how serious you are and how much you care about other people’s time.

In Portugal on the other hand, we always joke about the 'Portuguese time' which is always 20-30 min late so here the time runs differently for sure. Or probably, people here are more optimistic about themselves to make it on time… but they don’t.

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