While Romanians have been leaving massively their home-country, an opposite phenomenon is taking place – many foreigners are settling in Romania. The Romanian press, perhaps a little neurotic, searches for an explanation for this phenomenon: what do these foreigners seek in our country? Many foreigners who have settled in Romania have been invited to television for interviews, they wrote articles in newspapers, sung, danced, or cooked in competitions – and consistently, this phrase emerges - a foreigner in love with Romania! It irritates me a bit! As if there were no other explanation – the foreigner has fallen in love with Romania. They made an irrational decision, it was a spell of the mind that set them on this dubious path – from their Western comfort to the hazard called Romania, what doesn’t a person do when they are in love? Blinded by the beauty of Romania, they didn’t see what lies beneath. By framing the phenomenon in this light, it betrays how little confidence there is that things will work out between foreigners and Romania. I don't think it's fair – many of us have observed Romania patiently, calmly analyzed the situation, and concluded that Romania could be a qualitative improvement in our lives in the long run.
I'll illustrate my reasons for moving to Romania with a charming example from the Netherlands, from the flower sector. The rose you bought today, or received, in the name of love probably comes from the Flora market near Amsterdam. The Dutch have long specialized in flower cultivation, they have developed a system that serves the entire globe with their products, but the sector is not as romantic or innocent as it seems. Aside from the farmer who grows the flowers, there is a need for accountants, logistics and credit experts, a stock market expert, an export fiscalist, a chemical and nutrient expert, heating, breeding specialist and one for genetic modification, recently. A bunch of people in offices dealing with this rose, people who have nothing to do with nature. If you were to ask them what their job is, their answer would confuse you. But even the farmer himself is no longer connected to the land – maybe you didn’t know - but the rose did not grow in soil, it grows one meter high, in plastic boxes, in a mix of nutrients, under artificial light, to ensure growth. What do you expect from a flower that you don’t have to bend down to pick, a flower that hasn’t felt the outside air or the sun, neither day nor night, that has never experienced any season - how can this flower have the same effect on your beloved?
I chose the rose as a symbol, but it stands for problems in a lot of fields - vegetables, animals, industry, or the banking sector, you name it. The rose looks good, maybe it even has a scent, but what's harder to notice – it has lost its essence, it has remained without meaning – it was grown just for money. The capitalist system has surrounded us with meaningless things, the market dictates what we eat, how we dress, what we believe, and how we inform ourselves – all for one purpose – profit. They manage to create demand, to arouse desire - you feel the need for what they offer -- their profit optimization has made us buy roses in February.
In the capitalist system, work is no longer a pride in mastering a profession, it has become just a source of income. The house people live in no longer ties them to their family's past, it has become a consumable item, indifferent of location, an investment of course, but it’s lacking a soul. Financed with money from the bank, which obliges the owner to insure both the house and his life, to prevent anything unpleasant from happening! So all the values that once gave meaning to our lives have become numbers - a one-dimensional system with only one criterium – money. A person's worth is no longer measured by the role they play in society or on what they add to the lives of those around them. It is measured by what they have - accumulated goods, a number, an amount.
On the surface, it doesn't seem like a serious matter; people live so comfortably that they don't even realize where their dissatisfaction comes from. When they can't stand it anymore , they leave for vacation to escape their home life. Others visit psychologists, and still others turn to a range of dependencies – there are many signs that Western society is not in a good state. But few understand what the problem is – that everything is meaningless, everything has become superficial and artificial – through what the capitalist system promotes as freedom, a void has been created in people's minds that no one is accountable for. But the system is like a matrix – it's almost impossible to look beyond (except if you move to Romania, in Carlibaba sometimes I feel like I'm looking right under the carpet tassels).
And so we come back to the attraction that Romania holds for foreigners, here you can live differently. Here, if you're in love, you can wait for Dragobete, on March 1st, you make martisoare or look for snowdrops - Romania still has a different spirit, the Romanian people haven't complied to their condemnation to the status of consumer. In Romania you can prepare food from local products, or even from your own garden, here you can raise animals and make as much plum brandy as you want. Romanians have realized that not everything the West offers is exactly what they need. And maybe Romania can find another path to the future, avoiding the mistakes of the West - here is where I see the reason for the hope of foreigners in Romania. Romania could become the best of both worldsa society that lives in safety and prosperity (there is enough land and resources) where there is conscious and deep discussion about what needs to be taken from what the West "offers" and what are the qualities of the authentic culture that need to be protected.
Romania the best of both worlds could become a movement around which Romanians and foreigners can gather – it doesn’t require much involvement from the government, people know what they have to do. But in case the government wants to support the movement of people back to the villages, to a more natural life, I would propose some useful measures. A subsidy program for people living in cities, who still own their families house in the village, to preserv the house and thus their connection with the original community. A measure for international companies such as Aldi, Lidl, or Kaufland to buy part of their assortment from Romania, or even from small local producers. And regulation of the banking sector, to balance overindebtedness in cities and the total lack of credit in rural areas. And of course, a program to stimulate the repatriation of Romanians who have left abroad. But maybe I am placing too much hope in politics. For now, the government is trying their best for Romania to become the worst of both worldsa country suffocated by European rules, but without the prosperity, fairness, and justice that exist in the West. I heard that 2024 is an election year - I prefer writing in Carlibaba, but I hope you – as voters - will finally get things straightened out in Bucharest.
Here in Carlibaba, not a day or night goes by without me stopping at least once to admire what is happening around me - animals, stars, the Bistrița River, the sunrise, each time something else takes my breath away. Sometimes winter frustrates me, so many months to stack firewood in all the stoves. But..., when spring comes, it comes with an existential joy, which we share with all of nature, entire hillsides of flowers praise the Creator – here, spring is not a random fact observed through the office window looking over the highway.
