Mid-Term Report Part 2: Social and Cultural Adjustment

There is a substantial section in the grant report that asks about social and cultural adjustment. I was pretty familiar with Romanian culture, so rather than "culture shock" I've experienced more of a gradual cultural immersion, in which I've understood more and more about this country and the people. It has helped me to better understand Sorinescu, who has now spent exactly half of his life here and half in the U.S. Now I know why he likes to go to parties and dance until 5AM, and why he likes to eat yucky little bits of meat in stew-like concoctions. It's in his genes.

But anyway, there are the obvious ways one has to adapt to Romania; the ways everyone points out in guidebooks and expat websites and whatnot. "Adapting" usually means "getting used to," which usually means dealing with the things we don't like very much. There's the bureaucratic inefficiency (more on that later), the omnipresent second-hand smoke and diesel fumes, the bad driving, the phlegm splats all over the sidewalks (a real bummer when you have a rolling suitcase), the poverty, the way people park on the sidewalk, the long cold winter, the occasional rudeness of people in public places. There's of course the language, which is a whole subject in itself. Native English speakers are generally treated with extra courtesy here. It is completely unlike France in that sense; rather than being expected to speak Romanian, Romanians generally apologize to you if they don't speak English. You're almost a VIP as a Western expat; you have money, you are a witness who is going to bring back images and anecdotes from Romania to your own country. Many Romanians make an effort to treat you better than they would their fellow Romanians so that you will feel welcomed and will take back good reports. And if you mangle their language, they'll tell you how impressed they are that you're making the effort. I had an amusing exchange with a jovial taxi driver in Bistrita who asked me how long I'd been in Romania. I told him four months, and he said, "Long enough to learn to speak bad Romanian!" Exactly.

The topic of Romanian culture is one that I am no expert on. Interpreting a foreign culture is always an exercise in comparison; it's always predicated on one's own formative social and cultural experiences. There are a lot of things about Romanian culture that are ideally understood on their own terms, not as comparisons to the U.S. or Europe. But those are my points of reference, and as someone trying to make a film here I am reminded of that every day.

I think that my "social and cultural adjustment" is an ongoing process; one that you will pick up from my other posts. There's also some of that in the earlier blog--euromaniac.blogspot.com.