After living and working now for nearly 3 years in Romania, it’s overdue to acknowledge and describe the experiences, which we were able to make in this country!
My work-related experiences
Your satisfaction on working in Romania depends (of course) heavily on your own preferences. But one thing is for sure: If you
- are searching for something else then a routine 9 to 5 job,
- enjoy an agile environment,
- want to contribute with your ideas and find open colleagues to realize these changes together with you and finally
- if working together with teams means to you more than just assigning tasks, having reviews and maybe the annual get-together for team-building,
then Romania is your country!
I am e.g. working in a plant around 60 km outside of Sibiu. We manufacture products for our automotive and industry customers. Before I came to Romania, I already gained experiences in some other countries in Asia, Europe and North America for in total about 11 years.
Our private experiences
My wife (currently working in Germany) regularly joins me in Romania to spend time together with our friends. From the very first moment, we were lucky to experience the warmth and openness of the Romanian culture. Language barriers are easily overcome, accompanied with lots of laughter and utilization of gestures, if needed. And many times, there is also someone, who speaks English, French or German and can help you out.
From our personal experience, we feel it being easy to make new friends. In general, Romanians are open towards newcomers and are willing to integrate you. Going out in the evening together to a restaurant, cinema or just shopping is easygoing and does not require extensive planning and tidies scheduling upfront. Try to join a sports club. It does not only balance a little bit the rich food in Romania, but also allows you to immerse in your local community even more. And it is again amazing, how welcoming everyone is.
Very special moments for us are events like Eastern, Christmas or New Year as well as of course weddings, when spending them together with our friends and their families. While in other cultures, some of these special occasions are being more considered as private / family-focussed, we were lucky enough to be accepted in this circle.
Going from home to home and singing Christmas carols, dancing together (Romanian folk and other dances) until late in the morning or experiencing some religious ceremonies at Eastern is providing a lot of fun and insights and makes us feeling like at home and not as foreigners in a foreign country.
Conclusion
Regardless if you just plan to take one of the low-fare flights from major cities in Europe to Romania or consider to relocate and work in Romania: Romania will for sure leave lasting positive impressions with you (and maybe some extra pounds on your hips, if you are not careful).