Overall view

The first time I visited Netherlands I was utterly surprised by the general height of the people here. I know I am not all that tall but I never considered myself to be small. That changed when I got here. Seeing 1.80 cm women in heels really made me feel like Lilliput in Guliver’s land. It’s easy in NL to see who’s pure breed and who’s an imigrant, look no further than the height. I never realized that my country fellowmen were so averagely sized.

As an imigrant from an Eastern European country you have some explaining to do. Then again maybe I just met the special kind of people. Some think we still live in caves and wash our clothes by the river.

Every once in a while I got asked some puzzling questions that made me wonder if I look like I got lost from my mother ship.  For example: do you have comercials on t.v.?

How to react to that one? Tell them they’re stupid? Crazy? Say: No, our stone tvs can’t handle comercials?

But of course the favourite topic is the communism and the poverty. At some point I get tired of explaining that we don’t live in shacks and to my shame I let them believe whatever the want. Sometimes, I am for them just another animal in the zoo. Coming from a communist breeder.

There are of course those ocasional dutchies that know where Romania is on the map and even may have visted it. They know the wonderfult food we have and the welcoming people that would do anything to make their guests happen. But for the most part they consider me a gypsy. At least in the beginning.

Now I am going to try my best to be politically correct… Here it goes.

Through some miracle (so to speak) gypsies are called now, in Romania at least, Rromas. Notice the dubble r please. Now I do understand that it is quite confusing having the two words next to eachother. Romania and Rroma. But assuming that all romanians are rromas is very very far from the truth. Personally I am offended when people tell me: “Oh you are from Romania? So you are a rroma! You know we have a lot of problems with rromas here.”

Whoa! Hold your horses. First of all labeling ain’t all that nice, second of all you are expecting me to be trouble. Not to mention that there aren’t even all that many romanian rromas here. Bad weather and tricky language, of course they aren’t coming.