Romania: Life in a Post Communist Society
Among the many third world countries, Romania is one of the most underdeveloped, lacking an adequate infrastructure, as well as most of the modern technological advances that the United States takes for granted. In a recent New York Times article, Romania was called the "Basket Case" of The Balkans. The economy is in constant fluctuation and it seems that the country is in an everlasting hardship. Romania is located in Eastern Europe and borders Bulgaria to the South, Serbia and Hungary to the west, the Ukraine to the north and Moldovia to the east. The country has an area of 237,500 km (roughly 91,800 square miles.) and a climate similar to the central United States. It is about the size of Oregon. Even though the country has many economic problems, the land is by far the most beautiful that I have ever seen. The country has several major forms of landscape. The Carpathian Mountains, which have a maximum height of 2,535 meters of 8,300 feet, cross the country from the north to the southwest. To the west of the Carpathian Mountains lies a large plateau and to the south and the east, there are extended low plains fit for agriculture. One of the most important rivers in Europe flows throu
From 1946 to 1989, Romania was a socialist state. State property, excessive centralization and rigid planning characterized the economy. There was no private property and no free market. Because of the communistic way of governing, this time was the worst that Romania had ever seen. Cities became overcrowded as the communist leaders moved farmers into large housing projects to work in factories. After the collapse of communism lack of funds for maintenance has turned many of these into the equivalent of Chicago's Cabrini Green or New York's South Brooklyn. The life in which I have just described to you is what most Romanian lives are like. I did get a taste of the culture by becoming friends with a women of 24 who was married and had a child. From them, I learned how hard it was to live there. I will assume her role to describe what life is like from her perspective. My name is Claudia and I live in a single room of a small house that is owned by my mother and father. We live in the front of the house. My husband's name is Ion (John in English) and we have a four-year-old daughter named Andrada. Our room is about 4 meters by 4 meters. (14'x14'). It has two couches, a kitchen table with three chairs and my treadle sewing machine. I sleep with my daughter on one of the sofas and my husband on the other. I have no indoor facilities. We use a bowl for bathing and we have an outhouse in the back yard. In the winter, an old stove that sits in the corner heats our room. To wash my clothes, I use an electric ringer washer, which sits in the yard beside our door. I hang the clothes to dry in the yard above our garden. Our yard is quite large by Romanian standards. In my yard, we have a small garden, which is about 6 meters wide (20 feet) and 10 meters long. My mother and father live in the back of the house. My mother has severe psychological problems and is unable to get proper care for her condition, as medical and psychiatric facilities are sub-standard, lacking proper equipment, medications and staff. The care for patients with these conditions is hardly a main concern for the Romanian government. She has a large pig in a pen, which we are raising for meat. All around us are high rise apartments, but we have a farm in the city. This means that we have food to eat and vegetables to put away for the winter months. Sometimes, when we are out of money and the spring crops are not yet ready, we eat pickled tomatoes and onions because that is all we have left. The country is rich with culture and it was truly an adventure to go. The minute we crossed the Hungarian border, it was as if we had stepped back into time hundreds of years. We made many friends while we were there and because of their economic status, we send them clothes and money every chance we get. I only hope that Romania stays as virtually untouched as it is now. It would be a shame to see it ruined by modern society.
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3636
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page double spaced)
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