Work trip to Bucharest, Romania - 19th to 20th March 2008

This was a very short notice trip to Romania, which I only found out about 6 hours before I was due to fly out there. A colleague had pulled out of a meeting ill, so I was told to make emergency plans to be in Bucharest for the following morning. I managed to get a seat on a plane leaving later that day, and the last seat on the plane coming back the following day – at the very reasonable cost of almost £900 return!

I had been to Romania before, but as a backpacking student, and rather a long time ago. Since then, the country has joined the EU, and has one of the fastest growing economies in Europe – with double digit growth rates in wages for the last few years. I was due to talk to a group of clients for an hour or so. As when I went to Poland earlier this year, I found everybody I met in a professional capacity to be incredibly nice, welcoming and accommodating. The same could not be said for all of the other people I encountered.

On arriving at the airport (at just past midnight), I got my first taste of the Romanian love of bureaucracy (often badly organised of course!), with a very officious passport check. Despite now being an EU member, it looked as through some habits still die very hard. In general, the country seems to have an abundance of red tape, controls, checks, and paperwork – which makes the breakneck growth all the more surprising – surely it would be even quicker if they abandoned some of the needless pen pushing!

I made 3 car journeys whilst in the country, and heard a Queen song on the radio during every one of them. Whilst driving around the city, I also saw (slightly faded) posters advertising a Shakin Stevens gig. Add in the people with very poorly dyed blonde hair, and the cheesy decor in the airport lounge, and it was clear that, in many respects, Romania is still in the 1970s and 1980s. Things seem similar to Western Europe, just a bit out of date, and, well, just a bit shitty. And I suspect that Bucharest is the most “advanced” part of the country, by quite some distance - you hear stories of horses and carts still being used in more rural areas.

Differently to other “Eastern European” countries, Romania is Latin rather than Slavic – in terms of the language, the people, and the culture. This means lateness, a complete inability to queue up for anything, and pretty much everybody smoking heavily everywhere, all the time (I even saw a cigarette advert on TV!). It also means a language that looks familiar when you see it written down, looking rather like French or Spanish, or even Latin in some respects. If the Czech Republic and Poland are like ex-Communist versions of Germany, Romania is more like an ex-Communist version of Italy. When you think about that, it becomes easy to see how the country’s problems arose, and why it has been so poor

On the way back out to the airport, we experienced the traffic nightmare that seems to exist in every Eastern European capital, as the newly free and increasingly affluent population rush to buy cars. The main airport in Bucharest is small, chaotic, and frankly a hellish place to be – even considering Heathrow's failings. It is amazing to think that it is the major international airport of an EU capital – with 10 gates or so, and the main guy that checks boarding passes wearing jeans and a t-shirt – it all seems quite haphazard and a bit backward.

Romania is growing fast, and is modernising at a very exciting pace, but there is still a huge difference between it and the more developed EU economies. This trip really brought home to me that the newly enlarged EU is now a hugely diverse group of countries. Being a member can only be good for Romania, but in some respects, they have a lot of catching up to do!