history book: My Cool Life in Romania

Sunday, September 16, 2007

My Cool Life in Romania

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Now for updates about my life in Romania and how it is going.
Due to some IE problems, it is a long time that my Hotmail cannot be used...Usually I only log into my gmail account: zhangpengnjust@gmail.com That's why I rarely update MSN space and reply some of you so late!:(
Life is so interesting, funny and full of adventures! I am doing a traineeship in Romania now! It is located in Eastern Europe, with neighbors of Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine, and Moldova. As a brand new member of EU, Romanian economics is thriving but still everything here is not that well organized.
But It is a really green country, very worth to visit and travel around. I am always feeling that I'm so closed to the nature, especially when I am on the traveling to the other cities during weekend. Even though I will only stay less than 8 weeks here, I will make full use of this long distance trip :).I traveled around the country every weekend, from Cluj to Iasi,from Iasi to Suceava,from Tagau mures to Sighisoara,from Brasov to Sinaia...from Sibiu to Timisoara.Hmm, I am planning to travel to Bucharest and Constanta in the rest weeks.:)))
Key words here: Hitchhiking; Green country with full of medieval castles and old churches; Not punctual; Low salary but high expense; Kind of Leisure life; Nice @ers are everywhere in Romania.
Hitchhiking is always the most popular way for us to travel, cheap and excited! Local Romanians even consider our foreigners crazy...coz it is not usual for them at all. But it is really cool! We only need to split the gas or even get ride for free! We met a Romanian driver with an extremely old Dacia(a car brand in Romania),less than 60km per hour...what a slow! We met a rich German businessman but crazy driver with a okay Passat.That guy drove 120-150km/h on the Romanian bumping road!!!...Along the way, he told us that he ever crashed a Gypsies' horse cart and hit a huge bear accidentally by car at night! We were so worried about any accident coming to us...We met an amazing and cool lady with Hungarian and Romanian nationalities who went to work in Germany alone when she was 16,and still work there. She only knows basic English but fluent German. She spoke German to my friend and he replied English to her though...Interesting communication... Hehe,Even though we know that, as foreigners here, we are taking some risks, but we had fun! And we are still alive after so many hitchhikings!!! That's enough!:)

Romania is a green country with full of medieval castles and old churches.Bumping country roads aside with grasses,plains,green hills,cows,horses,sheep
,dunkies... We traveled between cities in Romania with this funny road!:) There are even cow traffic jam on some rural roads.
SIBIU:culture capital of Europe,2007.It is one of the most beautiful cities in Romania. A typical German style city!:) Nice square, buildings, walking street, attractive concert, fancy Medusa, historical and romantic lie bridge, cool ice cream...:) That great AIESEC event in SIBIU let us had a fantastic time there! Treasure hunting and global village were so impressed!!!
IASI:a city of forest in Moldova region of Romania!haha...There are so many nice parks,including the biggest one in Romania, in the city. The first University, first National Theatre, the huge old palace...
SUCEAVA:The medieval castle and Five famous monasteries around. The medieval castle is more like a ruin...just so so...but the world heritage-Cinci Manastiri Bucovimei(five most famous monasteries in Romania) is so amazing !!!!!!You'd better click into my picasaweb to see those pics, I don't think my limited English could describe the great sceneries.:) They are so famous that there are always many visitors, but the tickets are kind undeliverable cheap! One Lei(around 0.3Euro) for each student! They are located separately in different places around Suceava. Even though we have a car,(Vlad(a nice friend from Cluj)drive us there),It's a pity that we still didn't have time to visit all the 5 monasteries, only visited Humor and Voronet.
Because of nice Vlad, my travel to Iasi and Suceava is the only one without hitchhiking up till now...:) But still we went back Cluj so late as usual as other hitchhiking trip...We finally arrived Cluj around 4 AM Monday...It took us at least 15 hours on the road back and forth. Actually, I cannot imagine if I traveled there by hitchhiking...I had my neck and back hurt when I got back my apartment, what a exhausted trip!:( But it is really worthy!:)
BRASOV: Well-known for its Black Church and Castle Bran.The Piata Sfatului is so nice!!! Unfortunately, we arrived in Brasov late. When we got to the Sfatului square, the black church was closed...We tried to reach the peak of mount Tampa,but unlucky again, the man responsible for running the cable car left work also...
SINAIA:A small but amazing town !!!I love it! Especially the Peles, the best and luxuries Castle I ever seen,and Bucegi,the most amazing mountain in Romania. There are covering grasses without a single tree! You cannot find steps on the way to the top of mountain and so nature! hehe, luckily I chose to reach the peak by cable car. Otherwise, it would be a real problem to my energy and shoes...
CLUJ:A Romanian city with lots of Hungarians. It has beautiful Orthodox churches, Catholic churches, botanic gardens, a number of nice statues... and one of the best university in Romania. Actually it is also a student center of Romania. Since I am based here, go across the main street of the city everyday, I wasn't that excited when I visited each monuments here. It's one of the best developed cities in Romania though.
Not on time is so usual here...You should get known it before your coming, and absolutely get used to it within two weeks...10mins=30mins it happens... 2mins=1hour sometimes...it also happened... :( Our GM asked me to have a meeting with him on Monday, he postponed it everyday without feeling any sorry about it...finally we had the meeting after one week...I understand he is a really busy man to run this big company, but one week's late is a sort of long period time...My manager's late is even worse...She told me that she would have my virus infected computer re-setuped with the help of our partner IT company, and have my Romanian Keyboard changed to English one at the first day of my work, it hasn't happened yet...Frankly, I reminded her several times. Aha, in fact, those things are not a big deal. They are very warm, hospitable and always very nice to me. If I push much more, I am sure they could have all those done, maybe not that punctual, but at least done!:)That's Romanian! That's also my kind of culture shock here :)))
Low salary but high expenseHigh expense:Compared the prices here with in China, things are much more expensive.For instances:0.5L coke,0.7-0.8Euros here.0.25-0.3Euros in China. Bus ticket, 0.4Euros here,0.1-0.2Euros in China.Rent for one room(sharing app) is around 130Euros without utility expenses.But if you drink bear or coffee in pubs or cafes, the cost is similar to China or even a little bit cheaper sometimes. And traveling to the places of interest here is much cheaper than China. Hmm, strange~:))) Low salary:As far as I know, for new graduates, only a small part of them could get paid more than 250 or 300Euros per month here (The payment for new gradates with bachelor degree in China ranges from 200Euros to 1000Euros, most top university new gradates usually get paid around 300- 700Euros). And experienced employees in big trading companies can only get paid 350-400Euros per month in Cluj. Only sales could get lot of bonus which are much more than their fixed salary if they perform well. But that's just for sales, and I think it is the same for sales all over the world. Anyway, there are a big gap between the rich and the poor...

Kind of Leisure life: Generally, they work from 8:30 or 9 AM to 5PM or 5:30PM.Everybody leaves office just on time! J No extra working time is required! I can not see any prosperous CBD in the big cities here. The tallest building may be less than 30 floors in most big cities. Compared developed huge cities around Changjia (Yangzi) Delta and Zhujiang Delta in China, big cities here are more like small towns. But it is really peaceful and nice. Pubs and cafes are everywhere. They are extremely popular places after work. Many families have a car (Although some of them drive old Dacia, I don't think that's a car…), a number of families usually have a short vacation to the countryside during weekend. Lots of my colleagues prefer to have vacation abroad, to Greece, to Spain, to Paris, to London, to Tunisia, to Istanbul, Izmir...It's nice :) In fact, it is not very expensive for them, since they are not that far away from Romania, some of them are quite closed to Romania,but really quite far far away from China...we can use the flight ticket to buy 2 old Dacia:)))

Nice @ers are everywhere in Romania. :)))
In Sibiu, we had an amazing adventure. All the trainees in Romania were gathered in Sibiu.The tour of Sibiu night, the well organized creative treasure hunting and non-prepared funny global village… @ Sibiu offered us a fantastic weekend!:).
In Iasi, Marius and other @er friends spent a whole day to show us around the city and explained us the histories of famous places of interest which they know well. We went to Cinci Manastiri Bucovimei and Suceava together the next day!
In Brasov and Sinaia,I cannot imagine without Radu,Mara and her sister's kind guiding what our weekend there would be. They are so helpful and hospitable; we were together nearly all the time!
In Cluj, @ers' Romanian dinner and BBQ in the "wild forest" were incredibly great!
We are invited to participate LC meeting every week. We have traineebodys here,who are very willing to communicate with us and try their best to solve us all the daily problems. With Ioana, my traineebody, and other nice @ers' help, Up till now, my life is pretty cool here.
In Timisoara,there will be another huge @ event in a few days. How great would it be? We will see!:) Looking forward to participating in it.
Oh...my god. what a long email! hmm,I should mention something about my work nowJ :
Doing products' research, contacting Chinese suppliers, negotiating with export managers.it is not a very challenge work at all. But since I am Chinese, I could be well "used" here...Well, I could learn international trading skills and get some importing experience for sure. Expectantly, there would be some possibility to have further cooperation with some buyers here. Who knows, I will see...
Routine procedures: Post wanting, ask for general quotations, collect and compare all the nice quotations and negotiate with them for the prices...Price is always one of the key point:) hehe. Up till this step, half work has been done. To follow up, I should ask the suppliers to send samples to us for quality inspecting. It takes some time to achieve...coz my company doesn't want to pay anything for the freight charge and sample fee...The suppliers usually only agree to send the samples for free when they feel that there are big chances to finalize this deal and build a reliable partnership in the near future. Each side wants to earn more, lose less and take less risk...hehe what a basic but daily game theory! Fortunately, I work it out with my assemble English, fluent Chinese plus a bit business sense...After having discussed with our sales team who knows more about Romanian domestic market than importing team, they select few samples afterwards, then I have to give the responses to all the suppliers asking for better price (usually we ask both FOB and CIF) again... and move to the next steps ----Terms of Payment, the duration of production delivery, as soon as I get prompt reply from them. huuu, final step is to sign the first contract with our supplier after having gone through the tough procedures above...looking forward to setting up the long term cooperation as well.
I have attached many pics I took in cool cities in Romania,in Serbia and in China!!!Click the link below and enjoy it!:)))
http://picasaweb.google.com/zhangpengnjust
Bye and let me know how it is going with you guys.

Labels: working and traveling life

posted by Peng Zhang @ 11:56 PM

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