Proud to be Romanian

Although there are hundreds of reasons for not being proud of belonging to the Romanian people (and we Romanians excel in finding them), there are things that make me proud about my country and my people. Here are some of them:
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1. I am proud of being part of the seventh largest nation in Europe – Romania is the seventh largest country in Europe in terms of surface area and population.
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2. I am proud of belonging to one of the most beautiful countries in Europe – Romania has equal proportions of plains, hills and mountains; also Romania has an opening to the Black Sea and most important we have the Danube Delta which is a unique landscape in all of Europe.
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3. I am proud that we have unique architecture in the “Bucovina” region where are the old medieval orthodox monasteries that are true art wonders.
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4. I am proud that the Romanians preserved our mainly Latin language (Romanian is 60% Latin) in a geographic area dominated by slavish languages (not that there is anything bad about these languages).
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5. I am proud of the Romanian wines (the original old ones) that can’t be compared to any other wine I drank.
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6. I am proud that Romania exists, because somehow we managed to establish an independent country at the crossroads of three big empires (Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and Russian).
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7. I am proud of the Romanian parties and our party music and the way we always find reasons to celebrate something.
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8. I am proud of the overall Romanian history. There are many things in the Romanian history that make me feel not proud or even ashamed, but overall we have to be proud that the Romanians played their role in many important historical moments.
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9. I am proud of our overall openness and friendliness towards foreigners.
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10. I am proud that Romania had a Royal dynasty that understood that the country needs resources to develop and thus, after the independence, the Romanian kings reigned with a crown made of steel instead of gold. Too bad that the leaders that followed after WW II didn’t have the same attitude.
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11. I am proud that Romanian citizens of any ethnic origin, overall, live in peace and harmony and in Romania there are 18 ethnic minorities.
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12. I am proud of the Romanian movies and movie makers. In the last years Romanian movies wan many prizes at film festivals, including the Palm d’Or for “Four months, three weeks and two days”. Also during the communist regime the Romanian director Sergiu Nicolaescu made superb movies that were blocked from going out to the west. Last year, one of his movies – Michael the Brave – was ranked the third best historical movie of all times worldwide.
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13. I am proud that even if Romania is a rather small and poor country we had top scientists and artists like Eugene Ionesco (drama writer), Constantin Brancusi (sculptor), Petrache Poenaru (the inventor of the fountain pen), Nicolae Paulescu (inventor of the insulin) George Enescu (composer and violinist), Henri Coanda (inventor of the jet engine), Mircea Eliade (philosopher, writer and the author of the first complete history of religions) and many others.
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14. I am proud that Romania gave the sports world many athletes that had a saying in sport’s history. The most known one is Nadia Comaneci that “invented” the perfect 10 in women’s gymnastics. Others are Helmut Duckadam the first goal keeper that defended four consecutives penalty kicks in a football game. His performance brought the European Champions Cup to Bucharest; Leonard Doroftei, Mihai Leu and Lucian Bute all of them world champions in professional boxing, Ștefan Kovács the Romanian football coach that wan the European Champions Cup with Ajax Amsterdam, Mircea Lucescu that wan the UEFA Cup and the Super Cup of Europe with the Ucranian team Sahtior. Also, not to forget the Romanian feminin gimnastics team that ruled the world championships and olimpics for many years and the handball team „Oltchim” that is a big power in european handball competitions. There are many others that deserve to be mentioned...
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15. Last, but not least, I am proud of the Romanian humor. We make jokes and lough at anything, even at bad things. It’s our way of dealing with things. Many people don’t understand our humor, but we love it. Imagine only that Romania has the only Happy Cemitery in the world and you will start to understand.
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Now… I ask my fellow Romanians to write on their blogs, post on their facebook accounts and on tweeter or anywhere why they are proud to be Romanians. Multumesc (Thank you).