The new Wops and Dagos of Europe: 10 common myths about Romanians and Romania among some British people

On an amusing note: I compiled bellow a small list of misconceptions, which as an ethnic Romanian sometime I encounter when I travel the length and breadth of Britain:

1. Romania is the country of origin of the Romani people.

2. Romania is a strange and far away land (the fantasy Ruritania or Dracula-land of the cinema productions).

3. Romanians speak a hard to learn language (in the British imagination: being Gypsies they must speak an Indian idiom, or being East Europeans they must speak some sort of difficult Slavic language).

4. Very few Romanians, the people being so backward, speak English and one can get by with great difficulty in that country.

5. Romania is full of social problems, especially orphans and disabled children.

6. Romania is a small and far away country and people of whom we know nothing (remember the Nazi appeaser Neville Chamberlain).

7. Romania has a placid landscape or does not have mountains.

8. Romanians are a poor, uneducated lot, a yob.

9. Romanians were allied with Nazi Germany and fought against Britain (I failed my first UK driving licence test with a WWII veteran examiner who tirelessly reminded me that).

10. Quintessential Romanian leaders were Vlad the Impaler (Dracula) and his modern incarnation Ceausescu.

🙂