When deciding to travel to a country you start with expectations and return with impressions. When living in a country, we may tend to highlight our strong points and hide our weakest. In order to prevent that situation from happening, from today, I’ve created 2 new categories in the menu: Our thoughts and your thoughts. Here, I am hoping to attract both my countrymen and you, our visitors, to write about how you see Romania and its people.
From my citizens, I hope we will find first hand information about where to go, what to see, what to experience and what to avoid.
From you, the visitors, I hope you will share your experiences in our country / you will tell us about your expectations before arriving.
This way, I hope we can create a dialogue from which everybody will win.
Travelling in Romania 
As a fellow Romanian, I can see your point regarding the gypsies. However, I do not agree in totality with your opinions. And I’ll give you a few examples. I had 2 very fine gypsy colleagues during my military service. One of the in the same platoon, the other one in the neighbouring company… But they were well educated fellows (future students). There are gypsies (i.e. Jean Constantin, Nicu Constantin, Dida Dragan, etc.), which fulfilled their talent despite the communist regime being in power… I had also gypsy colleagues in my class in the primary school. They were lazy, didn’t like and didn’t want to learn anything, despite the laudable efforts of our teacher.
And the main problem with them is: if the communist regime was not able to civilise them by force, you will not going to be able to civilise them with the “soft touch” of the democratic society. Pouring money into solving their problem will solve nothing. It will be like pouring water on the sand: it will just disappear… Moreover, that money would come from our taxes (Romanian and/or European citizens). I do not think that it would go down well with the tax payers of any country involved.
Recently, the BBC discovered gypsies begging in London, while in Romania they had a “characteristic” castle and were filmed driving BMW’s. Cars and houses that many people in the UK cannot afford. Their children were sent on the streets to beg, instead of going to school, gain an education, a qualification, or experience for a job… That is the point: they are not interested in being educated, civilised, integrated in the society.
But just like in many situations with the Romanian people, it is always easier to “blame the others” or the “system” for our misfortunes. There is a good say in Romanian: “Fiecare doarme, asa cum isi asterne”.