#euroope

BY SORCHA SILLS

1. The internet is fast and cheap.

When many people think of Romania, they think of horses and carts, orphanages and vampires. They don’t think of awesome internet access — yet that’s exactly what Romania has to offer. Romania currently has the fastest download speed in Europe. My service currently costs about 12 USD a month.

2. The cost of living is pretty cheap in general.

For basic goods, Romania has some of the lowest prices in the EU. Rent in Bucharest — the most expensive city in Romania – can be as expensive as you want it to be, but you can get a comfortable place for less than $400 a month, and often it’s much less.

A good bottle of wine can cost as little as $6. I recently ordered two pizzas, a dessert pizza, chicken wings, and mozzarella sticks from a local pizza delivery company for about $12 (and due to a promotion, they threw in a bottle of wine for free).

While wages for a majority of Romanians are notoriously low, if you work for a multinational company, an international school, or as a successful freelancer, you can live really comfortably here on much less than you need at home.

3. You’ll have epic road trips.

While the roads in Romania are by no means perfect, Romania is a cool place to see by car. You have the Transfăgărășan Highway — a long, meandering road through awe-inspiring mountain scenery. When the road was featured on Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson was so impressed he called it “the best road in the world.”

But apart from that, being able to watch the tranquil countryside and menacing mountains pass you by, and having the opportunity to stop in picturesque rural villages along the way, makes seeing Romania by car an unbeatable experience.

4. Learning basic Romanian language skills isn’t too difficult for native English speakers.

The US Foreign Service Institute categorizes languages based on how many hours it takes for native English speakers to learn them. Romanian is a “Category I” language, which means it is one of the easiest languages for native English speakers to learn.

Also, if you’ve studied a Romance language at any point (especially Italian or Spanish) learning Romanian will be even easier for you, as it too is a Romance language. That’s not to say Romanian doesn’t have its difficult points — like the goddamn noun endings — but in the grand scheme of world languages it’s one of the easier ones for native English speakers to master.

5. The Romanian wilderness begs to be explored.

Do you like hiking? Skiing? Kayaking? Bird watching? Spotting large mammals in the wild? Beaches? The country is huge, and these places are everywhere (some of them don’t even have names but you’ll find them if you just start walking in any direction). Romania’s varied nature and four seasons have you covered.

6. Romanian wine is cheap, plentiful, and tasty.

I know pretty much nothing about wine in the deadly serious swilling and spitting and noticing the “warm, oaky aroma” sort of way. However, I do have a deep appreciation of wine that is both cheap and delicious. Romania has both in abundance — and it’s not just drinkable, it actually tastes good.

Also, I can all but guarantee that it is available in every “non-stop” convenience store in the country. Consider this: Romania has one of the oldest winemaking traditions on Earth, dating back over 10,000 years. With that sort of historical dedication to the craft, you have to assume they’re doing something right by now.

7. The people are fantastic.

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The economic future of the European block is quite a shaky one according to market trends that have been witnessed; as well as social reactions to the economic changes in question. Fiscal policy measures in a good number of EU members seem to be dwindling, and speculations about a dreary future have been the riding headlines in the media.

Fiscal policy mentions a Government’s adjustment in spending level in order to control and influence the nation’s economy positively. However this has not been the case for the European nations; fiscal policy has plummeted due to increase in debt crisis in the Euro zone market. The images of the gruesome protests in Greece remain fresh in our mind, and this was the red flag for the European Union that things weren’t going well with the Euro.

Rumor had it that Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Spain was following the same trend; the Government couldn’t regulate its spending and this resonated in a cringing economy. The truth is out, the Euro zone economy is not heading uphill as we would expect of a world economic Super power. And the old saying couldn’t fall out of relevance, when Europe sneezes, the world catches a cold.

We have all had a taste of what a dying economic in the Euro block affects the economies of other continents. It’s hard to imagine that a few mathematical errors inside European banks could lead to increasing cost of living in other countries. But it’s true and one wonders just what could have been the problem up in the Euro block?

Heavy uncontrolled spending by the different EU members is one factor of the fiscal meltdown. Cases of increased public debt have been on the rise and great numbers of the EU members were affected by such poor fiscal discipline; Greece happens to be the country that took the hardest blow on debt. Today Greece suffers an economic blow with existing banks having the hard time of answering this one question: “Where did the money go?” The Euro zone needs some heavy lesson in fiscal discipline, a measure that all of the EU members must embrace to change the situation to a better one.

However, a deeper problem lies within the structural design of the Euro currency and how cash flow happens in the Euro block. The EU members are ruled by one central block that controls the monetary policies of its members; fiscal policy measures are left to the EU countries to manage. Why is this a problem? For an economy to stabilize, both fiscal policy and monetary policy have to work hand in hand. But all this is theory, the a great deal of EU members made economic messes in their fiscal decisions and the central bank has no clue how to clean after their messes.

There may be discussion of bail out plans for countries like Greece and Italy; but until the Euro architecture changes, headlines won’t stop reading about bankruptcy cases. So the feature of the Euro block is uncertain as to whether they’ll revise the fiscal plan within its members. The rest of the world can only keep the fingers crossed lest they catch the proverbial cold.