 Romania is the perfect
land of contrasts and
paradoxes the country of
Constantin
Brancusi, Eugene Ionesco,
Emil Cioran, Mircea Eliade,
and Nadia Comaneci, but
also of Dracula and Nicolae
Ceausescu. The Old World of
Romania is a vast museum
of ancient heritage and still
alive even if only through its
famous painted
churches and monasteries,
its folk art, or its feudal
castles in the Carpathian
Mountains.
The New World may be
embodied by the Parliament
Palace and the subway
network
in Bucharest, or by the
Western styles of life adopted
by Romania's townsfolk.
Romania
lies in South-Eastern
Europe. Its neighbours are
Bulgaria (South), Yugoslavia
(South-West), Hungary
(North-West), Ukraine (North),
Moldavia (East),
the Black Sea (East). The
area of Romania is 91,699 sq.
miles (237,500
sq. km and its population,
according to the 2003 census,
is 21,680,974, mainly
Romanian, alongside
Hungarian, German and
Gypsy minorities. About 55%
of
Romania's
inhabitants live in urban
areas, and the rest in rural
areas.
Romanian is a
Romance language with
some archaic forms and with
admixtures of Slavonic,
Turkish, French and
Magyar words. There is a
wealth of folk tales,
legends, poetry, music and
dance passed on through the
centuries. |