Romania

• “Because of its lack of geographical unity, Romania is a place full of contrasts.”

• “The Romanian constitution of 1866 was simply an imitation of the Belgian one of 1833. This was a remarkable performance: Romania was an agrarian country of rural-patriarchal type, while Belgium was one of the most industrialized and bourgeois countries on the continent. Given all the constitutions available to choose from, the Romanians opted for the most advanced and liberal of them all!”

• “Driving through the Rumanian countryside I found was an unmixed pleasure. The landscape is very beautiful, and entirely unspoiled. The roads are either Roman and straight, or romantic and devious and narrow. There is little traffic, and one moves fast.”

• “Romania is a less extreme version of Egypt, with a mass of peasantry and a precocious consumer class that is limited mainly to a few districts of the capital. As my train entered Bucharest from the north, I saw miles of corrugated-metal squatter settlements as bad as many in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.”

• “For much of Rumania's charm is to be found in her mountains. Unforgettable is the first sight of the Carpathians, so thickly, richly wooded that, at a distance, it seems impossible that there could be roads or even paths piercing the greenness.”

• “Rumania is essentially an agricultural country. The ores of the Carpathians are not utilised, for there are no roads which give access to them.”

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.

Overview

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Romania across IJR