The hero of this story looks older than his 34 years. He has powerful upper arms, a gentle demeanor -- and he knows what many people think when they hear "Romania."
There are countries in Europe with a bad reputation, there are those with a very bad reputation and then there is Romania. It's a country with anti-corruption department heads forced to step down amid accusations of corruption, and a prime minister who stands accused of money laundering. It ranks lowest for toothpaste consumption in the European Union, and high for alcohol consumption. Our man knows all about these things, because he is well traveled in Europe. In political-speak, one could say that he is always on the go, driving the deepening of the European Union.
In 1992, Romania still had 23 million inhabitants. Today there are 4 million fewer. Those who emigrated profit from the fact that Europe has an undeclared division of labor that goes something like this: Wherever uneducated, rather than educated, workers are needed, employers look for Romanians. Even the Germans.
If it weren't for Romanians, slaughterhouse owners would be chest-deep in pig halves. Without them, real estate developers could forget about Germany's glorious construction boom. The same goes for asparagus and potato harvests. In their view, anything is better than staying in Romania. As a result, leaving home is about the most Romanian thing a person can do -- and that's not difficult at all.
All it takes is climbing into a mini-bus and rattling westward. There are hundreds of these busses in every Romanian city. A one-way ticket to Germany costs €70 ($77); to the Netherlands, €80; Belgium, €80; France, Italy, Portugal, €120. A massive armada of small Romanian buses has been traversing Europe for years.
A European Hero
This is where our hero comes in, a hero for freedom, a hero for the market economy -- somehow, in his own way, a hero for Europe. He prefers to be called Viktor Talic. His real name, he claims, would be unwise to use -- it would put him in danger of being persecuted, as heroes so often are.
Talic is on his way to Portugal. He's more than just a bus driver, he's also a shipper, money courier, messenger and smuggler rolled into one. With eight of his compatriots in his Mercedes Sprinter, he moves people and goods from Point A (Romania) to Point B (Portugal), a route many Romanians have taken.
Several of his customers are trying their luck outside their home country for the first time, others are leaving for a short while to harvest asparagus, work on construction sites or in frozen-food plants, or do whatever else. Others were back in Romania only briefly because they needed to take care of paperwork in Bucharest. When they head to Portugal, they aren't leaving home, they're going home.
Talic's trunk is always filled with packages. Most are presents for relatives living abroad, items that are self-slaughtered, self-knitted and, especially, self-distilled. Everything he transports, whether package or person, is brought door-to-door regardless of the final destination in Portugal. There are no receipts and no paperwork, but nor are there any problems, not even when Talic is asked to deliver half of someone's yearly salary to his or her family.
It's mid-May and Talic is standing in the town center of Satu Mare, his hometown in northwestern Romania, with his bus. His customers are all punctual, showered, somewhat melancholic, and all have more than the agreed-upon single suitcase with them. There are seven of them, each with their own dreams of the West. There is a young married couple and an older one, a heavyset woman who will not utter a single word during the entire 50-hour drive and a haggard, thin man, the kind frequently cast as a terrorist sleeper agent in Hollywood. There is also a beautiful girl in a white, shiny, sequined outfit that is actually a sweat suit.
Of all the drivers in Satu Mare, Talic offers the toughest journey. From here to Portugal, his route spans about 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles). His way may not be the most direct, but it is one he has optimized in the 10 years that he has been in business.
He avoids Italy even though it would be shorter. In the past the Carabinieri have confiscated Romanian cars for the slightest of irregularities. Drivers have supposedly received notes saying their car had been confiscated and that they needed to wait for a court hearing. But wait? For a court hearing in Italy? Talic would rather go 500 kilometers out of his way to avoid the country.
The final stop is always Portimao, on the southwestern tip of Europe, where Talic's mother has now moved. It's almost impossible to go any further west in Europe. The drive takes 50 hours, and the first Romanian word one learns during the journey is "cinci," meaning five. That's exactly how many minutes Talic takes as a break after filling up with gas. The second word is "cincisprezece," or 15, which is the length of the meal breaks. As far as sleep breaks go, only three hours are alloted for the day after tomorrow somewhere in northern Spain. The rest of the time, Talic stays awake.
"Crazy, right?" Talic asks.
Feeding a Family at 14
Fifty hours to travel 4,000 kilometers through Europe in an old green Mercedes Sprinter van with 1.2 million kilometers on the odometer. The seats are rock-hard and worn, the biaxial trailer in tow filled to the brim. And then there's the Romanian disco-pop playing at full blast and in an endless loop, so that Talic doesn't fall asleep before he reaches northern Spain.
In France, he avoids the highways -- they're too expensive -- which means that Europe's largest country by area is crossed via country roads. A 10-hour break in Portugal is all Talic allows himself before turning around and heading home. That makes for 8,000 kilometers of driving, 100 hours at the wheel in a bit more than five days. Is this crazy, suicidal or just business as usual?
Talic is a pleasant man who has not been put off by the million kilometers he has spent behind the wheel. He understands people's criticisms of his lifestyle, and explains that he wasn't always a bus driver.
He says he was a decent student who was good at math. But one day, when his father was sawing a tree, an oak branch fell on the back of his head, knocking both of his eyes out of their sockets. He toppled forward onto his still-running chainsaw, a red, Soviet-made Drujba that cut his heart into shreds. Talic was 14 years old at the time. He left school a week after his father died in the forest, using the heavy Drujba to feed his family for four years. After that, he went to Portugal and worked in construction.
Talic tells the story warmly. He isn't one to exaggerate, and his mother, with tears in her eyes, confirms the entire story 50 hours later at the southwestern tip of Europe. For someone who, as a child, used a chainsaw to feed his family, 4,000-kilometer journeys through Europe don't seem so crazy. In fact, it's a rather pleasant job.
Talic starts the bus. The overloaded Mercedes creaks and jerks, but it drives. "The water in the back, in the cargo space," says Talic. "I don't think that's normal." Stowed under a dozen packages there are 50 bottles of Romanian mineral water. Some guy in Lisbon orders them every month. The man doesn't drink Portuguese water, Talic says, he has the Romanian water brought to him. "Every kilogram that I transport costs 2 euros. That's pretty expensive water."
We soon reach Hungary.
Special Cover Charge for Romanians
Nothing moves at the border. A dozen Mercedes Sprinters are lined up behind one another, most of them with trailers -- Romanian import-export businesses. It's a hot day and the Hungarian border guards are sweating in their blue uniforms and demonstrating how slowly a person can leaf through a passport. Talic's boss, the owner of the Mercedes van, is one car ahead in the line, waiting in a VW Passat. He always comes along to the border, because he knows the customs people best. He and Talic had words as they were leaving, the boss complaining about the ever-present extra luggage. "Three fucking suitcases per person," he bickered.
Instead of asking for money in exchange for the extra weight, Talic pressed two cartons of cigarettes into each passenger's hands, as many as a person can carry customs-free in the EU. Now they are, so to speak, legally smuggling cigarettes. In Romania, a pack costs €2, in the Ukraine where his boss bought them, they cost a bit over €1. Somewhere in Southern France, Talic will give them to a man at a highway rest stop -- the 16 legal cartons being carried by him and his passengers, as well as the approximately 20 illegal ones hidden somewhere in the cargo space. In France, a pack of cigarettes costs between 6 and 7 euros, a nice by-catch.
When Talic doesn't get any further at the Hungarian tollgate, his boss gets out in front and greets one of the customs officials. They hug. They know each other. A short chat, a quick look in the passport. There is something between its pages, which the official takes with practiced fingers. Two minutes later Talic can leave the line, and as he drives by, the Hungarian in the uniform cheerfully wishes the Romanians in the Mercedes a good trip.
How much was that? "A bit more than we need to give the one here," says Talic. The next highwayman is about one kilometer after the border. This time it's a fat traffic cop in a red safety vest. He stands at the edge of the road and reaches out his hand. Every small bus loaded up with Romanians needs to stop here in order to pass. The drivers roll down their windows and press some money into the hand of the man in the police uniform. Nobody speaks, the communication occurs wordlessly. It's a kind of cover charge that only Romanians pay.
And what if you don't pay? "Packages are opened and placed on the road," says Talic. "The interior lining is stripped and the engine space is examined. Three hours at least." Talic turns towards the back. "Which one of you has Palinka?" Palinka is the name of the self-distilled fruit schnapps. Everyone knows it is illegal to bring it along. All of them raise their arms. "Then 10,000 Forint it is." Ten thousand Forint, equivalent to €30, is what the police officer pocketed.
Talic bends forward and turns up the music. He's attached a USB stick with hundreds of hours of Romanian folk-pop to the radio. To Western ears, they are hundreds of hours of the exact same song. Talic seems to like it, the others stare contentedly at the monotonous Hungarian Pannonian steppe. It's a calm journey. A Hungarian police car stops the bus shortly before Budapest, and once again demands €200, but Talic doesn't want to get worked up about it. He actually likes Hungary. He knows that most people here can't stand Romanians, but at least they're up front about it.
The German Dream
And then we enter Austria.
The older married couple has dozed off, the younger couple is holding hands, the gaunt man is trying to start a conversation with the pretty girl in white. Talic is racking up the kilometers.
The beats from the radio blend with the wind that is streaming through the open window. The passengers' back muscles long ago gave up their resistance to the much-too-hard seats.
Talic's cell phones are on the dashboard, eight of them: two Romanian ones, one German one, one French one, one Spanish one and three Portuguese ones. If a customer would like to have a package dropped off in Portugal, he or she calls Talic. The same applies if Talic is already on his way. Then he takes a small detour. The conversations are never brief. Romanians like to chat, possibly even more than the Italians do.
For many Romanians, Talic is one of the few connections they still have with home. Sure, there's Facebook, WhatsApp and flat-rate plans for mobile phones, but they don't eliminate the homesickness -- they simply exascerbate it. Among Talic's customers are migrant laborers who might work in a field in Alentejo, Portugal, for 15 hours a day, seven days a week. Sometimes they give him packages to deliver just to be able to speak Romanian with him for a bit and feel a tie to their home country.
After Austria comes Germany.
"Why does everybody actually start their drive on Fridays?" the pretty girl wonders out loud. It's her third journey. She has already worked in Germany, in the south, in a cannery. She can say exactly four words in German, the ones for pickle, red beet and business license.
Back then, the young woman made €8.50 per hour on the production line, and was not officially on staff. But she had to spend €400 of her wages on a tiny room in a residential trailer next to the factory. She always had to share her 10-square-meter room with another Romanian. She learned than an €8.50 minimum wage doesn't mean that you earn €8.50. It just means that some companies make more hassle, and still only pay you €6.
The Romanian small-bus armada prepares for Germany, or more specifically, its police officers. Unlike in Hungary, the Germans can't be bribed. Of course, there are fines, €50, rarely more. The problem is the upstanding officials. Only in Germany does a police officer go to the effort of stopping a transporter van filled with Romanians on the highway to check if the car or the trailer is overloaded. In hardly any country will the police officer want to see latex gloves in a Romanian first-aid box designed to protect against HIV infections.
Talic doesn't think the Germans are particularly mean. Or that they want to cause trouble. They are simply, he says, correct. Correct and annoying. The French, Spanish and Portuguese are, for the most part, simply happy when they don't have anything to do with the Romanians and don't have to do any work because of them. For them, every small bus is a mountain of paperwork, because of course something always isn't quite right. Too many cigarettes, too little tread on the tires, illegal spirits, no road-worthiness certification for the vehicle.
Their Land, Their Rules
That explains the Friday thing, the calculation is simple: A driver needs about 10 hours to drive the 900 kilometers from the Hungarian border to Passau. If you leave Romania early on a Friday afternoon, you reach Germany just after the sun sets. A Romanian license plate is harder to recognize at night, and the German officials are partly on their weekend, the beautiful German highway is empty, the likelihood of not being stopped is high. And by Saturday morning, before the sun goes up, the Romanians have passed. If all goes well, no person has noticed that they've gone through Germany in the night.
Talic thinks it's right, what the Germans are doing, even if he himself is breaking all of their rules. His bus turns into a rolling deadly weapon by sun-up on Saturday mornings -- despite the pounding pop music, he is extremely tired. It doesn't change things that the Germans are right, Talic says, in principle. But he needs to break those laws in order to make things halfway worth it.
Their land, their rules, he says about the Germans, nothing wrong with that, but he counters: "my life, my risks." He sees it as a sport. He would like his daughter in Romania to grow up well, so that she can go to college later and live in a nice house. If he obeyed the German rules that wouldn't be possible. So he does what he must. And Germany does what it must. And Europe too. It's actually very simple.
One will, so to speak, meet few people who are as passionate Europeans as Viktor Talic. For him, the European Union is not a monster that lives in Brussels, it is a sea of possibilities. Nothing is given, he says, of course not, but if you make an effort, you are rewarded.
Many people who have ridden with him might come back to Romania a couple of years later with a big car and move into a big house that they never would have been able to afford if they had not left the country. They may have lots of back pain, and ruptured disks, and scratched-up fingers, but the car, the house, nobody can take that away. So who says that the European dream doesn't work?
Talic says he doesn't understand what is currently going on in Europe, not at all. This hostility, this Greece problem, the discussions about austerity policies or not, about national debts, are all beside the point, he argues. For him, Europe means that a person can work and make an okay living from it. So where is the problem?
An Impossible Life in Romania
Of course, he says there are differences but they don't have anything to do with injustice. Germany, for example, is a great country. In Germany, Talic says, nobody needs to work hard. Working is enough, and that is the main difference between Romania and Germany. In Romania, working isn't enough, not even working hard. The actual minimum wage is €217.50. Doctors work for €450. And where do most of the foreign doctors in Germany come from? Romania, of course.
It's not true that everything is considerably cheaper in Romania -- groceries or rents. So how does a person support a family with only one wage?
"Not at all," says Talic.
The van rolls into France.
The radio unit comes on. A truck driver is offering Talic a tank of diesel. Before, Talic took these kinds of offers more frequently. Truck drivers earn some extra money by selling diesel on their way to Romania. But these days, this is more closely monitored by the shipping companies. And Talic just filled up with cheap gas near Montlucon, in the Auvergne region. Instead of showering, he went into the drugstore department of a supermarket and sprayed perfume onto his upper arms. Unfortunately, the other passengers did the same. Now the bus smells like a perfume outlet store at the height of summer.
Talic has never had problems in France. If he has believably reassured the police officers that he is only traveling through and will be in Spain in a few hours, they let him pass. He has only had difficulties once. "That was with the pigs."
Word had spread about the kinds of things that Talic transports. Two euros per kilogram, that was the only rule. Last year, around this time, he received a phone call from a Romanian working in a slaughter business near Lisbon. The boss there was refusing to pay the wages of the Romanian workers and saying they should take him to court. The Romanians had another idea -- they decided to steal his pigs.
They built a very large wooden crate, put 14 living pigs in, and gave everything to Talic, who lashed the stolen goods to the trailer. Since all of the people involved decided that the 4,000 kilometers from Portugal to Romania were pretty far for the pigs to travel, they decided to send the pigs to an acquaintance in Paris.
Talic and the pigs were caught up in a police inspection. A gendarme stopped them and asked for veterinary documents. Talic, who had understood him, showed him the vehicle license and explained that the delivery was going to Paris. Who knows what the police officer was thinking, perhaps he didn't like Paris, or maybe he didn't want to wait for the department veterinarian. He shook his head and allowed Talic to keep driving with his pigs.
"They all survived," says Talic. At least the trip. " Don't ask me what they did with them. They lived in a high rise, in the city."
And thus we enter Spain.
Arrival in Portugal
After the 35th hour, time goes by in thick clumps. Bilbao, Valladolid, Salamanca, the cities pass by. At least now the bus is driving on the highway again. Nobody looks at the time, nobody seems to care if the drive will ever end. The flat land in northwestern Madrid, formerly Castalia, is made up of spacious steppe, which doesn't make things easier. Talic slept for exactly three hours near Burgos, and afterwards he looked more tired than before. He says that he's feeling well, but the right-hand tires frequently rumble over the road markings, and the sound of the grooves scares everyone every few minutes.
Talic says that he can only actually remember one accident. A friend of his, who was driving a Sprinter to France, drifted out of his lane near Rastatt and ran into a truck. A passenger was immediately dead. Ten minutes after the accident, a helicopter landed on the A5, and now the friend has a plate-sized piece of metal in his head, and works near Milan. Talic says, the man would have been dead in any other country. Since that story, German police officers can ask about the AIDS gloves as often as they want. Talic won't say anything bad about them, about Germany.
Spain is the worst part of the journey. The passengers lay on their seats as if sedated. Conversation topics have been used up since Basel at the latest. It's the moment in which people asks themselves why they would subject themselves to this for €120. A flight would have cost only double that. But presumably a person has to earn two to four euros per hour to be able to answer that question. Never has it felt nicer to arrive in Portugal. The madness begins.
From this point onwards, none of Talic's eight cell phones stays quiet. Everybody knows that he arrives in Portugal on Sunday afternoon. Everybody wants to discuss when their package, their relative, their boyfriend will arrive. At moments, Talic speaks with three people simultaneously on the phone. If he doesn't answer, people get worried and call even more frequently.
After he has dropped off the older married couple and the gaunt man in a village near Lisbon, Talic drives into the Portuguese capital. There, at a traffic circle, several of his customers are waiting with their cars to pick up packages. Thirty, 40 Romanians besiege Talic's Mercedes. He distributes package after package and picks up new ones. To passersby it looks like one big fight, but Talic claims it is all in order.
Romanian is a Job
The fatigue is gone. The phone is ringing every minute. Talic drives to small villages, collects packages, jumps out briefly somewhere with an envelope filled with money, drops of the rest of the passengers at their front door. The last hours pass quickly.
Early on Sunday evening, the drive ends at Portimao, a tourist spot near the Algarve, which the Portuguese construction boom has gifted with a pair of very ugly high-rise buildings. Talic's mother lives in one of them. His sister and step-brother live below her.
The mother cleans a hotel for €5 per hour. The new construction in which she lives isn't finished yet, but she doesn't want to return to Romania no matter what, she is that happy here.
Talic sits next to her at her kitchen table and is too tired to talk. Tomorrow at eight he goes back to Romania. He says that he just remembered something. To the question, what it's like to be a Romanian in Europe. He has the answer. Being Romanian in Europe is no nationality at all. Being Romanian is a job.
There are countries in Europe with a bad reputation, there are those with a very bad reputation and then there is Romania. It's a country with anti-corruption department heads forced to step down amid accusations of corruption, and a prime minister who stands accused of money laundering. It ranks lowest for toothpaste consumption in the European Union, and high for alcohol consumption. Our man knows all about these things, because he is well traveled in Europe. In political-speak, one could say that he is always on the go, driving the deepening of the European Union.
In 1992, Romania still had 23 million inhabitants. Today there are 4 million fewer. Those who emigrated profit from the fact that Europe has an undeclared division of labor that goes something like this: Wherever uneducated, rather than educated, workers are needed, employers look for Romanians. Even the Germans.
If it weren't for Romanians, slaughterhouse owners would be chest-deep in pig halves. Without them, real estate developers could forget about Germany's glorious construction boom. The same goes for asparagus and potato harvests. In their view, anything is better than staying in Romania. As a result, leaving home is about the most Romanian thing a person can do -- and that's not difficult at all.
All it takes is climbing into a mini-bus and rattling westward. There are hundreds of these busses in every Romanian city. A one-way ticket to Germany costs €70 ($77); to the Netherlands, €80; Belgium, €80; France, Italy, Portugal, €120. A massive armada of small Romanian buses has been traversing Europe for years.
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| Viktor Talic has been driving a mini-bus from Romania to Portugal for a decade. The trip costs 120 euros one way, allowing Romanians to do jobs or to visit relatives. Talic also carries packages and goods, some illicit others not, across European borders. |
A European Hero
This is where our hero comes in, a hero for freedom, a hero for the market economy -- somehow, in his own way, a hero for Europe. He prefers to be called Viktor Talic. His real name, he claims, would be unwise to use -- it would put him in danger of being persecuted, as heroes so often are.
Talic is on his way to Portugal. He's more than just a bus driver, he's also a shipper, money courier, messenger and smuggler rolled into one. With eight of his compatriots in his Mercedes Sprinter, he moves people and goods from Point A (Romania) to Point B (Portugal), a route many Romanians have taken.
Several of his customers are trying their luck outside their home country for the first time, others are leaving for a short while to harvest asparagus, work on construction sites or in frozen-food plants, or do whatever else. Others were back in Romania only briefly because they needed to take care of paperwork in Bucharest. When they head to Portugal, they aren't leaving home, they're going home.
Talic's trunk is always filled with packages. Most are presents for relatives living abroad, items that are self-slaughtered, self-knitted and, especially, self-distilled. Everything he transports, whether package or person, is brought door-to-door regardless of the final destination in Portugal. There are no receipts and no paperwork, but nor are there any problems, not even when Talic is asked to deliver half of someone's yearly salary to his or her family.
It's mid-May and Talic is standing in the town center of Satu Mare, his hometown in northwestern Romania, with his bus. His customers are all punctual, showered, somewhat melancholic, and all have more than the agreed-upon single suitcase with them. There are seven of them, each with their own dreams of the West. There is a young married couple and an older one, a heavyset woman who will not utter a single word during the entire 50-hour drive and a haggard, thin man, the kind frequently cast as a terrorist sleeper agent in Hollywood. There is also a beautiful girl in a white, shiny, sequined outfit that is actually a sweat suit.
Of all the drivers in Satu Mare, Talic offers the toughest journey. From here to Portugal, his route spans about 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles). His way may not be the most direct, but it is one he has optimized in the 10 years that he has been in business.
He avoids Italy even though it would be shorter. In the past the Carabinieri have confiscated Romanian cars for the slightest of irregularities. Drivers have supposedly received notes saying their car had been confiscated and that they needed to wait for a court hearing. But wait? For a court hearing in Italy? Talic would rather go 500 kilometers out of his way to avoid the country.
The final stop is always Portimao, on the southwestern tip of Europe, where Talic's mother has now moved. It's almost impossible to go any further west in Europe. The drive takes 50 hours, and the first Romanian word one learns during the journey is "cinci," meaning five. That's exactly how many minutes Talic takes as a break after filling up with gas. The second word is "cincisprezece," or 15, which is the length of the meal breaks. As far as sleep breaks go, only three hours are alloted for the day after tomorrow somewhere in northern Spain. The rest of the time, Talic stays awake.
"Crazy, right?" Talic asks.
Feeding a Family at 14
Fifty hours to travel 4,000 kilometers through Europe in an old green Mercedes Sprinter van with 1.2 million kilometers on the odometer. The seats are rock-hard and worn, the biaxial trailer in tow filled to the brim. And then there's the Romanian disco-pop playing at full blast and in an endless loop, so that Talic doesn't fall asleep before he reaches northern Spain.
In France, he avoids the highways -- they're too expensive -- which means that Europe's largest country by area is crossed via country roads. A 10-hour break in Portugal is all Talic allows himself before turning around and heading home. That makes for 8,000 kilometers of driving, 100 hours at the wheel in a bit more than five days. Is this crazy, suicidal or just business as usual?
Talic is a pleasant man who has not been put off by the million kilometers he has spent behind the wheel. He understands people's criticisms of his lifestyle, and explains that he wasn't always a bus driver.
He says he was a decent student who was good at math. But one day, when his father was sawing a tree, an oak branch fell on the back of his head, knocking both of his eyes out of their sockets. He toppled forward onto his still-running chainsaw, a red, Soviet-made Drujba that cut his heart into shreds. Talic was 14 years old at the time. He left school a week after his father died in the forest, using the heavy Drujba to feed his family for four years. After that, he went to Portugal and worked in construction.
Talic tells the story warmly. He isn't one to exaggerate, and his mother, with tears in her eyes, confirms the entire story 50 hours later at the southwestern tip of Europe. For someone who, as a child, used a chainsaw to feed his family, 4,000-kilometer journeys through Europe don't seem so crazy. In fact, it's a rather pleasant job.
Talic starts the bus. The overloaded Mercedes creaks and jerks, but it drives. "The water in the back, in the cargo space," says Talic. "I don't think that's normal." Stowed under a dozen packages there are 50 bottles of Romanian mineral water. Some guy in Lisbon orders them every month. The man doesn't drink Portuguese water, Talic says, he has the Romanian water brought to him. "Every kilogram that I transport costs 2 euros. That's pretty expensive water."
We soon reach Hungary.
Special Cover Charge for Romanians
Nothing moves at the border. A dozen Mercedes Sprinters are lined up behind one another, most of them with trailers -- Romanian import-export businesses. It's a hot day and the Hungarian border guards are sweating in their blue uniforms and demonstrating how slowly a person can leaf through a passport. Talic's boss, the owner of the Mercedes van, is one car ahead in the line, waiting in a VW Passat. He always comes along to the border, because he knows the customs people best. He and Talic had words as they were leaving, the boss complaining about the ever-present extra luggage. "Three fucking suitcases per person," he bickered.
Instead of asking for money in exchange for the extra weight, Talic pressed two cartons of cigarettes into each passenger's hands, as many as a person can carry customs-free in the EU. Now they are, so to speak, legally smuggling cigarettes. In Romania, a pack costs €2, in the Ukraine where his boss bought them, they cost a bit over €1. Somewhere in Southern France, Talic will give them to a man at a highway rest stop -- the 16 legal cartons being carried by him and his passengers, as well as the approximately 20 illegal ones hidden somewhere in the cargo space. In France, a pack of cigarettes costs between 6 and 7 euros, a nice by-catch.
When Talic doesn't get any further at the Hungarian tollgate, his boss gets out in front and greets one of the customs officials. They hug. They know each other. A short chat, a quick look in the passport. There is something between its pages, which the official takes with practiced fingers. Two minutes later Talic can leave the line, and as he drives by, the Hungarian in the uniform cheerfully wishes the Romanians in the Mercedes a good trip.
How much was that? "A bit more than we need to give the one here," says Talic. The next highwayman is about one kilometer after the border. This time it's a fat traffic cop in a red safety vest. He stands at the edge of the road and reaches out his hand. Every small bus loaded up with Romanians needs to stop here in order to pass. The drivers roll down their windows and press some money into the hand of the man in the police uniform. Nobody speaks, the communication occurs wordlessly. It's a kind of cover charge that only Romanians pay.
And what if you don't pay? "Packages are opened and placed on the road," says Talic. "The interior lining is stripped and the engine space is examined. Three hours at least." Talic turns towards the back. "Which one of you has Palinka?" Palinka is the name of the self-distilled fruit schnapps. Everyone knows it is illegal to bring it along. All of them raise their arms. "Then 10,000 Forint it is." Ten thousand Forint, equivalent to €30, is what the police officer pocketed.
Talic bends forward and turns up the music. He's attached a USB stick with hundreds of hours of Romanian folk-pop to the radio. To Western ears, they are hundreds of hours of the exact same song. Talic seems to like it, the others stare contentedly at the monotonous Hungarian Pannonian steppe. It's a calm journey. A Hungarian police car stops the bus shortly before Budapest, and once again demands €200, but Talic doesn't want to get worked up about it. He actually likes Hungary. He knows that most people here can't stand Romanians, but at least they're up front about it.
The German Dream
And then we enter Austria.
The older married couple has dozed off, the younger couple is holding hands, the gaunt man is trying to start a conversation with the pretty girl in white. Talic is racking up the kilometers.
The beats from the radio blend with the wind that is streaming through the open window. The passengers' back muscles long ago gave up their resistance to the much-too-hard seats.
Talic's cell phones are on the dashboard, eight of them: two Romanian ones, one German one, one French one, one Spanish one and three Portuguese ones. If a customer would like to have a package dropped off in Portugal, he or she calls Talic. The same applies if Talic is already on his way. Then he takes a small detour. The conversations are never brief. Romanians like to chat, possibly even more than the Italians do.
For many Romanians, Talic is one of the few connections they still have with home. Sure, there's Facebook, WhatsApp and flat-rate plans for mobile phones, but they don't eliminate the homesickness -- they simply exascerbate it. Among Talic's customers are migrant laborers who might work in a field in Alentejo, Portugal, for 15 hours a day, seven days a week. Sometimes they give him packages to deliver just to be able to speak Romanian with him for a bit and feel a tie to their home country.
After Austria comes Germany.
"Why does everybody actually start their drive on Fridays?" the pretty girl wonders out loud. It's her third journey. She has already worked in Germany, in the south, in a cannery. She can say exactly four words in German, the ones for pickle, red beet and business license.
Back then, the young woman made €8.50 per hour on the production line, and was not officially on staff. But she had to spend €400 of her wages on a tiny room in a residential trailer next to the factory. She always had to share her 10-square-meter room with another Romanian. She learned than an €8.50 minimum wage doesn't mean that you earn €8.50. It just means that some companies make more hassle, and still only pay you €6.
The Romanian small-bus armada prepares for Germany, or more specifically, its police officers. Unlike in Hungary, the Germans can't be bribed. Of course, there are fines, €50, rarely more. The problem is the upstanding officials. Only in Germany does a police officer go to the effort of stopping a transporter van filled with Romanians on the highway to check if the car or the trailer is overloaded. In hardly any country will the police officer want to see latex gloves in a Romanian first-aid box designed to protect against HIV infections.
Talic doesn't think the Germans are particularly mean. Or that they want to cause trouble. They are simply, he says, correct. Correct and annoying. The French, Spanish and Portuguese are, for the most part, simply happy when they don't have anything to do with the Romanians and don't have to do any work because of them. For them, every small bus is a mountain of paperwork, because of course something always isn't quite right. Too many cigarettes, too little tread on the tires, illegal spirits, no road-worthiness certification for the vehicle.
Their Land, Their Rules
That explains the Friday thing, the calculation is simple: A driver needs about 10 hours to drive the 900 kilometers from the Hungarian border to Passau. If you leave Romania early on a Friday afternoon, you reach Germany just after the sun sets. A Romanian license plate is harder to recognize at night, and the German officials are partly on their weekend, the beautiful German highway is empty, the likelihood of not being stopped is high. And by Saturday morning, before the sun goes up, the Romanians have passed. If all goes well, no person has noticed that they've gone through Germany in the night.
Talic thinks it's right, what the Germans are doing, even if he himself is breaking all of their rules. His bus turns into a rolling deadly weapon by sun-up on Saturday mornings -- despite the pounding pop music, he is extremely tired. It doesn't change things that the Germans are right, Talic says, in principle. But he needs to break those laws in order to make things halfway worth it.
Their land, their rules, he says about the Germans, nothing wrong with that, but he counters: "my life, my risks." He sees it as a sport. He would like his daughter in Romania to grow up well, so that she can go to college later and live in a nice house. If he obeyed the German rules that wouldn't be possible. So he does what he must. And Germany does what it must. And Europe too. It's actually very simple.
One will, so to speak, meet few people who are as passionate Europeans as Viktor Talic. For him, the European Union is not a monster that lives in Brussels, it is a sea of possibilities. Nothing is given, he says, of course not, but if you make an effort, you are rewarded.
Many people who have ridden with him might come back to Romania a couple of years later with a big car and move into a big house that they never would have been able to afford if they had not left the country. They may have lots of back pain, and ruptured disks, and scratched-up fingers, but the car, the house, nobody can take that away. So who says that the European dream doesn't work?
Talic says he doesn't understand what is currently going on in Europe, not at all. This hostility, this Greece problem, the discussions about austerity policies or not, about national debts, are all beside the point, he argues. For him, Europe means that a person can work and make an okay living from it. So where is the problem?
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| A young man naps during the 50-hour drive from Satu Mare to Portugal. During the journey, Talic only sleeps for three hours somewhere in the northern part of Spain. |
An Impossible Life in Romania
Of course, he says there are differences but they don't have anything to do with injustice. Germany, for example, is a great country. In Germany, Talic says, nobody needs to work hard. Working is enough, and that is the main difference between Romania and Germany. In Romania, working isn't enough, not even working hard. The actual minimum wage is €217.50. Doctors work for €450. And where do most of the foreign doctors in Germany come from? Romania, of course.
It's not true that everything is considerably cheaper in Romania -- groceries or rents. So how does a person support a family with only one wage?
"Not at all," says Talic.
The van rolls into France.
The radio unit comes on. A truck driver is offering Talic a tank of diesel. Before, Talic took these kinds of offers more frequently. Truck drivers earn some extra money by selling diesel on their way to Romania. But these days, this is more closely monitored by the shipping companies. And Talic just filled up with cheap gas near Montlucon, in the Auvergne region. Instead of showering, he went into the drugstore department of a supermarket and sprayed perfume onto his upper arms. Unfortunately, the other passengers did the same. Now the bus smells like a perfume outlet store at the height of summer.
Talic has never had problems in France. If he has believably reassured the police officers that he is only traveling through and will be in Spain in a few hours, they let him pass. He has only had difficulties once. "That was with the pigs."
Word had spread about the kinds of things that Talic transports. Two euros per kilogram, that was the only rule. Last year, around this time, he received a phone call from a Romanian working in a slaughter business near Lisbon. The boss there was refusing to pay the wages of the Romanian workers and saying they should take him to court. The Romanians had another idea -- they decided to steal his pigs.
They built a very large wooden crate, put 14 living pigs in, and gave everything to Talic, who lashed the stolen goods to the trailer. Since all of the people involved decided that the 4,000 kilometers from Portugal to Romania were pretty far for the pigs to travel, they decided to send the pigs to an acquaintance in Paris.
Talic and the pigs were caught up in a police inspection. A gendarme stopped them and asked for veterinary documents. Talic, who had understood him, showed him the vehicle license and explained that the delivery was going to Paris. Who knows what the police officer was thinking, perhaps he didn't like Paris, or maybe he didn't want to wait for the department veterinarian. He shook his head and allowed Talic to keep driving with his pigs.
"They all survived," says Talic. At least the trip. " Don't ask me what they did with them. They lived in a high rise, in the city."
And thus we enter Spain.
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| A passenger checks her makeup during the long drive to Portugal. Since 1992, 4 million Romanians have left the country, many in search of a better life elsewhere in Europe. |
Arrival in Portugal
After the 35th hour, time goes by in thick clumps. Bilbao, Valladolid, Salamanca, the cities pass by. At least now the bus is driving on the highway again. Nobody looks at the time, nobody seems to care if the drive will ever end. The flat land in northwestern Madrid, formerly Castalia, is made up of spacious steppe, which doesn't make things easier. Talic slept for exactly three hours near Burgos, and afterwards he looked more tired than before. He says that he's feeling well, but the right-hand tires frequently rumble over the road markings, and the sound of the grooves scares everyone every few minutes.
Talic says that he can only actually remember one accident. A friend of his, who was driving a Sprinter to France, drifted out of his lane near Rastatt and ran into a truck. A passenger was immediately dead. Ten minutes after the accident, a helicopter landed on the A5, and now the friend has a plate-sized piece of metal in his head, and works near Milan. Talic says, the man would have been dead in any other country. Since that story, German police officers can ask about the AIDS gloves as often as they want. Talic won't say anything bad about them, about Germany.
Spain is the worst part of the journey. The passengers lay on their seats as if sedated. Conversation topics have been used up since Basel at the latest. It's the moment in which people asks themselves why they would subject themselves to this for €120. A flight would have cost only double that. But presumably a person has to earn two to four euros per hour to be able to answer that question. Never has it felt nicer to arrive in Portugal. The madness begins.
From this point onwards, none of Talic's eight cell phones stays quiet. Everybody knows that he arrives in Portugal on Sunday afternoon. Everybody wants to discuss when their package, their relative, their boyfriend will arrive. At moments, Talic speaks with three people simultaneously on the phone. If he doesn't answer, people get worried and call even more frequently.
After he has dropped off the older married couple and the gaunt man in a village near Lisbon, Talic drives into the Portuguese capital. There, at a traffic circle, several of his customers are waiting with their cars to pick up packages. Thirty, 40 Romanians besiege Talic's Mercedes. He distributes package after package and picks up new ones. To passersby it looks like one big fight, but Talic claims it is all in order.
Romanian is a Job
The fatigue is gone. The phone is ringing every minute. Talic drives to small villages, collects packages, jumps out briefly somewhere with an envelope filled with money, drops of the rest of the passengers at their front door. The last hours pass quickly.
Early on Sunday evening, the drive ends at Portimao, a tourist spot near the Algarve, which the Portuguese construction boom has gifted with a pair of very ugly high-rise buildings. Talic's mother lives in one of them. His sister and step-brother live below her.
The mother cleans a hotel for €5 per hour. The new construction in which she lives isn't finished yet, but she doesn't want to return to Romania no matter what, she is that happy here.
Talic sits next to her at her kitchen table and is too tired to talk. Tomorrow at eight he goes back to Romania. He says that he just remembered something. To the question, what it's like to be a Romanian in Europe. He has the answer. Being Romanian in Europe is no nationality at all. Being Romanian is a job.
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| Talic only stops for five minutes after refilling his gas tank, and only 15 minutes at a time for meals. He is driving an old Mercedes Sprinter with over a million kilometers on the odometer. |
1. Proves there is no European Union
spiegelerin 07/22/2015
The citizens are too tired to vote, to think about politics. They live as cuckoo birds in the nests of others, each thinking about his/her small gain with no sense of being brothers/sisters, just lost from their brothers/sisters. So someone dies, so disease passes through...no one cares, other than the German officials, but apparently, the system can always be beat.
2. FYI Viktor Talic is not a Romanian Name!
Egroeg 07/22/2015
I wonder how on earth can you actually make such a statement: "There are countries in Europe with a bad reputation, there are those with a very bad reputation and then there is Romania." Are you that retarded ?? Is everything pink and full of sunshine in Germany, France or other European countries ? All this is highly offensive and frustrating and I do not understand why you retarded media people can only talk about the bad parts and never about the good contributions that Romania is bringing in Europe. I am sick of you.
3. @spiegelerin
ricardo9 07/22/2015
While you raise some valid points, I find your cuckoo birds metaphor distasteful. I suppose you don't take issue with German industry "travelling" abroad, producing at one fifth of German salaries, creating the prosperity for the society back home. I suppose you are also fine with German clinics recruiting in Romanian medical schools, hiring away the last doctors trained by the poorest taxpayers in EU - but when the poor and the uneducated of the other country also come to visit (to work mostly), you would prefer them to stay at home. I think if you are taking advantage of someone it is also fair to take a share of their problems. - A Romanian
4. Disrespectful
andre_alx 07/22/2015
This article, while being based on facts, is written in a tone that is deeply disrespectful and propagandistic. "There are countries in Europe with a bad reputation, there are those with a very bad reputation and then there is Romania." You say this based on what? On other articles like this? If one reader knows nothing about Romania and reads this article, what can s/he imagine? Then there's quite an interesting passage from corruption to toothpaste usage. As a Romanian with good oral hygiene, I am a bit pissed off about this. Why, for example you don't quote other statistics, like the one that says that Romania is the country with the highest internet speed? Anyway. I've been in Germany about twenty years ago when we were students and we enjoyed the beauty and quality of the place. However, as we went to school there for two weeks we observed that the Maths that the Germans were learning in the eighth class, we already learned in the fifth class. What I want to say is... yes... you have enough stupid people able to get the low jobs, but it is more comfortable to import them from countries that weren't that luckier in the recent history, to say the least. Also, I got the impression that Germans are manipulated with the myth of the scapegoat. Lets blame it on the marginals and forget about the fact that your politicians also treat citizens badly. And what do you think, is Romania having an independent rule, that can be rightly judged for what they do? Aren't our leaders just puppets of the wealthier countries? Unfortunately, not many German readers will understand my comments, since they don't know too much English language.
5.
diana_wdr 07/23/2015
I felt so sad reading this piece. Coming from an uppermiddle class family in Bucharest (capital of RO) I feel like this is another world. I have been exposed to people who left the country to work unqualified jobs in Western Europe, but still, reading about it makes it seem so distant from my world.
6.
stephanie_wojcik 07/23/2015
Fascinating story! Please more like this!
7. Excellent Story
Backwoods 07/23/2015
I'm a casual reader of Der Spiegel and this is one of the more interesting stories lately. It shows a side of the EU that echoes migrations in the US from poor states to states with more opportunities. It also echoes the migrations from Mexico to the US. Thank you for this perspective.
8. Romania and Romanians in the EU
alin_codoban 07/23/2015
The Romanians presented in the article are only a part of our society. Poor and uneducated people, mainly from villages are going to work in Spain, Portugal or Italy. However, the EU is an instrument for richer countries like Germany to fulfill their population deficit with cheaper workers from Eastern Europe (it was the same case with cheaper labour force from Spain and Portugal in the 80s). Off course nobody will speak officialy about that. But it's Romania's duty to boost its economy and to stop corruption in order to offer its own citizens opportunities back home and to make disappear Talic's job and maybe to attract at its turn cheaper labour force from Moldova or Ukraine.
9. Romanian's wake up
in pectore 07/23/2015
This story is heart breaking of course and completely unfair... I commend the drivers outlook on how he has to carry out his work, and understands that it is their country, their rules - but HIS risk. What I cannot understand is that it is accepted now in Romania to leave instead of trying to reform their own institutions/employers/working conditions. They have given up on this. I am not talking about some new corruption agency that will get a few big fish/headlines - but the masses on the ground. They accept that some Romanian's are corrupt and such is life. If most put as much effort as Talic does into driving thousands of kilometers away to deliver people and goods - into standing up against corruption and not accepting this is the way Romania works and always has done, then the older generation may leave something for the younger generation that is worth working/studying for. Otherwise, yes, Talic's daughter will have education paid for her by her hard working dad - but what has he left in terms of a country in which for her to work?
10. geography
daqy 07/23/2015
"It's almost impossible to go any further west in Europe." Really? 300 km to the north maybe, but not in the south of Portugal. And the stereotypes used in the articles... I have never read such a long list of prejudices and stereotypes about Romanians in one single article.
11. PS. next time try a check airline when flying to Portugal
apopa 07/23/2015
Very interesting article and congrats to the writer for his patience in joining the bus along this trip. However, a little bit more efforts would have been appreciated when looking at Romania's place and behavior in Europe or at the distribution of its workforce abroad to avoid general statements based on some individual facts or cases. As for the country image, saying '... there are those with a very bad reputation and then there is Romania.' seems based (involuntary I guess) on some very subjective criteria - just looking at how we manage public debt in Romania versus other EU countries and some more respect will be welcome. Going further and making class-based associations: '...Wherever uneducated, rather than educated, workers are needed, employers look for Romanians...' seems based more on interactions of the writer with some specific working categories but cannot be taken as a serious statement. On the other hand, I do understand of course this is just an article about the life of a Romanian mini-bus driver, an interesting one actually, and not an exhaustive study.
12. Germans are the heros -- again
Gough 07/23/2015
Even in an article focusing on Romanian smugglers, somehow the article is written in a manner that paints the Germans as the only good guys in all of Europe. I imagine your German readers don't even notice the bias.
13. Filter my news
John T 07/23/2015
I know a guy, he went to Venice on vacation. I asked him-you liked it ? No- there were rats in the canals he replied. Then he went to New York. Did you like it ? No, the subway was dirty. This article is the usual German fare: looking for negatives or poverty or small defects in other cultures to underline the superiority of the German culture (the trip is done in a Mercedes van, with over 1mil km's, the cops are the most honest etc.). Like that guy in NY or Venice, you miss the positives and perhaps the beauty in the world, because like 90% of the German articles about other cultures, your goal is to search deep to find things that "stink",that don't work or poor people in bad situations in other cultures, in order to produce a "good-feeling" about Germany, to the German reader. I was born in Romania, I live now in Canada, and I worked in Romania, Germany, Canada and the US. I travelled quite extensively to other countries, and I speak 4 languages. Nowhere did I see so often this approach in other countries. They are either indifferent or try to find what is positive in other culture. Do a google search for English, French and German news. It is enlightened. BTW my grandfather was of German origin and came to Romania 150 years ago for a better life, and he had a better life then in Germany. And Romania ? In your opinion, it is beyond "very bad", a place where people hardly use toothpaste (do these statistics actually really exists ?!) , have the highest corruption, use alcohol (huh ? so what? who doesn't? Germany gives lessons in alcohol consumption ?) , have the highest level of corruption, and people earn money as "putz-frau" in Portugal. What a demeaning mind, with superiority complexes reminding of Hitler's Arian race, did write this article? Oh yeah I know, Hitler is a taboo word in Germany, but the superiority complex very deep entranced but not supposed to surface. Why don't you make articles about the German main squares at 11 am, where all the German drunkards on welfare gather, drink beer, and are still there at 4pm, but either aggressive to all by-passers or sleeping on the pavement? Read other articles (not usually German) about Romania: it has the highest level of anti-corruption fight between all its neighbours, including the farther away Italy. Romania's president was elected from a minority (-incidentally: German) - does this happen in Germany? is it open-minded enough to elect somebody from a French, or Italian, or Turkish minority ? Romania has the 2nd highest internet speed in Europe, and the 6th in the world (Germany: 35). They say that at Microsoft, Romanian is the second language spoken, and Romania produces the most IT experts reported to the population, in Europe. Have you ever been to see the Romanian Carpathians? This reminds me another episode: Bucegi Mountains, on a peak called Vf.Omu. All the tourists looking in awe at the beauty and majesty of the mountains around. A group of German tourists were in the meanwhile photographing a bin of garbage where empty plastic bottles next to it.
14. The last European
abboshack1 07/23/2015
This has to be the saddest yet most heartwarming story i have read for a long time. A decent man fighting the system to make a living against all the odds.Here in the UK the system is trying its best to brainwash the the public into believing everything Romanian is bad, a story like Talic's would probably never be printed here. May his own god go with him.
15. Very good article
radu 07/24/2015
I like the accurate details about the borders of Hungary.
16. Yet, Romanians just proved they
oanaandserban 07/24/2015
Romanians especially, practice the national sport of blaming themselves for lack of solidarity and a sense of community. No wonder, after half a century of communist dictatorship, at crucial time when the rest of the European nations were taking essential lifesaving steps into the second half of the twentieth century. After all, it all comes down to education. Ignorance never helped a nation to progress. Romanians are continually proving that they can work hard, take a look at the jobs they are practicing all over Europe. The thieves are the exception that comes with the lack of education and common sense.
17. Very comprehensive overview of Romanian cliches
Tamara S 07/24/2015
If you were after a more or less full list of Romanian cliches and prejudices, then this article offers it. I'd be curious though where the toothpaste consumption stats came from, they seemed spot on relevant to the topic!
18. Can be a great documentary movie
rsigan 07/24/2015
I read and enjoyed this original and thought provoking article. It can be a basis for an interesting documentary film
19. Safety Implications for other EU citizens?
westdande 07/24/2015
Within the European Union, I understand regulation 561/2006 ‘controls’ driving times, breaks and rest periods required to be taken by drivers of goods or passenger vehicles who drive in the EU. Or has an exemption be agreed for Romanian drivers?
20. The truth, if you can stand it
dpotop 07/24/2015
I already knew Romanians work more than Germans. Be it on the fields, driving buses, or simply doing hard research and engineering (like I do). They mainly do this in Europe and the US, because their country has been confiscated from them with German support. Yes, we have a prime minister accused of money laundring, but who is more morally sound than your chancellor is. Your chancellor, who condoned absurd notions such as "parlimentary coup d'état" when her protégé in Romania (former president Traian Basescu) was ousted by the referendum vote of romanians, and then reinstated. This is the event that lead to Ponta being the subject of a political trial, while the current president -- the ethnic german Klaus Johannis who participated in child trafficking, but was never bothered for this -- was promoted with support from the European People's Party and Germany itself. I can understand Germany has no real democracy (historically, Germany liked more corporatist policies, this is why SPD is just an annex of CDU) but I can't stand Germany imposing this to the whole of Europe.
21. wonderful romanians
illu 07/25/2015
living in greece, i travelled many times to romania ,also by bus , since 2000 aprox. - in general i met a lot of wonderful people there , good educated - often able to speak 2-3 or more languages ,generally disciplined and really hard working. i think ,also by my own experience , most of what the article describes is reality , and actually not flattering germany . germany is good for tourists or to find a hard and bad paid job or just as something to function by rules - otherwise better avoid it ,what 'talic' knows well ,and does so . other places work in a more 'human' way- starting with the hungarians, followed by the french ... . about the much discussed 'tooth-paste-statistic' ,that's german cynical humor !! which nobody except germans understand so well - also the writer ,i basicly believe is an open minded person ,but a good example for nobody can really can leave all his roots behind even if he tries so ,well he tried to be a bit of funny at the beginning ,but in a very german way ! anybody seen mr schaeuble to be funny ?? only germans can laugh !!!!
22. Unbacked statements and poor generalisations
Tamara S 07/25/2015
This must be one of the most obnoxious articles I've read about Romania in recent years. It's so full of prejudices and unbacked statements that I'm not sure how it got published at all in Der Spiegel. As a Romanian citizen I can take fair and constructive criticism but not something like this. If all the quotes below represent solely the author's opinions then this should have been stated at the beginning as I can't imagine Der Spiegel would want to be associated with such poor journalism. 'There are countries in Europe with a bad reputation, there are those with a very bad reputation and then there is Romania.' - Romania should sue the author for this statement. 'Wherever uneducated, rather than educated, workers are needed, employers look for Romanians. Even the Germans.' 'And where do most of the foreign doctors in Germany come from? Romania, of course. ' These two statements make perfect sense together! 'In their view, anything is better than staying in Romania' - Very poor generalisation. 'It ranks lowest for toothpaste consumption in the European Union' How rude and irrelevant is this 'stat'? It'd be great if next time an author submits such an article, you'd think twice before publishing it. There are certainly other ways of presenting a country's issues without lowering ourselves to prejudice and stereotypes.
23. Driving
michael_ah_oleary 07/25/2015
I am sure that this style of driving is banned in most countries - Is the driver covered by professional driver insurance and driving licence ?
24.
Martin Zaimov 07/25/2015
Excellent
25. europe
david_owen 07/26/2015
i don,t find the comments in the article demeaning in any way,but shows the European states as divided in the way they treat each other as they always have been before the so called union.All they have created in Romania is an escape route to prosperity .Looks like the blue print for whats in store for Greece.
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A couple in Talic's mini-bus. Talic’s cargo space is filled with packages, always. He brings presents to relatives living abroad. Items that are self-slaughtered, self-knitted and, especially, self-distilled. |
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