Romania: Difference between revisions

* ''Train of Life'', a great tragicomedy about Romanian Jews in [[World War II]] who know that they're to be deported and hatch a crazy plan - that could work.

* In ''[[Harry Potter]]'', Ron's brother, Charlie Weasley, works with dragons in Romania.

* ''[[South Park]]'''s answer to the Elian Gonzalez debacle, ''Quintuplets 2000'', involved Romanian quintuplets... whose home country is apparently still Communist, and certainly dominated by grey, bland architecture and an economy and populace so poor that a few hundred US dollars makes one "rich" there. Probably not the best depiction, and not necessarily all that accurate, either it turns out (current-day Bucharest, at any rate, is [[wikipedia:Bucharest|actually quite pretty]], as far as we're concerned, and the country's been a democratically-elected Republic for years). This probably stems more from the fact that Romania ''was'' Communist-controlled until 1989 and [[Ripped from the Headlines|wanting to draw a better comparison between the episode's plot and the Elian Gonzalez thing]] than anything else, though.

** The older bits of Bucharest are pretty. The Communists did their best to hack the place apart and fill it with depressing architecture. It's all a matter of finding the old parts that escaped relatively unscathed.

*** Perhaps coincidentally, the tribe that invented that spell were protected by Dracula, so they might have picked up elements of the spell from other magicians nearby.

** Same again in the Wolf Man remake. The two gypsy women speak in Romanian.

* Wallachia is the location of the [[Our Wormholes Are Different|first gateway]] to the Vampire World, and the birthplace (not to mention undeath place) of the [[Big Bad|Big Bads]] from the first two books of the ''[[Necroscope]]'' saga.

* Romania as represented in ''[[Scandinavia and The World]]'' is a vampire who steals, in keeping with the typical exaggeration of stereotypes. He also re-enacted Dracula with the Netherlands, at least until England threw them out of his garden.

* Though presented as Kazakhstan, the village at the beginning of ''[[Borat]]'' is in Romania.

* A ''[[Wizards of Waverly Place]]'' episode revolves around Romania, due to the fact that Alex wants to travel there for entertainment, and she doesn't know exactly where it is located (or what ''[[Book Dumb|it actually is]]''). Her father explains to her that Romania is a country in Europe, filled with gymnasts and vampires.

* [[Common Knowledge]]: The history curriculum in Romania conflates the Dacians and the Getae, something modern historians aren't very eager to champion (some go so far as to suggest they were two separate tribes of Thracians, the Getae living in southern Romania and the Dacians beyond the Carpathians). This is mostly a legacy of the long Romanian-Hungarian dispute over who "rightfully" owns Transylvania, wherein both sides gleefully bent history to try and fit their own narratives - the Geto-Dacian classification is meant to emphasise the fact that Romanians were there first.

* [[Drives Like Crazy]]: In practice, less accent on the ''crazy'' part and more on the ''crazily fast''. While may be many crackpot theories to explain the disregard of rules<ref> Don't try. [[Flame War]] ensues.</ref>, in reality the disregard is first and foremost for the police, who are regarded as the most disgusting species of [[Corrupt Hick|CorruptHicks]] on Earth.<ref> Their efforts to prove [[I Am the Trope|they are just that]] [[Sarcasm Mode|are admirable]].</ref>

* [[Misplaced Nationalism]] and [[Patriotic Fervor]]: Bring up the Hungarian minority's rights, or just Hungary in general, in the right crowd. Make sure you have popcorn.

* [[Nosy Neighbor]]: Description is futile, one has to experience life among them to believe.