In addition to the US and Canada, this website has now had a visitor from Romania!
One of the (perhaps) surprising things about Romania is that, despite it being situated in Eastern Europe, the language is a romance language descended from Latin and not a Slavic language as one might naively expect. Side-by-side comparisons of some of the words are surprisingly similar to Spanish, French, Italian, or Portuguese words with the same meaning. This shouldn’t be surprising; the name Romania actually comes from “Roman”, which is obvious once it is pointed out. The Roman province of Dacia was roughly in the Transylvanian mountains. Modern Romania roughly corresponds to the ancient Kingdom of Dacia; which followed the Roman province after the fall of the empire. The region was strongly influenced by the Kingdom of Hungary and the Bulgarian and Ottoman Empires. The area of Romania emerged as the medieval principalities of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania and Calvinism, Lutheranism, Unitarianism, and Roman Catholicism were recognized in the 1500s. Again the region was pulled between different empires, the Habsburg monarchy / Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russians, and Ottomans, but did become independent and achieve recognition in the mid-1800s. Then it was occupied by the Soviets after WWII and gained independence again in the violent Christmas Revolution of 1989, which I remember hearing about on the news. Today Romania is a member of NATO and the EU. Ethnic Romanians are the majority of the population, with Hungarians and Romani as the largest minorities.
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