Did you know

Romania is often dismissed as simply a mysterious place where fairy-tales are upheld as truths and the mountains are inhabited by vampires and wolves. However, the country has achieved and given the world much more than you think. Here are some facts about Romania that might just surprise you.

• Did you know that Prince Charles is a great fan of Transylvania where he spends a lot of time?
• Did you know that the real Count Dracula was a military leader who fought the Turks in the Middle Ages? And Dracula the Vampire was invented by an Irish author, Bram Stoker?
• Did you know Romania is roughly the same size as the UK, but its population is only one third as large?
• Did you know Romania is the second largest consumer market in Central and Eastern Europe after Poland, together with its neighbours being part of a market of 100 milions inhabitants?
• Did you know Romania is the gateway to Caucasus region, the Middle East and the Western Balkans and that it has a major shipping port on the Black Sea?
• Did you know that taxis in Romania are ridiculously cheap? In Bucharest they can cost as low as 0,29 euro cents/per km.
• Did you know that Romania it’s home to the world’s heaviest building? It has 1,100 rooms, 365,000 square metres, 3,500 tonnes of crystal, 480 chandeliers and 1,409 ceiling lights, while 700,000 tonnes of steel and bronze was used for monumental doors and windows. Guinness World Records recognises it as the heaviest building on the planet.
• Did you know that Romania has the world’s most beautiful road? In his search for the “world’s best driving road” Jeremy Clarkson declared that he had found it in the middle of Romania – in the form of the Transfagarasan highway.
• Did you know that Romania is the real home of Borat? In Sacha Baron Cohen’s film, scene’s purporting to show Borat’s Kazakh hometown were shot in the village of Glod, Romania, while its Roma residents were cast as extras.
• Did you know that Romania is one of the best places in the world for 4G speed, occupying an impressive fourth place out of 78 nations? Users in the country can expect speed of 35.61 Mbps, on average, compared to just 21.16 Mbps in the UK.
• Did you know that Romania has the world’s largest flag? A five-ton flag that measured 349 metres by 227 metres, and used 44 miles of thread, was unfurled in Romania in 2013.
• Did you know that Romania has the largest gold reserves in all of Europe? The country is also home to Europe’s only museum dedicated to gold.
• Did you know that Romanian forests are the last place in Europe where the brown bear can be found? The are approximately 6,000 bears living in the country’s Carpathian region.
• Did you know that the Romanian language is in fact one of the five major romance languages, along with French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian? Many are still thinking Russian is spoken in Romania. This is false
• Did you know that Bucharest is a great city? Sure it has no such architecture as Budapest, Krakow or other eastern European cities, but it has the museums, parks and nightlife that few others have
• Did you know that Romania has all the 4 seasons with two huge advantages from northern countries: In winters they have sun. In summer it’s not cloudy?
• Did you know that most Romanians at their 18’s have two dreams in mind: 1 – Moving to the UK. 2- Moving to any other country that isn’t Romania? They are wrong. While Romanians dream to leave, the visitors dream that one day they will come back.”
• Did you know that in Romania when you enter an office, you have to shake hands with the men but you just wave to the women?
• Did you know that the reason for the large number of orphans in Romania in late 80s, early 90s was Nicolae Ceausescu, because of his measures to boost birthrate: he banned abortions for women under 45?
• Did you know that the modern jet engine was invented by the Bucharest-born inventor Henri Coanda in 1910?
• Did you know that The Danube Delta is the most extended wet area in Europe, occupies the third place in the world as biodiversity, after the Great Barrier Reef and Galapagos islands?
• Did you know that Romania has 7 UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the Churches of Bucovina; the Dacian Fortress of the Orastie Mountains; the Historic Centre of Sighisoara; the Monastery of Horezu; the Villages with Fortified Churches in Transylvania; the Wooden Churches of Maramures; the Danube Delta?
• Did you know that Romania is Europe’s richest country in gold resources?
• Did you know that the largest population of brown bears in Europe lives in Romania?