A Folk Land of Music, Dance,
Merry-Making & Much Eating

The culture of Romania is rich and varied. Like Romanians themselves, it is fundamentally defined as the meeting point of three regions: Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, but cannot be fully included in any of them.

The Romanian identity formed on a substratum of mixed Roman and quite possibly Dacian elements (although the latter is controversial), with many other influences. During late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the major influences came from the Slavic peoples who migrated and settled in nearby Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine and eventually Poland and Russia; from medieval Greeks and the Byzantine Empire; from a long domination by the Ottoman Empire; from the Hungarians; and from the Germans living in Transylvania.

Modern Romanian culture emerged and developed over roughly the last 250 years under a strong influence from Western culture, particularly French and German culture.

Traditions
The most striking thing about Romanian culture is the strong folk traditions which have survived to this day due to the rural character of the Romanian communities, which has resulted in an exceptionally vital and creative traditional culture. Romania's rich folk traditions have been nourished by many sources, some of which predate the Roman occupation. Traditional folk arts include wood carving, ceramics, weaving and embroidery of costumes, household decorations, dance, and richly varied folk music.

Ethnographers have tried to collect in the last two centuries as many elements as possible: the Museum of the Romanian Peasant and the Romanian Academy are currently the main institutions which systematically organise the data and continue the research.

Wood used to be the main construction material, and heavily ornamented wooden objects were common in old houses. In Maramures wood was used to create impressive structures such as churches or gates, in Dobruja windmills were made of wood, and in mountainous regions hardwood was used even for covering the roof. To preserve traditional houses many village museums have been created in the last century throughout Romania, such as the Village Museum in Bucharest, the Traditional Popular Civilisation ASTRA Museum in Sibiu or the Oltenian Village Museum in Ramnicu Valcea.

Music & Dance
Music and dance represent a lively part of the Romanian folklore and there are a great variety of musical genres and dances. Party music is very lively and shows both Balkan and Hungarian influences. Sentimental music, however, is the most valued, and Romanians consider their doina (a sad song either about one's home or about love, composed like an epic ballad) unique in the world. Maria Tanase is considered to be one of the greatest Romanian folk singers and today Grigore Lese and Taraful Haiducilor are two of the most famous musicians. The dances are lively and are practiced throughout Romania by a large number of professional and amateur groups, thus keeping the tradition alive; Hora is one of the most famous group dances but men's folk dances such as calusari are extremely complex and have been declared by UNESCO to be
"Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritages of Humanity".

Romanians have had, from time immemorial, a myriad of customs, tales and poems about love, faith, kings, princesses, and witches. Ethnologists, poets, writers and historians have tried in recent centuries to collect and to preserve tales, poems, ballads and have tried to describe as well as possible the customs and habits related to different events and times of year. Customs related to certain times of year are the colinde - Romanian Christmas carols, sorcova on New Year's Eve or the Martisor custom on the 1st of March marking the spring. Other customs are presumably of pre-Christian pagan origin, like the Paparuda rain enchanting custom in the summer, or the masked folk theatre or Ursul (the bear) and Capra (the goat) in winter.

Perhaps the most successful collector of folk tales was the novelist and storyteller Ion Creanga, who, in very picturesque language, shaped into their now-classic form stories like Harap Alb (roughly, "The White Prince") or Fata babei si fata mosneagulu (roughly, "The old woman's girl and the old man's girl"). Also, the poet Vasile Alecsandri published the most successful version of the ballad Miorita (The Little Ewe), a sad, philosophical poem, centered around a simple action: the plot by two shepherds to kill a third shepherd because they envied his wealth. Another prolific editor of folk tales was Petre Ispirescu, who, in the 19th century published an impressive number of volumes containing a large number of short novels and tales from popular mythology. They are centered around popular characters like the prince Fat-Frumos (the Romanian "Prince Charming"), the princess Ileana Cosanzeana, the villain or monster Zmeu or Capcaun, the dragon Balaur or fantastic super beings like the good Zana and the evil Muma Padurii.

Spirituality and religion
Romanian spirituality is greatly influenced by its strong connections with the Eastern Christian world. Romanians have thus obtained a unique sense of identity and two clichés can simply express this: An island of Latinity in a Slavic sea and The only Orthodox Christian Latin people. There are only a few Romanian Catholics (of both the Roman and Greek rites) and a small number of Protestants, the vast majority of Romanians being Romanian Orthodox (over 90 percent) despite the diminishing importance of the church in recent generations, it remains the most trusted institution in Romania. Church attendance is high in rural communities and among the elders in the cities. Also, despite accusations of collaborationism with the communist regime, which continue to plague the Romanian Church, outstanding personalities have kept their verticality and became widely respected like the priest Dumitru Staniloae who is considered one of the greatest world theologians in the recent period.

Traditional cuisine
Romanians like to eat, and they eat a lot with a great diversity. An existential Romanian question is: Do we live to eat, or eat to live? A great number of proverbs and sayings have developed around the activity of eating. From the innocent child's thank you: "Thank you for the meal, it was good and tasty, and the cook was fat", to the more philosophical "Thank you Lord, for I have eaten, but I am hungry again", "Love passes through the stomach", or the simple "Appetite comes while eating" or "The pig would eat anything but it gets fat for others" or the expression of total fulfillment, "Ate well, drank well, in the morning woke up dead".

Recipes bear the same influences as the rest of Romanian culture: from Roman times there still exists the simple pie called, in Romanian, plãcintã and keeping the initial meaning of the Latin word placenta. The Turks brought meatballs (fried mititei in a soup called a ciorba); from the Greeks there is the musaca (moussaka); from the Bulgarians, a wide variety of vegetable dishes like zacuscã; from the Austrians there is the schnitzel and covrigi (hot pretzels); from the Hungarians, their ornate pastries; and the list could go on.

Wine is the main drink and has a tradition of over two millennia. Romania is currently the world's ninth largest wine producer, and recently the exports have started to grow. A wide variety of domestic (Feteascã, Grasã, Tãmâioasã) and worldwide (Italian Riesling, Merlot, Sauvignon blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Muscat Ottonel) varieties are produced. Also Romania is the world's second largest grower of plums, and almost all of those plums becomes either the famous þuicã (a once-refined plum brandy) or palincã (twice-or-more-refined plum brandy). Also beer is highly appreciated, generally blonde pilsener beer, after the German style.