Salut from Romania!!!

It has been a little more than a week since I arrived in Romania for my 8 week internship and boy have those 10 days gone by quickly. I have never lived away from home for more than 14 days let alone in another country on my own, so I am a little nervous but also very excited.

My traineeship requires me to train high school students on the theme of Entrepreneurship and the skills you require to be a successful entrepreneur, like communication, leadership, team management etc. After my two months in Brasov, Romania I will be backpacking across France, Spain, Italy and Portugal for around 40 days. I hope everything goes according to plan but then I am also reminded of Murphy’s Law, what can go wrong will go wrong! I have my fingers crossed!

I flew from Delhi to Paris and had to wait in Paris for four hours to board my connecting flight to Bucharest and since it was early morning the setting was perfect to jot down my goals and expectations for the adventure that lay ahead of me. By the time I was done other passengers started to stream in through the check in gates. One thing that I noticed was that most people were not very fluent in English and only spoke in their native tongue and made no apologies for it, something different from India.

Many people who have been on internships or lived abroad had told me that a person becomes more patriotic when they live in a different country and I began to understand what they meant. There were a couple of other Indians at the airport and as we crossed each other we would exchange smiles and glances, almost whispering the words, “mera Bharat mahan” or something like that. {yes I know that sounds a little dramatic but its true!}

Anyway, so after a couple of hours and some spectacular views from the plane I arrived in Bucharest. Waiting for me at Otopeni Airport were Gheorge {alumni, AIESEC Brasov} three of his friends and his Mercedes with a sun roof, talk about an airport pickup!! : P The drive from Bucharest to Brasov is about 2 hours and some of the places you pass on the way make perfect postcards.

I finally arrived, after 11 hours of flying and 2 hours by road, at the place I would call home for the next two months. Laura aka my TN manager aka the person who matched me was waiting for me and it was nice to finally meet her after exchanging mails for almost two months.

Brasov can be divided into two halves, the old part of the city and the new. You can see the clear division and also get a nice view of the city from the top of the Black tower. We are staying at Memo, one of the students dorms in the old part. By ‘we’ I mean myself and the other two trainees who are part of the project, there is Jenny from Taiwan and Ashley from Armenia.

The people of Brasov are very friendly and warm and although they may not be very fluent in English they will try their best to help you. Public transport is very good but a lot of people choose to walk and I can’t blame them. The city is not very big so you can be sure to bump into someone you know on your way.