First National Meeting

31st March-3rd April

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Traditions

Feasts

Winter feasts 24 December -> 7 January

Mărţişor 1st of March

Easter - holiday without a fix date – usually one week after the Catholic Easter.

Childrens go from house to house singing beautiful Christmas Carols, often with a large star made of coloured glossy paper, singing and celebrating the Christ's birth.

Also in some parts of the country people respect the old customs and use masks and costumes imitating animals to celebrate winter.

is the celebration of spring. Popular tradition: amulets with red-white thread are offered to women to were them for a few days, and after that they have to be put in flourished trees.

Religious tradition: special foods are prepared – especially using

lamb and eggs are painted. The colors that are used are red, yellow,

blue, green and black. The most important is red which symbolizes,

Jesus’ blood when He was crucified.

Food

The Romanian cuisine is a diverse blend of

different dishes from several traditions which came

into contact but it also maintained its own

character. It has been greatly influenced by Turkish

cuisine, while it also includes influences from the

cuisines of other neighbours, such as

Germans, Serbians and Hungarians.

Romanian traditional foods heavily feature

meat. Cabbage rolls, sausages, and stews (like

tocanita) are popular main dishes. Quite different

types of dishes are sometimes included under a

generic term; for example, the category ciorba

includes a wide range of soups with a characteristic

sour taste.

Places

Sibiu - European capital of culture 2007

Known in German as Hermannstadt, Sibiu has always been the centre of Romania's German minority since medieval times. Even today, it contains Romania's largest German community, and, due to initiatives by the local government, the Germanic feel of the area has been maintained. Sibiu is known as a city of art and culture. There you can visit numerous cultural monuments, a diversity of museums, and famous artistic and cultural events. This attracting atmosphere has been created for residents and visitors who have the opportunity to experience cultural life in this Transylvanian city.

Bran Castle, situated between the Bucegi

and Piatra Craiului Mountains, 30 km far from

Brasov, is the only touristic point that attracts

hundreds of thousands of tourists because of a

legend: Count Dracula’s Legend. Its narrow

corridors constitute a mysterious labyrinth of

ghostly nooks and secret chambers easy to hide

a "vampire" but of course there is no proof and

Vlad Tepes lived only for a short time in the

castle and only as a guest. What is really true is

that Bran Castle conjures up the perfect Gothic

fairy-tale image of a Transylvanian castle.

Places

The Danube Is the only river on Earth that passes through 10 countries (Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine) and four capitals (Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Belgrade), being the only delta in the world that is declared a Biosphere Reserve. The Danube Delta has the third largest biodiversity in the world. Here you can find pelicans, duks, different fishes, lilies etc.

Targu Jiu -> Sculptor Constantin Brancusi

The Table of Silence, The Kiss Gate and the

Endless Column – these are the three sculptural

components from Targu-Jiu, made by Constantin

Brancusi, which constitutes an homage to the

hero soldiers fallen during the First World War.

The initiative of achieving this ensemble

belonged to Aretia Tatarascu, in 1937.

Lifestyle

If we were to talk about the

Romanian lifestyle we would have to take

into account the difference between rural

customs and the ones representative for

towns and cities. In fact, traditions have

been mainly kept vivid in villages.

Technology has taken over and people

have sometimes forgotten their roots.

Living in the city brings about a

new perspective on enjoying and

regarding the old traditions. They

have not lost their meaning but

changed their appearance. Towns

are alive not only in the holiday

period but also during the rest of the

year. Week-ends are the times when

people escape from every-day duties

and manage to have fun, whatever

their social status.

Clubs are always full of young

people, who also take part in special

events, because the Romanians are

very warm and lively people. Most

of us leave the towns for a picnic or

a barbeque on Saturdays and

Sundays.This is a general

characteristic of our Latin country

and its lifestyle.

1. Ioan Cantacuzino has discovered the cure (which had been relevant) in

the treatment of cholera, epidemic typhus, tuberculosis, and scarlet fever?

2. Lazăr Edeleanu was the first chemist to synthesize

amphetamine.

3. The Romanian doctor Nicolae Paulescu discovered the insulin and he was

the first to published the result of his reaserch in France.The two canadians

Banting and Best admited they knew about Paulescu's discovery.

4.Emil Racoviţa he is the founder of biospeleology.

5.Aurel Vlaicu built the first arrow-shaped airplane.

6. Henri Coanda was a Romanian inventor, a pioneer inaerodynamics and the builder of world’s first jet plane. He discovered and gave his name to the Coanda effect.

7. Stefan Odobleja is the „father”of cybernetics.

8. Romania's Danube Delta is a World Heritage site and is the second

largest delta in the whole of Europe.

9. Gheorghe Marinescu, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine in

Bucharest, was the first person to see living nervous cells with a

microscope

10. Irish author Bram Stoker based his horror novel ‘Dracula’ on the

fifteenth century Wallachian Prince, Vlad Dracul of Romania.

11. Nadia Comaneci - the first gymnast in history of this sport who

obtained a perfect 10.00 in 1976 in Montreal at the Ollympic Games.

The Computer was not prepared for such experience, so all world

saw "1.00" on the screen!

12. The fountain pen was invented by the Romanian Petrache Poenaru -

he was student in Paris...

13. The Danube, which is the longest international river in Europe,

empties into the Black Sea at the Romanian coast.

14 .Bucharest's Palace of the People is the world's largest and most

expensive civil administration building in the world, according to the

World Records Academy.

15. Mircea Eliade, 79, a world authority on the history of religions who

helped to establish the discipline in the United States as a professor at

the University of Chicago

16. The only “Happy Graveyard” in the world is „Cimitirul Vesel”. It may sound strange, but this place really exists. It is placed in the village of Sapanta, Maramures County, România. The graves have a picture representing the dead person in a very important moment or a very usual moment of their life. On the grave there are carved the lasts words the dead wanted his friends wanted to know and usualy these lasts words have a sense of humor.

JADE Romania's team is

waiting for you in

Bucharest to find out more

about Romania!

31st March-3rd April

First National Meeting