The 'Interesting Facts About Your Country' Thread

[sapphi_snake]

- Romanian is a romance language (like French, Italian, Spanish etc.), and it's actually one of the only 4 such languages in Eastern Europe (and the only one that has a significant number of native speakers);

- Romania was the only Eastern European country that had a bloody revolution in order to take down the communist regime;

- Nicolae Ceauşescu (the former communist dictator) only graduated primary school (he never made it past that);

- Approximately 10% of Romania's population lives in the country's capital, Bucharest;

- Romania is one of the most religious states in Europe (and the most religious former communist state), being surpassed only bu Turkey (the Vatican doesn't count, as it's not really a country) - over 90% of the population is religious;

- Almost half of Romanians (about 45-48%) believe that humans and dinosaurs coexisted;

- This year less than 45% of Romanian high school graduates managed to pass the Baccalaureate exam (last year over 80% managed to pass), the main reason being that survailance cameras were set up in the exam rooms, and students couldn't cheat (fun fact: at the high school which had the highest percentages of students that passed, there either were no survailence camers, or these camers "malfunctioned");

- The most watched TV station here in Romania has it's headquarters in a 1 room appartment, and it's ran by a jerk who spread misinformation, makes up facts, and instills panic in the population (this station has also been implicated in a scandal regarding paedophilia recently);

- Americans may have been silly with the whole War of the Worlds hysteria, but just a couple of days ago a hysteria regarding "organ snatchers" who kidnapp children that started from a Facebook message led to some people attacking ambulances with stones (!);

- Vlad Tepes, who served as inspiration for Dracula, is actually considered a national hero over here;

- Romanians will eat almost anything with bread (excluding sweets).