salut and welcome to romaniac my name is forza and uh you've seen the title
you know what we're here for let's not beat around the bush quite clearly i am handsome
quite clearly as you can see i am black and in this video i'll be going into
the details of how it is for me living here in romania as a black person now i'm not the most
serious person so this is a little bit weird for me this is a little bit on uncharted territory
so bear with me as i try to rackle my brain and talk about my experiences um in a more serious
way on this channel now i just want to preface that some of the things i'm going to be saying
are my own personal experiences not everything that i say is fact and please please please keep
that in mind my experiences may be different to other people's experiences and that is of course
because of our changes and personalities because of our changes in gender changes in the way that
we look as well these all play a huge role into how we're viewed and how our experiences differ
from one another much like color our experiences range in shades and that leads us nicely on
to the first topic which is that in romania black is black now you're probably asking uh
what's this all about black is black in romania of course black is black in in england black is
black in africa black means black yes but let me just explain and the best way for me to explain
is to give you a bit of backstory about myself and where i'm coming from now i am 22 years old i was
born and raised in london until the age of 18 and then i moved here and now i've been here for on
and off around four years because of the covered however my parents they're born in cameroon which
is a country in central africa and they left their country to come to london when they were
around the same age as i am both our experiences and the way that we grew up and our cultures are
very very different even though we're both still black and now the experience the culture and the
way in which somebody from america an american black person lives is very different to the
way that i live and also very different to the way that my parents experience life coming from
africa that is also very different to the way that somebody may be from the caribbean lives there
are so many different type of black people around the world and our experiences our cultures differ
greatly not just in africa in africa in itself as well the culture of somebody from cameroon would
differ very much from the culture of somebody from nigeria and they're just neighboring countries
and that's just to show how in my head black isn't just black but over here in romania somehow
all these cultures are just a little bit blended together i totally understand where that mindset
comes from romania is one of the last countries to come out of communism and they were just
recently in the past 30 40 years really opened up the country to different foreigners not just
black people they don't know as much about your culture and the way it differs from other people's
culture as maybe you do so for that reason one of the things that i've realized when coming here
in romania is that sometimes they don't know the differences culturally between maybe me
uh somebody who grew up and was born in london and another black person who grew up and was
born in america i mean for me as clear as they were two very different people culturally or for
romanians because they don't have as much exposure to either parties they don't really see that much
of a difference between you or between somebody who's come from somewhere in west africa which
majority of black people here are from west africa you'd end up being like bunched together
which at the end of the day is not necessarily a bad thing it's not necessarily a good thing
it's just an observation that i've made and i do kind of understand it a little bit especially
with the older generation because they're not used to seeing as much black people as maybe somebody
in the older generation in the uk is used to seeing in the uk it's not strange to
walk past i don't know five or six black people on your route to the way to school but over here
it is and uh maybe they don't speak to as many black people so they just think that everybody
is just from africa or something and a lot of the older generation don't have as many black friends
so they don't tend to know the small nuances between the different type of black cultures
around the globe and that leads me swiftly on to the next topic of the fact that the older people
in romania do tend to stare a little bit more at you because you are black now everyone watching
this video you all know that there aren't as many black people in romania as there are romanians
or white people or however you want to say so of course you are going to get a couple more stairs
and the usual white person walking down the street because you're not the normal thing that they see
if if there were so many black people here if this whole country was just filled with black people
then nobody would be looking at you you're nothing special but one thing that i can say is that
the older generation so the people 60 and above do tend to stare at you more than the younger
generation most times when i'm walking i live in bucharest so this place is populated with more
foreign people than i think any other city in the country so when i walk past people
who are my age a bit younger they tend not really to stare at me or look at me
at all however the stare is not a sinister stare of of them thinking oh what are you doing in my
country or you're inferior to me or something it's more of like um a curious stare a more
how do i say it a very like nosy inquisitive stairs as you're walking past there would be
and they don't stop honestly they even if you lock eyes with them i've tried it once i'm i was like
you know what i'm trying locking guys with this guy see whether he'll avert his eyes after he
noticed that i'm looking at him and he just didn't they just don't stop which is in a way it's it's
funny at the beginning it didn't make me sweat a little bit i was like oh am i do i look a bit
weird am i wearing something funny but it's just something that i've come to realize that the older
generation do tend to stare a little bit more than uh the normal younger people and i only have one
more point to go over but before i do that i'd like to ask everyone who's still watching to
like and subscribe as it helps our channel grow immensely if you are romanian by any chance and
you're wanting to watch and you like the video that we're doing subscribers we're going to put
loads of videos out on our experience here in romania our studies and our general travels here
if you're wanting to visit romania as well check out other videos right here if you're wishing to
study which is about another student's experience here um as a foreigner now we're going to go into
the third and the final topic probably the most important one the one that encompasses both the
first and the second points together and i think i would generalize this as not just being black in
romania but foreigners in general you do tend to have a lot of questions asked asked to you
about romania in general however when i do start engaging in conversations or people engage in
conversations with me those are the main things that people would ask they would be asking have
you tried this certain food have you tried this sun drink have you visited this certain place
how do you think of romania how do you think of the women here in romania etc etc and in a
way i would say it's a great way for you to start conversations especially if you're shy romanians
give you good conversation starters to start with them and in another way i find it quite endearing
that romanians are quite proud people they do care about their country a lot but for some people it
may be just a little bit too nosy or a little bit too much into their lives and i think some of that
pride is due to the fact that in other countries they may be seen as less than what they actually
are you know in the uk or in france or maybe in germany people view romanians a little bit
different and they have that stigma that they're not as good as other people and that's why
it's such a great thing to see when you come here when i come here that people do really want to
know how i see the country and if they if i see it as good as they do which i do now one funny story
that i do have which has to do with me being black here is that one day i was in the subway
and i was on my way home from school and there was this one guy this one older gentleman as i
mentioned before people do tend to stare and he was staring at me for some time and i just brushed
it over i didn't mind i was too busy in my texting mode however he came up to me and he said uh put
in faction more poser can we take a picture and i was um i was like uh but strange but uh
it's okay yeah let's take a picture and i thought he wanted to take a picture of me
and misunderstood so i took out my airpods and he just gave his phone
to two young teenagers i was like yeah take a picture of us
so somewhere out there on an old man's phone in bucharest is a picture of him and me just like i
don't know why he took a picture with me i don't know if he thought i was a footballer or i don't
know a celebrity or something or maybe just took a picture of me because i'm black and he doesn't
see black people as much but he was very kind and then the woman next to me who she was also old she
decided that she wanted a picture as well i don't she may have thought that i was somebody that she
somebody knew so for me it was a funny story that i told my friends afterwards and they had to laugh
and i had a laugh about it as well our experiences differ greatly based on your personality and based
on how you look at things based on how you see things and and that really how you're perceived
is not just based on who's looking at you but you also play a role into how you're perceived too
if you're somebody who is always staring at the floor or always has a grumpy face doesn't like to
smile at other people and is generally ticked off whenever somebody looks at them of course
other people are going to react negatively towards that however if you kind of adapt yourself to the
new environment that you're in you understand that you're you're a bit of the outsider in
the country you're something that's a bit far from the norm so when people do stare at you
you tend not to stare back you just carry on with your day you tend to interact you try as much as
hard as possible to learn the language you try to explore the country not just so that you can feel
more at home and feel like one of them because unfortunately to say you're never really going to
feel remaining i'm never going to be romanian i'm never going to feel like i'm really somebody from
here however the more i try to immerse myself with the romanian culture and try to understand more
of the history of romanian and understand the country and the people it themselves
i think the better the romanians are going to understand me and i think that's that's
just not just for black people i think that's for foreigners in general wherever you are try as hard
as you can to be the best version of yourself as possible and if that means that you're gonna have
to smile a bit more than you're used to coming from london or coming from germany or coming from
france wherever you're coming from and i don't mean that you have to change your personality
but you just have to understand that things work differently in other countries yes you're going
to get more stairs uh in romania if you're black or if you're indian or if you're just not romanian
then people who are romanian of course because there aren't as many non-romanians here in romania
than non-english people in england there are many small small things that you can do to help
change the perception people may have on your race or on your skin color to round it off i'm
very comfortable here if i didn't i wouldn't be here it's not as if romaine is the only
option that i had romania was my first choice in terms of coming somewhere to study it's my first
choice for many reasons and it's it's the country that i'm staying in i'm i've been here for four
four-ish years on and off due to the covert and i'll be here for another minimum
two years on and off this video isn't to convince you to come visit romania but if that doesn't
reassure you that as a black person or as a foreigner you you'd feel okay here in
romania you wouldn't feel terrorized or or feel less than anybody else then i don't know what
will we never had a topic this serious on this channel and hopefully i did a due diligence and
and um yeah i mean i just spoke exactly the truth and nothing but the truth from my experience here
being black um in romania now if you are interested in our travels in romania our studies
how it is to study in romania medicine in general check out our channel we have loads of videos
up already and loads of videos to come so that was me forza signing out see you next wednesday
you