[madaxe_again]

Oh, I don't have a dim view of Romania though, I loved my time there, I fell in love with Sibiu - actually, a big chunk of what I said/think comes from a buddy from Cluj who I've known 25 years or so - and I hadn't heard about the anticorruption initiative, that's good news.

I had a knife stuck in my back at a cafe and had my camera stolen, and the police officer I found then took my passport and wanted (and got) a bribe to return it. Not a unique experience, I've been held up and hijacked variously around the planet, but it did go to reinforce the Cluj guy's "don't bother with Bucharest, you'll get mugged" anecdotes!

Oh, and driving around rural Romania on single track roads, I guess the donkey carts kinda stick out, as you get a nice long view of the back of them! Selection bias...

Anyway, cheers for the education.

[oblio]

Sorry for that :(

Romania actually has a lower crime rate than the US, so you were unlucky.

The cop part is what they're working on with the whole anti corruption initiative.

[adventured]

That would heavily depend on what type of crime you're talking about.

For example, corruption is a very serious form of crime. Romania ranks #58 (below Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Croatia, and Greece) on Transparency International's corruption index, compared to the US at #16.

With Romania having such extreme corruption, how can you be certain its crime stats are worth taking seriously? How under-reported is crime - rape, theft, violent crime etc - likely to be in a nation with corruption problems that are that bad? From other countries with even worse corruption (eg Venezuela or Brazil), what we do know is that there tends to be a direct correlation - for extremely obvious reasons - between high levels of corruption and poor crime reporting.

[oblio]

I'm not sure that the police reward system is based on crime stats over here. I.e. the police chief gets more money if he reports fewer crimes. Considering the way people in our public sector think, it's more likely that the police chief would want to report more crimes, since he can hire more people, get more resources and likely more bribes.

And my anecdotal evidence says that Romania is truly a safe country. I probably know 1000+ Romanians and I know 1 that has been robbed while being threatened with a knife and several that have had things stolen from them. This feeling of safety is one of the few things that's reported constantly by people I know, either in rural areas or in urban areas: violence is not wide spread. We even have a proverb that says: "mamaliga explodeaza greu" ("it takes a long tine for mamaliga to explode": mamaliga is a local dish, a sort of corn porridge; the meaning of the expression is that we don't get aggravated quickly; we do talk a lot, curse and threaten and whatever but we tend to not actually fight that much... maybe we're cowards :) ). Most people over here would find the US gung-ho mentality quite threatening ("don't take my guns", "stand your ground").

What does happen constantly, and what the agency I posted above tries to fight, is wide spread practice of asking for bribes for any kind of service performed by a public servant. Which has a huge negative impact on small businesses, especially.

[madaxe_again]

Interesting point you make re: small businesses - my friend runs a web development shop, and he was telling me about how they keep accounts, and "accounts", because declaring a profit is a good way to ensure a tax inspector will arrive and won't leave until you bribe him to go away.

Interestingly, this phenomenon isn't limited to Romania - a Latvian friend running a furniture company does the same thing for the same reason - for the first two years of his business he filed genuine books - the first year, they came asking for a bribe, he refused - the second year, they raided him and took all the machine tools - so now he just "makes a loss" every year and they don't bother him.

Similarly, a Lithuanian friend who used to run a telco found himself stuck in the middle of a lover's quarrel between the state telecoms regulator and another telco who had paid a bribe to win a tender, which he then bid for and made things awkward.

Corruption is no joke - I think many underestimate the chilling effect it has on everything from civil liberties to tourism to business to tax revenue collection - if your tax collectors are corrupt, you are well and truly on the road to hell.

Re: Romania feeling safe, you're right - which is in no small part why my experience in Bucharest was such a shock - it was at total odds with the Romania I'd experienced up to that point.

[oblio]

They've started sending doctors, cops, clerks, etc. to jail for taking bribes. They're encouraging people to organize stings when asked for money. It is a struggle but things are actually changing.

You have to remember that Romania wasn't all that "clean" even before Communists came and Communism is basically "the state as a criminal organization". Old habits die hard.