Time in Romania - a whole new concept!

There are so many ways of describing time in Romania. The most simple is to say we are two hours ahead of British time. This is great as then I can do a full days work, go home and still catch the Brits mid-afternoon. Of course the side effect is I can’t call for a chat in the morning without causing them to get out of bed!

If you come here, you will discover a whole new concept of time. Do you recall times when your mother or your partner used those magic words 'maybe later' - which translates into 'not on your nelly' or simply a polite way of saying no? These terms, I am convinced, have their deep dark roots in Romania.

When a party or meal starts at 7.30, the Brits will be there, ready for a pre-meal beer at 7.15. The Romanians on the other hand see this as the time they should really be thinking of getting into a taxi - from wherever else they happen to be in the city.

If you are building a house in Romania, the timeframes make the British builder look the model of efficiency rather than a man who needs long tea breaks. Here, every weather condition is used as a perfect excuse. Rain and damp will warp the most resilient of wood, (ruling out Spring and Autumn) and it must not be cold (goodbye working in Winter), while it is impossible to work in the Romanian heat - not to mention the secret deadly radiation rays which oddly only target Romanian skin.

When I first came here, I was impressed at the proposed timeframe for knocking down a little shack and reusing the bricks for a bigger, better designed home for two families. After saving up the tiny amount needed, and waited with bated breath. 7 years on, every cold winter sees more fabulous house designs roll out. Every summer sees reasons why this is not the time to do it. You get use to it - perhaps little Victor will build my dream house...

The killer Romanian phrase is 'Septamaine vitoire' which should mean 'next week' but is up there with the British 'maybe'. It means everyone agrees something should get done - but not now. I use to believe it was going to be the following week - it took a few intervening months and a miserable father-in-law to stop asking!

If you come to visit, your time in Romania will feel like endlessly long sunny days, yet your day to fly out will come around so quickly that you will wonder where your 2 weeks really went.

The final odd belief, started by Romanian scientists, was time in Romania, like everywhere has suddenly increased. This is why you get less done in each day - each day is in fact much shorter than it was in our childhood days. My pointing out that for this to be true everything from distant stars moving across the sky to super accurate atomic clocks would all need to speed up at exactly the same rate, despite the vast differences in time (light from stars we see our thousands to millions of years old) and space. Romanians hate such logic; time is so short here as everyone has to work ever harder to stay in one place.

What are your experiences of time in Romania? Please don't let me be the only Englishman to be trapped in this unique comprehension of time! Tell me more about your experiences of Romanians trying to keep to a time frame.

How do you measure time in Romania?

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