Week One in Galati

One week down, nine more to go. I have successfully survived my first full week in Romania. With this already being my third post, I’ve been quite busy and have learned a lot.

This past weekend in Galati has been just as busy and as eventful as mentioned in my previous post. The Young Entrepreneurs Association held its conference here at various locations all over town. SMART is very involved with this organization, not only because the management of SMART is a member, but the subject of entrepreneurship itself is a public policy issue that SMART will be addressing this summer. I had great interest in the conference besides being able to go to fabulous places and see great things because advancing entrepreneurship in Romania is my topic for my first policy recommendation. Having the opportunity to learn more about the difficulties of starting a business in Romania was exactly what I needed to learn; however, the entire conference was in Romanian and it made it more challenging for me to fully grasp the concepts even though I had some translation. Regardless of language barrier, I feel I was still able to understand the desire for more entrepreneurship in Romania through the passion behind the speeches at the conference, and a sense of the central problems a new business owner faces.

The conference room at the botanical gardens

SMART Co-workers- Cosmin, Simi, Madalina, Dariya, Vale, and myself.

The first event I attended was at the botanical gardens, which house the gardens, of course, the aquarium, a natural history museum, and a lecture hall. This meeting was very special because the Romanian Minister of Small and Medium Businesses was the keynote speaker, and it gave me the most insight into the current business policies in Romania. During the breaks, I was able to go down stairs to the aquarium and upstairs to the roof top for food and drinks. Aquariums are a favorite of mine in the U.S., so I was very excited to see Galati’s exhibit. The aquarium was on the smaller side, but I was still able to see some interesting fish that I haven’t seen before. On the rooftop, we had a beautiful view of the garden grounds, the city, and the Danube. The roof was one of my favorite places because there was so much to look at. Below are the pictures from Friday:

Romanian Minister of Small and Medium Business.

Entrance to the botanical gardens

The Aquarium

View from the roof top

View of the Danube from the roof

The Japanese inspired garden

The North American section of the gardens. There wasn't a lot of blooms right now, but I'm told that there will be more in about a month.

Part of the rose garden in the North American section

The Romanian section of the garden

Romanian gardens

Rain on Friday night didn’t allow me to go to the local soccer game, but I went to a concert and fashion show the Association was throwing instead. The performer was a famous singer in Romania; to prove this, if one were to walk down the street in Galati, you would see there are pictures of him on posters everywhere. He sang with a back-up choir and orchestra. He was very good, and again I wish I spoke Romanian to get the full effect of his performance. After the concert, we went to this Latino place to go dancing. I had such a blast there because people were salsa dancing and I, being such a huge fan of dancing, hence my love of Zumba, was excited to learn. Salsa dancing is much harder than it looks, but I had so much fun attempting to learn. I was very impressed at the other people in the place; everyone seemed to know how to dance, everyone except me (I think it’s turning into a trend… First Zumba… now here!). I feel like I improved a bit, but will definitely need some more practice.

The fashion show

Front row seats for the concert.

Saturday included a relaxing river cruise on the Danube to end the conference. We had great weather and a great time. It was very interesting to see the different parts of Galati: the industrial, residential, and nature parts along the Danube.

On Sunday, Radu took Jordan and me to the country side to visit a monastery and a cow farm that is owned by a friend of his. The drive was beautiful! Jordan and I took lots of pictures and really enjoyed seeing the more rural side of Romania.

To wrap up my first week, I did a lot of things in Galati to get an understanding of the culture here as well as an understanding of what my work life will look like here. Based of this first week, I'm very excited to see what comes next for me in my internship.

 Below I’ve posted pics of the scenic trip and of some of the different things we saw while in a small village and monastery. 

The front of the Monastery. This particular one was an all women or nun monastery.

Front of the Monastery Chapel

Monastery couryard

Inside of the Monastery Chapel

Monastery vineyard

Monastery cemetery

View of Chapel in the Monastery

A Gypsy house in the country side. They build huge houses to show how much wealth they have. Also, I'm told they rebuild them frequently just to show they have money to constantly rebuild their massive houses.

The cherry tree where we got our afternoon snack.

View of the country side

Our friend's cows on his cow farm.

Segrit River

Our friend named the white calf after me because I'm white haha.

The new borns.

Ostriches on our friend's farm