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The highway of ... tomorrow in Romania. Neverending story

or lack of. Because the term highway is a SciFi term in Romania’s authorities dictionary or fact books.

Most of the Western Civilisations prefer to build up highways for speeding up the expedition of goods from one place to another, but also to cut the traveling time by personal car between cities. In Romania, 20 years after the fall of the pro-soviet regim we have around 200km of highway, all starting from Bucharest  and ending up on the leisure points for the capital of Romania citizens: Constanta – at the black sea, or Brasov (mostly still underconstruction after 7 years) and the rest of the winter ski resorts in Carpathians Mountains.

While most of the border countries – like Bulgaria, Serbia or Hungary – prefer to build up between 70-200km of highway / year we still struggle with our 22 million people to get the country highway kilometers to 200. In total. As road infrastructure of Romania, it’s a known fact that the EU countries started building the better roads towards West; Austria did the best job on getting closer to Swizerland, Hungary to Germany, Czech Republic and Austria and even Bulgary did a great job in building highways and national roads towards West – Serbia.

The government of Romania doesn’t give a penny on others did right or wrong. They have their own way: the corruption way! This is why the most important city in the civilized Romania, Timisoara is not having right now an road to get the traffic that comes from Arad to Lugoj (North-West) out of the city and this is why it takes about 10-11 hours to get from Timisoara to Bucharest, which is 550km away; Budapest (200 km ~ 2.2 hrs drive), Belgrade (120 km ~ 1.5 hrs drive) and Wien (900km ~ 6 hrs drive) are cities that you can get easier and faster from Timisoara if you travel by car.

Basically, the structure of the roads in Romania is on ground zero, with only 200 km (most of them still underconstruction, on repair or with speed limitation) for a country that has 300.000 square km and 22.000.000 people living in it. And it’s a member of EU since 01.07.

If you think you can come to Romania and use the car (perhaps your car?) to move from one place to another, think again. Or get an helicopter rented. Or just skip coming, you’ll get your nerves drained on the road.

If you want to build up a highway here, this is the place to do it: the price that you can ask for the roads are 300-1.500% higher than you would ask in Croatia (think about the mountains, tunnels, bridges that you will have to build in Croatia) or EU. We have a range between 5 and 60 milion euros / km of build highway in the plain, while in a mountain country (Croatia, Slovenia) you would have to build each km with only 3.5 millions euro.

Btw, the introduction sequence of Borat movie is filmed in Romania. Do you remember that wonderful blue car? that’s the national Dacia vehicle – still in use on the country roads, build and used in Romania by people who doesn’t have the money to upgrade to Renault’s Logan version.

… but, the flipside of the story is that in Romania you’ll find the newest Mercedes, Lamborghini or Ferrari cars before they hit the autostores in rest of the world. And that’s another story

social bucharest, highway, roads, Romania, status of romania transportation, timisoara

Over the last weekend I’ve considered to be a good time to spend some time knowing my city; oh no, that was a total mistake. Except some customization made on a general level, and the pubs in the Pta Unirii – the Timisoara former city square – nothing is changed in the past 3-4 years. Nothing new worth mentioning, nothing new worth speaking about. I can recall most the the places being the same as 20 or 25 years ago, as if the years just made scars on the buildings walls but forget to improve them. Same pipes, same “under construction” with no constuction sites, maybe the same construction workers on the city streets and roads trying to fake the working process over a pet of beer (I especially love the working crews with 1 worker and 5 people watching him doing the jobs, you can almost say the worker is the medic and his bosses – I guess they where on higher ranks in the construction company since they where not working, just watching – as I said you can almost compare them with an student crowd watching the doctor doing the daily round).

One noticeable fact over “my promenade” was the attitude of the sales persons: most of them where more friendly, almost approaching to the European attitude of a vendor/tab person. I’ve even seen ice-cream people selling their products with a smile on the face, which is an totally unseen attitudine in the Romania, happiness and smiles from the person that sells you something can be seen starting from the Romania / Hungary border, heading vest.

Iulius Mall: ofc, I’m there almost every 2 days but now I spend more time watching over people’s faces; and my Romania’s impression was confirmed again: sad or grumpy selling people, with eagle eye, watching you all the time and worring that you might steal from them. WTF’s wrong !!!!

Personal, social timisoara, walking

Friday was the chores day. One of the stops: RETIM – the Timisoara garbage collecting and recycling company. Over the past months, ReTim was trying to improve their image with lots of new programs, ads and improved garbage collection. Their staff has been submitted to qualifications and send to specialization courses for working with clients and software programs. In a word RETIM is trying to improve the image by using the means available on the market; ofc they are doing 10% of the job in marketing, but that’s call for willing in Romania. So, here’s the story:

- After waiting for more than 14 days for the monthly invoice, the person that collects the money from the clients arrived at my house with the wrong invoice

- One visit two days later at their invoice center; it’s morning, 9:30 AM, much too morning for my taste. I got to the office, and took the seat in front of a sales manager; she was talking to the telephone, of course to a friend or relative, about some trivial stuff. As I seat down, she noded at me, but she didn’t rush her call to end. Noooooo. …. telling to her friend what she watched on tv last night and her impression of someone she and the phone interlocutor knew WAS FAR MORE IMPORTANT THEN ME, THE CLIENT WHO JUST ARRIVED. After a few polite attempts to capture her attention, she FINALLY said “talk to you later” in the phone and hung up; this was 7 minutes after I was arriving and took the seat in front of her. 445 seconds counted. RIGHT! 445 seconds later! So I wasn’t important, I’m just garbage people (and BTW, what’s the trend of speaching from the company phone hours with your friends? RETIM, any idea why your phone bills are so high ? ). Finally, I started explaining that they made a wrong invoice, doubling over the night the number of people from the invoice, and the amount they perceived, and that I wanted to be billed by the number of persons from the contract signed 2 months earlier; she told me to make an request asking them to bill me after the contract. WTF did I signed the contract ? Again, for RETIM policy, CLIENTS = GARBAGE = AREA OF ACTIVITY AND EXPERTISE. The good news was that they promised the send the new invoice in two days. There’s no why in discussing openely with the lady in front of me, so I made the request to be billed according to my contract not to some fantasy some worker had over night, and leaved the building with the promise that 2 days later I will have the new invoice.

- 6 days later, oh you already guessed ? no invoice. So I called today, monday at their 0256 499 490 phone number. BIIIIG MISTAKE. The first men that answered was the centralist; with a tone raised he asked me what I want; no hellos, no how may I assist you; just a shouted what do u want. Again the garbage stuff. I started politely to tell him the story of the invoice, and he decided to transfer me to the payments dept. With an irritation on he’s voice (did I interrupted him from a BJ’s or something ? ) he made the forwarding. Again a lady, irritated and shouting at me; I haven’t said a word yet, but I was already yelled at. WTF! Again, I started to explain the invoice story, but the lady, with a more aggresive and much more irritation in voice than the previous men,  decided to interrupt me 3 times, just without reason. As if I was GARBAGE, not client.., After finishing the story, the lady shouted at me: what do you want from me, this is an invoice problem, why did you get here. Ofc, I asked for the invoice phone interior number, and also for the invoice value, which she could tell me. Again, no presentation, no hello, no how may I help. WTF is wrong with the people there? and WTF do you have against your clients RETIM Timisoara? Why do you treat us so bad ? Having the monopol over the garbage market doesn’t give you the right to have grumpy employees that shout just when they answer the call, and ignore you when you seat in the clients chair.

Conclusion: I know I used and abused of this word in the article, but WTF is wrong ? Is anyone responsable for this situation (I’m already guessing not, but what the heck)? Long live and prosper Timisoara and the garbage monopol! I love you RETIM, keep it up the same way, we, your clients, just LOVE to be treated as garbage!

Personal, social Client Treat, Garbage, RETIM, timisoara