Initially, I wrote this ranty article back in 2016, never thinking that, eight years later, things would be even worse.
Since I’ve been ranting a bit lately anyway, I decided to do it again here and show you why Romania sometimes still seems to be stuck in the Middle Ages or at least a few centuries behind.
So, here we are. Romania, European Union, 21st century. Winter is just around the corner, with temperatures like this in the screenshot I took this morning:
In my beloved city of Drobeta Turnu Severin, the authorities only decided to offer centralized heating to the many people still using it starting November 15th (while other cities had it since October or early November).
The problem? Not everybody receives it.
In our building, we have one person with a huge debt toward the heating bill – close to €1,000. The amount has been piling up since last year, and now the heating company has decided not to supply heat to the entire building because of this debt.
I found out after visiting the administrator of our building. He shrugged, saying he’s surprised they’re doing this when elections are coming up later this year. It’s too late to try taking any measures against the person with the big debt – winter will be over before anything can be resolved.
It’s not like he or anyone else would be willing to do anything. This is how things work here sometimes. And the ugliest part, the thing that enrages you the most, is that, as always, innocents are caught in the crossfire.
There are 15 apartments in this building – each one forced to find alternative ways to heat their home because of one person in debt.
Why hasn’t the company taken any measures since last winter when the debt was building up? Why don’t they install switches for each apartment instead of cutting off an entire building?
Because this is Romania!
Winter heating is still handled by the state and local authorities in many cities and towns throughout Romania, and poor management over the years has led to these disasters.
Right now, there are other places in Romania where central city heating is not working, leaving homes (as well as schools and hospitals) literally in the cold. And the problems seem to worsen every year, with more cities barely managing to get past winter with their heaters running.
There are places in Romania where you’re freezing inside as well as outside because the authorities no longer have the funds to provide central heating to the population. I know this sounds like something that could never happen in a country that’s part of the European Union, but it does happen in Romania.
In the city where I live, for example, the state-owned facility that provided hot water and heating during the winter went bankrupt and was shut down more than a decade ago (after years of barely managing to survive).
A new company was formed to handle the situation, using the same equipment and in the same location. We Romanians have a saying for this: “Aceeași Mărie cu altă pălărie” (meaning “Same woman, different hat”).
And it indeed is the same thing, because each year this company has been in financial trouble, only getting by with help from the government.
During this time, they took no real action to collect their owed money, and each year they started activating the heating system later (and turning it off when temperatures were still extremely low outside).
But, with the country in economic turmoil (despite officials not admitting it because elections are coming), the situation has reached a breaking point, and they can no longer offer charity or keep things running in the comatose state they’ve been in for years.
The heating problem in Romania is widespread
Earlier this month, because the authorities in Drobeta Turnu Severin hadn’t started the central heating facility and some schools and kindergartens had inhumane temperatures inside, people stopped sending their children to school/kindergarten.
Fortunately, at the time of writing, this problem is solved – but the fact that it happened at all is enraging.
Various other cities face all sorts of problems – from constant failures in their heating systems that leave residents without heating for days, to a lack of fuel. Even large cities like Bucharest, Constanta, or Craiova (with one of the most beautiful Christmas markets in Europe) have this kind of problem. The same goes for smaller cities.
In all these places, part of the population (those depending on the city to provide heating) is freezing inside their homes, and in many cases, this has been happening for years now.
This is a disease that affects the entire country. As I mentioned earlier, due to very poor management, most of the state-owned companies that should keep homes warm are in financial trouble.
In other words, no place is safe during the winter if the building depends on the city or state-owned companies for heating.
Things are slowly getting better, with more and more areas in the country being covered by individual, natural gas-powered heating systems for each apartment. Even in front of our building, we have the magical natural gas pipe installed (since late September).
Eventually – maybe even this winter, our administrator said – we’ll no longer depend on the local authorities for heating and for our well-being.
But until then, we’re spending more than we should on electric heating, which will also lead to the power grid being overworked, and outages will follow, especially when temperatures drop even more.
Comfort has become something we’re not getting these days. We’re wearing layers of clothes, drinking plenty of tea, and sleeping while hugging hot water bottles. It’s depressing and enraging. But it is the way things are over here. Sometimes.
What to Do to Avoid Freezing if You Come to Romania
The authorities in all cities are aware of the problem, and at least some are trying to find a solution. In some places, where the authorities actually care, things are much better. Even in Drobeta, things could have been worse – but things can always be worse.
Either way, if you decide to move to Romania or visit during the winter, it would be best to make sure that you will have no trouble heating your room.
While a large number of houses and apartments rely on centralized heating systems, many do not. And fortunately, these numbers are increasing each year.
If you do visit during the winter, make sure to check how heating is managed. If it’s provided by local authorities, know that it’s a gamble: things might work flawlessly, but there’s also a chance of being left without heat for a few days (or more if you’re extremely unlucky).
So, yes, you might freeze in Romania if you happen to visit during the winter. Hotels are usually not affected by this problem, though – so this is more of a concern for those planning long-term stays. If that’s the case, make sure to add this to your checklist; otherwise, you might experience some medieval times you aren’t prepared for!
Personal note: It was horrible to write this article. Not because my fingers were frozen on the keyboard, but because I had so much trouble finding the term for “city central heating” – Google and dictionaries weren’t helpful so it might sound awful and nothing but a poor translation.
Well, that’s what you get when a non-native English speaker has to talk about more technical stuff, but hopefully, you understand what I’m talking about. Rant over.
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Hi Calin:
A very “cool” article. Pretty scary, though. So, do you have electric heaters in every room? Don’t most of the older homes have fireplaces–not that that’s the best way to stay warm.
Your article is very well written without a hint of mistranslation!
I don’t like cold, so I hope fixes are made before I go to roost in Romania.;-) I guess the newer apartments don’t have the heating issues–as long as they aren’t hooked up to city systems.
Crumbling infrastructure is not endemic to Romania, for sure. The USA’s is also crumbling. (Gee maybe if we weren’t involved in so many conflicts which we have NO business in we’d have the $ to upgrade.) I hope the people in charge will fix the heating situation–there’s no excuse for children to be freezing in schools.
I hope you will keep us apprised of your situation. It will be interesting to see what the costs will be for you this winter. I hope you will mange okay!
Best!
~Teil
Houses indeed have fireplaces and most are still using them. Actually, most homes are not even connected to the city systems. The problem is with the apartments, as they have no other options than city heating at the moment. I read somewhere that in our city 33,000 apartments are affected.
Yes, we’re using electrical heaters in every room. We have two heaters that we move around: they don’t run 24/7, for now just several hours per day is enough to keep the temperatures over 20 degrees, up to ~22 which is decent for us.
The local authorities in our city announced that if nothing goes wrong, schools and hospitals will get heated on November 1st, while apartments will defrost between November 5-7. At least when it comes to our city, they were always able to find a solution eventually.
Very interesting article. Thank-you.
That is an unpleasant situation, I can imagine. Romania is like much of Eastern Europe where excess heat generated in factories or central heating plants has been piped for kilometers in big insulated conduits/pipes to the far corners of a city where it is needed. Usually above ground, these pipes are hideous and sometimes have to go up in the air to bridge over a street or driveway entrance. Add to that the very poor insulation of the apartment blocks, and you have some major energy waste. At the risk of getting off the subject, there is an undeclared war going on in Ukraine, financed and directed by Russia. Over 11,000 Ukrainians have already been killed and 100s of thousands have been displaced. Ukraine has precisely the same thermal conduit system and the not insulated apartment blocks. The saddest irony is that while much of their heat is going poof into the air, Ukraine has to buy all their natural gas for their heat from RUSSIA! Back to Romania, I have been in Romanian schools where the children all wore their winter coats and winter caps in class. I always thought Romania was fortunate in having significant natural gas reserves. Somehow this gas doesn’t make it very far. Wood is also a popular heat source but more so in small towns. This is very unhealthy for the users and leaves a blue cloud hanging over the whole town. Here in northern Japan where it gets pretty cold, everyone uses kerosene heaters. The kerosene is delivered by tank trucks and pumped by the drivers into your external(!) kerosene tank. We get the bill in the mail, it’s all on the honor system. All we have to do to get heat is press the “on” button. Would this work in Romania? Yes, I know, rhetorical question…
I love the system in Japan. I won’t try to answer your rhetorical question, though 🙂
Before moving to our apartment, I lived in a house that was heated with wood and it was horrible. Not only that you have no control over the temperature in the room (as the stoves have no thermostat), but it’s also a ton of work involved: splice the wood, carry it around, start the fire every day. It was horrible and time consuming. One of the wood stoves was poorly built and sometimes the smoke would enter the room. We had to keep the windows open every time we started the fire (every morning), no matter how cold it was outside because you couldn’t breathe inside. So there was a ton of work involved, a lot of debris accumulated and temperatures would get out of control (up to 30 degrees and above) only to drop drastically over the night. Not a good experience either, but at least there was heating 🙂
Shocking reality to hear about how children struggle in a cold school. No different then taking classes outside. How can they concentrate and learn in that? Only to go home and face the same. No hot water for bathing. It is indeed a trip to the past without a simple solution. Here in the united states i do not recall any central heating agencies like you describe here I believe all schools and apartments have independent heating situations and if they fail they just address that individual situation. Would never effect a whole city. We are constructing our house and looking to layer heating options to help handle the crazy things that can happen like losing electricity or gas in the winter we have fireplace too. Sure hope you have a mild winter.
Thanks, Otto! Indeed, it’s best to be prepared when building your house, you never know what the future holds.
This is horrible to hear. I was shocked a few weeks ago reading about some schools in the U,S and how they had no funding..and the schools were literally falling apart with cables and no heating system. Even the house we’re in now has no central heating system. We have portable heaters that we carry from room to room and it gets really cold in the winter, colder inside than outside. Malaga flats also don’t have heating and paper thin walls. Nothing compared to Romania though since the cold is never as bad. I hate how the corrupt governments make the people suffer :-(. I hope they do something to fix it really soon, probably not for this winter, but maybe soon. It is always the people that can least afford it that suffer the most unfortunately.
We’re carrying around heaters from room to room and I know how unpleasant that is… but it’s surely better there. I know I was checking out the temperatures in Europe, Spain included, and the Malaga area is indeed way warmer than what we have here now. It’s tough and it will only get worse if they can’t find a solution.
My wife and I are planning to semi-retire to Sibiu next year. It seems that having lived in southwest China for the past nine years will be good preparation for living in Romania in winter, as there is no central heating here whatsoever and never has been. The temperature gets low enough in winter for the occasional snowfall, but everyone, including schoolchildren, just keeps on their thermal underwear, many layers, and coats and hats whenever they’re not tucked up in bed at night. So the Chinese have taught us that you can adapt to winter without central heating. Not easy at first, but we have gotten used to it over time. And by the way, I teach English for a living, and you have no reason to apologize for your English whatsoever; quite the opposite! And thanks for this wonderful website. It’s a real gem!
Thanks for the compliments, Peter! Sibiu should be an improvement compared to China – there should be no problems with heating in the city. But since it’s Romania and anything could go wrong at any moment, it’s good to have the experience and be able to face the cold if needed. I hope you will have a great time in Sibiu!
It was fun to read all the comments from 2016. But it is sad to hear that the heating situation hasn’t improved. Maybe your apartment will get hooked up to that gas pipeline in front of the building and your troubles will be over. The price of kerosene has been going up here in Japan. My mother-in-law is on a pension which doesn’t seem to go up as fast, so I contribute some money to her heating bill. The kerosene heating stoves seem to do a good job but only heat the room they are in and maybe a few others on the same floor if the doors are open. The bathroom has a separate electric heater. This house is getting older and older. I went around the outside of the house last autumn and caulked all the gaps around the windows. I think it did some good.
Maybe I should’ve written this article sooner. In the evening, after publishing it, the administrator told us that he had paid some of the debt and that we might get hooked back to the local heating today or tomorrow.
It seems that the kerosene heating is similar to any electrical heating – it only heats up one room and as soon as you stop it, it gets cold again. It’s a good eye-opener and makes things easier to handle when you realize that, unlike your initial beliefs, the grass is not always greener in other places either 🙂
Calin, I thought I read an article here earlier this year that showed you fixing up a house you owned in your area? Why are you living in an apartment?
Indeed, that’s our village house. I did consider moving us there for the winter, but there are even more problems there than here. While the house does have a wood burning stove that could heat some of the rooms, it won’t heat all of them (and has other issues that haven’t been fixed yet). Plus, it’s 40 minutes away from the city (so getting our son to/back from school would take too long), the roads are bad/difficult during the winter, and it has its fair share of other problems with electricity and water stopping for up to a couple of days at a time.
I planned to solve at least some of these problems, but then a storm came and destroyed our roof and other parts of the yard, so we had to put money in those areas.