You have probably heard about or seen the idyllic Romanian villages in photos over the internet and fell in love with them. It is true, in most of these villages traditions remain untouched, the air is cleaner and the grass is greener.
For those who love nature and want a home away from crowded, noisy, and polluted urban areas, a Romanian village can be a sanctuary.
But despite all these advantages, living in a Romanian village might not be the right thing for you! And I am here to tell you why you might not be able to live in one, especially if you’re not particularly into sacrificing at least some of the comforts of the modern world you likely take for granted.
If you’re a returning visitor here on Romania Experience, you probably know that I love my village house which, despite all the negatives, is like a battery that keeps me charged.
A similar experience was shared by our reader Angela from the UK, who spent a summer living in a village in Transylvania. But you have to be careful and plan wisely: our first village house was a total failure!
So today, I am focusing on the challenges. This article has everything you need to understand why foreigners – and even city-born Romanians – can sometimes struggle to adapt to rural life here.
1. A Shockingly Different Mentality
Even though, like all Romanians, people living in Romanian villages are extremely friendly and nice, especially towards foreigners, they all have an old, outdated mentality that might shock many people.
I was certainly shocked after speaking with an old man living in a village here in Romania.
When we visited, he invited me to his house to offer some fresh eggs and vegetables (they love to give you gifts, that is true!) I hesitated and mentioned I hoped he didn’t have a dog loose, as I am afraid of them.
His answer shocked me: “Oh, no, I had one, but he started to attack the chicken so I drowned it.”
He said that as if it was nothing – just your regular early Monday routine. Unfortunately for him and many other people living in villages all around the country, it is nothing.
Animals are usually viewed strictly as tools or resources, not family members. If a tool stops working or becomes a liability, it is discarded.
For example, in order to keep the dog population under control, they drown the newborn puppies, and there are a ton of other barbaric things they normally do without even considering them wrong… and I don’t even want to think about them.
One afternoon at our new village house, we heard a pig screaming – not the usual grunts, but a sound of pure terror that didn’t stop. Fearing the animal had severely injured itself, we ran to the neighbor’s fence to investigate.
What we saw was a brutal reality check. The neighbors were there, holding the animal down. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, they casually told us they were castrating it. There was no anesthesia, no veterinarian, and zero hesitation.
It was a heartbreaking moment that probably marked me for life. To them, it was just a Tuesday chore; to me, it was a barbaric act. I don’t think I will ever be able to scrub the sound of those screams from my memory.
It’s true, animal welfare laws have tightened significantly in Romania today, but enforcement in rural areas remains lax and people – especially the older ones – still do what they were taught.
This mentality extends beyond animals. It can include outdated views on gender roles, where women are often seen as inferior to men, LGBTQ-friendliness is at its lowest, and there are plenty of deep-rooted superstitions.
Changing this mentality isn’t a matter of years – it is a process that takes generations and it has started, but some time is still needed for things to be up to date.
So keep in mind that being surrounded by a worldview that clashes so violently with your own can be isolating.
2. Lack of education
A lack of education is, in my opinion, the root of all evil. And unfortunately, the education is a bit behind in Romania as a whole, and in villages in particular. The country still struggles with high rates of functional illiteracy.
People can read and write, but many lack the exposure to broader cultural or scientific concepts that you might consider basic general knowledge.
Just recently, a TV reporter asked people in a seemingly average village to name the country they lived in. Shockingly, several adults with the right to vote could not answer. Others didn’t know the current year or whether the Earth revolves around the Sun.
Sure, a special kind of people were chosen, but I think there shouldn’t be an excuse for anybody not to know the name of the country they live in…
This lack of formal education doesn’t mean they aren’t intelligent – many are brilliant agriculturalists who know more about soil, seasons, and survival than you ever will.
But this lack of education leads to the old ways of thinking and the mentality problems we’ve talked about earlier, also making them extremely unreceptive to anything new.
But the biggest problem coming from a lack of education and interest for culture is the fact that it’s very difficult to communicate with these people, even in Romanian language.
They usually find it very difficult to understand what you’re saying, to make logical connections, and to explain things properly. It can be very frustrating!
3. Nobody Speaks a Foreign Language (But Tech Helps)
The statistic that “most Romanians speak English” applies almost exclusively to cities. In a traditional village, especially among the older population, the chance of finding an English speaker is near zero.
Since most of the people living in villages here in Romania barely know how to read, it’s pretty much common sense that learning another language was not high on their priorities list!
Lately, this has changed a bit. As Angela mentioned in her guide, many villagers have worked abroad in Italy, Spain, or Germany and most of them can speak at least a bit of these languages, but not necessarily English.
Fortunately, technology is making it easier to deal with this problem. With real-time translation on smartphones, you can manage basic interactions. But for a meaningful connection, you need to learn Romanian.
4. Lack of Running Water and Sewage
Despite massive infrastructure projects like the “Anghel Saligny” program pushing utilities into rural areas over the last several years, a large number of traditional villages still lack centralized sewage and water.
In many older houses, water comes from a well in the yard. If you are unlucky, you might even have to walk to a village fountain with buckets and bottles to get water – a romantic idea for a day, a nightmare for long term living.
No running water also means that the toilet is a bit different from what you might be used with – and it’s right there at the back of the yard, an outhouse that smells exactly like you think it does, and visiting it during a freezing January night is an adventure you will not want to repeat.
Even if a house has a well, the water is probably unsafe for drinking. Locals might drink it because they have built up immunity over a lifetime, but it will likely give you a severe upset stomach.
If you have the budget, you can fix this with relative easy. You can drill a deep well, install a septic tank, and set up a modern filtration system. But if you are buying an old house on a budget, prepare for the outhouse life!
5. Heating Your Place is a Full-Time Job
If you want to keep your house above freezing in winter, get your axe ready. Most village homes still rely on terracotta wood-burning stoves for heating.
I grew up in a house heated this way, and I can tell you: it is exhausting. You have to chop wood, bring it inside, start the fire, and clean the ash every single day. It is messy, smoky, and inefficients.
Thanks to the poorly insulated house that I lived in (which is even more common in a village), we usually went to sleep when the temperature was over 30 degrees Celsius, only to wake up in the morning at 15-16 degrees. It was really horrible – don’t let anybody else tell you otherwise!
6. The Infrastructure Paradox: Great Internet, Bad Roads
Here is where Romania gets weird. You might have a dirt road outside your house that turns into a mud pit when it rains, making it impossible to drive a normal car. You might have power outages when the wind blows too hard because the cables are 50 years old.
But you will likely have fiber internet. Contrary to what you might expect in a rural area, Romania’s internet infrastructure is world-class: you can literally stream Netflix in 4K while your neighbor plows the field with a horse.
So, while the physical infrastructure (roads, sewage, gas) is often poor or non-existent, the digital infrastructure is surprisingly good. And in most villages, road work has at least begun in the past few years, which means that things will get better and better.
7. Lack of Medical Options
This is a critical factor that many people overlook until it’s too late. Village dispensaries – if they exist – are short-staffed and with basic equipment at best. In most cases, the best you can hope for is to have a doctor in the vicinity.
If you live in a village, the nearest pharmacy might be 20 kilometers away. More dangerously, if you have a medical emergency, the ambulance response time can be terrifyingly long – sometimes 45 minutes or more, depending on road conditions.
If you have a chronic condition or are retiring here, you need to factor in the distance to the nearest county hospital.
8. Lack of privacy
There are usually just a few hundred people living around you – sometimes less, sometimes a bit more. This means that everybody knows everybody, and most people there will have absolutely no respect for your potential need for privacy.
Don’t be surprised if people simply open your gate and welcome themselves inside to have a chat and see what you’re doing. In 99% of the cases, unannounced, of course.
This is how they lived their entire lives and the most you can expect is them knocking at the door (or usually just yelling your name) before entering.
But it’s common practice to just come and go as they please, whenever they feel like it. And since you’ll be “that foreigner” who moved in, they will surely be curious!
9. Alcohol and petty crime
Since there’s not too much to do in a Romanian village, people there consider drinking extremely entertaining – maybe their main hobby. They make their own wine and moonshine (Tuica or Palinca), and they have a lot of it, which has to be consumed.
It’s not uncommon for people in the villages (males and females equally) to start drinking early in the morning, although most wait until the afternoon when their work in the field is done.
This means that, influenced by alcohol, the villagers might become a bit more violent and it’s indeed the villages where most of Romania’s crimes happens, even though Romania is not a dangerous country to live in, overall.
Although it’s usually just fights between the drunken people (so technically, if you don’t drink, you should be safe), there are also a lot of petty crimes happening there, stealing probably being the top crime.
There are sometimes more violent crimes – in the end, you can’t expect a lot of compassion or kindness from a person who sees nothing wrong in drowning puppies for population control…
It was actually the same neighbor in my village that was once upset that thieves had stolen almost all his chicken – leaving him with just three and a rooster so he can repopulate (which I found kind of funny, honestly).
When I showed my worries, he told me that it’s not a real problem – he knew who stole his chicken, everybody in the village knew.
And no, he had no intention in calling the police. “They’re very poor, they don’t have anything to eat. What else could they do but steal?” my neighbor told me, leaving me speechless.
Conclusion
Living in a Romanian village is not a fairytale – it is a raw, unfiltered experience.
For some, the downsides listed above can be dealbreakers. For others, they might be just a fixable challenge (or at least some of them) or just a fair price to pay for total freedom, silence, and a connection to nature that is impossible to find in the West.
Also, there are villages and villages… usually, the ones that are very close to the cities are slowly turning into suburbs, with people simply moving there from the crowded city for more space, cleaner air, or whatnot.
This also means that these villages lose most of their traditional appeal, but also most of the cons presented above.
In other words, this means that you should do some serious research about the area you’re about to move in to and make sure you know everything about the people living there and the type of living you’d have to do before moving out. I am sure that you can still find some amazing villages to live in with none of the problems above!
Hint: Start your search in villages within a 30-minute drive of a city, as these are usually the ones a step ahead of the others.
I am a journalist and local expert who has been documenting life in Romania since 2013. Based in Constanta (after living in Bucharest and Drobeta Turnu Severin), I provide up-to-date, on-the-ground advice for expats and travelers. My articles are based on real life experiences and plenty of research – from paying Romanian bills to exploring the wild “Rawmania” countryside.
Howdy Calin:
Well, I am #1–yippee!
The villages you describe sound like the rustic ones in Appalachia in the USA in the 20th Century. I wonder if the people remain in the villages because they are satisfied with their lot in life. Sometimes the modern world can be rather too much at times.
I remember back in 1968 when I spent a summer in Denmark. My uncle tied up a newborn litter of kittens and threw them in the lake. I didn’t realize what he was doing at the time, though–I was too young. Still it sure should hit home to folks to spay or neuter their pets. (Sometimes here in the USA there are people who should be spayed and neutered, too!)
I couldn’t live without running water and toilets and showers. That is too rough for me, for sure!
I’ve seen a very lovely Romanian city on You Tube: Piata Neamt (sorry I don’t have your alphabet). Have you been there, or has Wife Romanian?
Thanks for another view of your country!
~Teil (USA)
Yay, Teil, you are first! 🙂
I don’t know if the people choose living in these villages because they are completely satisfied with it, but they don’t really have the means to get out of there. Most of them are happy to see their kids make the move to the city, so they clearly know that it’s not an ideal life there.
Regarding Piatra Neamt (often referred to as “The Pearl of Moldavia”) – I have only been there when I was little, so I don’t remember much. I know that the entire Moldavia is a great place to visit because of its monasteries, which are indeed worth seeing. I just checked the city on Wikipedia and it seems that it’s just as large as the one I am currently living in, so it could definitely be considered a good choice.
I’m looking to move out the u.s. at least for 6 months a year or more. Rommania sounds nice…concerned about water for home…I’m in construction n thought maybe I could buy a home that needs work, or build my own. How much is property there…appreciate any information… Thank you…Michael Martuscelli…
If you don’t want to live the country life, then you will have no problems with the water – tap water is drinkable too. Properties are very cheap here compared to the US and rent is even cheaper.
Hi Calin: Thanks for your reply. Who knows, maybe in time, as the older folks pass on, village life will change for the better. The younger folks may come back to improve their lot. It would be nice if all the arable land was used for agriculture. So many people in the world go hungry.
I spend a lot of time looking at the different Romanian cities on You Tube, Wikipedia, et al, just to see what is what. As much as Bucharest has to offer, I am afraid of the earthquake risk. So many people are living in “red circled” buildings in the city because of the lower rent, I guess. Also, I understand a lot of the building owners are just waiting for some of their older and damaged buildings to collapse so they can build or sell the land. For new construction, do you know if the Romanian law requires reinforced construction to minimize damage in an earthquake?
It’s the same way here in the USA. I live in an earthquake tsunami risk zone right now (coastal Washington State–Ring of Fire). Seattle, up north of me, is the fastest growing city right now, and it’s also in a very high earthquake risk area. There are laws for new construction to be reinforced, but the many older brick and masonry buildings aren’t reinforced, and hence will suffer the most damage in an earthquake. For that matter, the whole West Coast Of the USA is at risk of a really BIG ONE. (This definitely s*cks!)
My ideal Romanian city would be out of the seismic zone, scenic, free of a lot of “undesirables,” have a good mass transit system (no Dacia for me;-), a variety of shopping options, a theater or opera house, a train station, a nearby airport, a good infrastructure, a variety of apartments (not a fan of the “blocks” as in Bucharest), etc.–basically what anyone would want, eh?
Sorry to blather on;-) I hope all is well with you and your little family.
TTYL,
~Teil (USA)
Teil, I don’t know if the law requires reinforced construction, but I believe there’s nothing about it. I might be wrong, though.
The fact that you want a nearby airport and you want to be as far away from the potential seismic areas, actually narrows you down to Western Romania – the areas that I would recommend to anyone willing to make the move. Major airports are in Timisoara and Cluj so anything around them would fit this bill. But I am sure you already know that 🙂
This sounds just like back home! 🙂 . I am not so sure about the kitten and dog killing though. Amazing how similar everything is though. Nice post C, people need to be aware. It’s easy to say ‘oh, l want to live somewhere rustic etc’ . Be careful what you,wish for ..lol..
That’s true, some people are certainly not ready for this!
Yes..its normal in Romania that once in a while stray dogs get killed by police officers and/or para-militairy men (hunting is a sport in the country side..some i saw even with automatic kalasnikov guns!!). Back in 1996 in Sibiu (I lived there for several months) the police shot all street dogs. BUT I must admit…with a good reason..they attacked several people..injuring some of them badly. Please remind..that Romania does not have money to sterilize dogs. And after all…a street dog is just an animal..nothing less then fe a cow…a pig or indeed a chicken. my 2 cents. regards, Johan.
Johan, things have fortunately changed a bit since 1996. I don’t personally remember the dog shooting you mention (but I’m not saying it didn’t happen – anything’s possible here), but things have changed since then. And even though funds are still tight, Romania has started to sterilize dogs a few (maybe several) years ago and the situation is much, much better now than it was in 1996. Many things change in 23 years 🙂
Hi Calin,
I’ve been enjoying reading your articles today, they are a great source of very useful information, well wriiten and fun to read 🙂 I was wondering if you could please tell me how tattoos are viewed in Romanian cities and villages? I plan to move to (ideally) Brasov for a few months (maybe longer if it works out well) and was curious if there was any discrimination, in particular being a girl with a couple of tattoos?
Thank you for your time,
Sera
Hello Sera,
I am glad that you enjoyed reading the blog! I’ve never heard anything about any kind of discrimination for people with tattoos, be them boys or girls. Actually, tattoos are pretty widespread in Romania and you can always see those full sleeves on somebody. So don’t worry about that – boy or girl, tattoos are welcome! 🙂
Thank you for the swift reply Calin,
that’s great! I only visited Romania for 4 days in 2008 (Brasov and Zarnesti, with a quick visit to Sinaia) and fell in love with both the place and the people, I look forward to returning 🙂
I was a frequent visitor in a small town not far from Sighisoara. Houses could be bought for very cheap but they were in very bad shape. Actually as a foreigner one had to sign a “rent in perpetuity” contract because foreigners weren’t allowed to buy land just the buildings on it. The villagers were really nice but after a while got to be a little annoying with their constant “requests” which always got bigger and bigger (“Oh, if you can remember it, maybe a chainsaw would be nice… Oh, make sure it’s a Stihl!”). As one of the few foreigners in our party who could speak some Romanian, the villagers always made a beeline for me. The strangest request I got was from a Romanian mother who had a very nice daughter who was deaf and had recently divorced her violent husband. “Could you find a nice deaf man in Germany who will marry my daughter?” I told her, sorry, I wasn’t in the matchmaking business, and besides, I thought German sign language was different from Romanian sign language. Well, imagine the egg on my face when the next time I visited, the same mother told me her deaf daughter had met a nice deaf German through the Internet, and she had moved to him in Germany!
Ah, I didn’t even consider the requests, but I am sure the same happens everywhere. When we visit our village life, they also try to get things from us as well, usually by offering insanely overpriced services. Probably for foreigners, things are even worse.
I spent a month living in Miclosoara or Mikoslvar, back in 2005. Granted I was living in the rebuilt cottages for tourists, but you were smack in the middle of the village. It’s the Count Kalnoky Villages. I was surprised that he was actually born in America. But anyway, I spent my time there playing with the village kids. Even though I couldn’t speak Hungarian, I was still able to have a great time with the local kids and getting to know the local people. Sometimes I got lucky and a younger person would know some english who would help translate when I would speak to the local residents. The locals invited me into their homes and they had electricity and running water. But the heat is very true, they were cutting wood all the time. But despite them getting water from the well, using the horse and cart, some had cars, but lived in the local neaby town of Barolt. I became friends with one of the tour guides and we would drive to Brasov since it wasn’t all that far. I returned to the village in 2008 because I loved it there. During both visits, I became very close to two little girls in the village and ond day treated them, and one of their mom’s, out for a day of fun in the Brasov, since they were very poor and never get to go out to the city. I took them out to lunch, and treated them to whatever they wanted. It’s a memory I’ll always treasure.
So despite all the drawbacks you’ve mentioned in this article, it’s still an option that I may consider once I retire. Since it’s about 45 minutes from Brasov getting other things I may need won’t be a problem.
I love the Transylvanian region of Romania. I’ve since vacationed in Romania 6 times and have been almost everywhere in the country. I love Romania very much and is without question one of my favorite countries in Europe. So hopefully when things die down with the current situation, I can visit it again and see my friends.
That is a nice thing you did with the girls, Brian! I always considered doing something like that when I meet somebody in need. These things could really mean a lot of the people involved: maybe the girls saw what life can be and this motivated them to learn better at school and get the most out of life. Really nice indeed!
I’ve never been to Miclosoara myself (it’s actually the first time I hear of it), but I checked it on Google maps and it looks really good indeed, one of the more modern villages in the country. This proves that you can definitely find something that works and has a lot to offer, despite potential other negatives. Let’s hope that everything gets back to normal ASAP!
Prince Charles ended up donating a lot of money for the restoration of the hunting lodge there in Miclosoara. Back when I used to stay there in 2005 and 2008, this building was completely run down, but structurally still okay. Me and the local kids used to sneak in there and we would play hide and seek there. Some areas were really dark of course becuase it run down so it made for an amzing experience. So I look back, and of course not knowing at the time, that this was a unique experience in terms of a vacation, that would never happen again. So because of the closeness of the relationship I built with the people in this village, it developed my love for your country.
Now that the hunting lodge has been restored, many people have been using it for weddings and events and such. I’m glad it’s been restored since it is a historical building, but the experience that I had there can not happen to future visitors because it has become more touristy. I’m certian the money being earned is being put back into the village. Or at least I hope it is. But a part of me is sad that this unique experience with the village children is now gone with the restoration of the building.
I went back one final time in 2010 with a suitcase of all kinds of clolthes, perfume, lotion and all kinds of things that they could normally not afford, and I gave them to the girls. By this time, they were 13 years old and I never saw them again. I cried when I left them because I knew that part of my life with them was over. I can only hope they are doing fine.
Would you mind to share the video in which they were asking people the name of the country they were living in?
Sure thing! This is it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awwPcxmrxzU
The guy is doing all sorts of similar videos, asking people in villages questions that you’d expect they’d know the answer to. All in Romanian language, of course.
I live in Romania and lived my whole life here (in a village, i lived in a city only to study, but came back. What you describe here- mostly- are the most extreme situations. I say mostly because they can apply to the villages that are isolated from the rest of the world. But these are the exception, in a normal Romanian village you have all the conditions you have in the city – without the noise, pollution, and you have SPACE in the country side. About the people from villages – there are some people that drink, yes, every village has this kind of group that everybody knows- mostly they are inofensive and only hurt themselves with their addiction. Not everybody that lives in a village drinks their mind, most people are hardworking people. Noisy neighbors sometimes are a good thing, in a village if you need help people won’t look at you an go on with their life (like it happens in a city), and when you don’t have time for them or the mindset for them you just lock your door and nobody enters. If you have a big dog people tend to be more careful when they enter- also you can put a sign with bad dog on the door no matter if you have a dog or not. And now we come to the animal cruelty “thing”, this sadly is true, is true in cities and in villages. The problem is the whole system- now we have cruelty against animals laws and are activists that fight for their rights, but they are not applied most of the times. It is still a long rode till a person will be punished for this. I love animals. This being said i came across people that are cruel with animals, but i can’t say everybody is like this, most of the times people are not cruel with animals. Don’t expect to see at every door some crazy old man or lady with a machette. There are always pro and con things when we talk about anything, it’s true it’s not for everybody the life in the countryside but i had to make this comment. Hope it all worked out with you and your countryside life and came to enjoy it- with the COVID pandemic and all.