Google maps street view for Romania (including Iasi) and CEE

Well, it's not actually Google maps.

It is a similar service that it's in Beta version - Norc.

It also has versions for: Austria, Czeach Republic, Poland, Slovakia.

It is still pretty slow and not very easy to use but I think that it's still much much better than nothing.

So you should try it: www.norc.ro

Foreigners in Romania

I just got an e-mail with an announcement from Romanian Immigration Office. It contains some data about the foreigners living in Romania.

There are only 64789 registered foreigners living in Romania.

Out of them, only 17619 are from EU countries, and 47170 are from non-EU countries.

Out of the EU citizens living in Romania 4366 are Italian, 3268 German and 2298 French.

Most of the foreigners living in Romania are from Moldova (13820), Turkey (8011) and China (5545).

The highest number of foreigners is found in Bucharest, Iasi, Cluj, Timis and Ilfov counties.

The most common purpose of their residence in Romania is because they are married to Romanian citizens (13086 cases) and because they are studying in Romania (12820 cases).

Out of this data it seems that still Romania is not a very attractive destination for foreign people.  65.000 is a very small number compared to the population of Romania. I am sure that the Baltic countries have more foreigners living there even if their population is 10 times smaller than Romania.

And the main reason to worry, as I see it, is that people that come to Romania to study do not continue to work in Romania. This is a very big loss. After investing time and money in their education, Romania should to everything possible to keep the best graduates. But after all, there are Romanians that leave the country after graduation, so why should be different for the foreigners who study here?

Direct Flights Budapest - Iasi

Hungarian airlines Malev will launch scheduled flights from Budapest to Iasi starting in March 2009.

I found the news on a Hngarian website.

I think that this is a very good news as it offers the opportunity to people from the NE region of Romania to travel almost everywhere in the world with connection in Budapest. The added value is that the Ferihegy airport from Budapest is better connected to important global destinations than Otopeni airport. And besides this, most of the flights from Budapest are cheaper than the ones from Bucharest. These are facts that are well known for years by the people living in western part of Romania.

Of course Malev is the second international airline that operates from Iasi airport, after Austrian airlines. And of course we have the Tarom flights.

I am looking forward for the moment when either Ryanair or EasyJet (second option would be Wizzair, Blueair, SkyEurope)  will also decide to operate flights from Iasi.

Monica Macovei - EU Woman of the Year 2008

Former minister of Justice in Romania, Monica Macovei, is the EU Woman of the Year 2008.  

She currently works for the UK government as a consultant on justice reforms in EU candidate countries. But it was her efforts in rooting out political corruption in Romania which won her the plaudits of an international jury. She was widely credited with implementing justice reforms that allowed Romania to enter the European Union (EU) on January 1, 2007.  

Presenting her with the award, a gold broche, Pottering, EU Parliament´s President, said she and the other candidates were a "symbol and model for women everywhere" and that she could be proud of her achievements.  

Dedicating the prize to "all Romanians who believe in the rule of law", she said, "Tackling corruption has been the most challenging thing in my life but I will continue because I believe in zero corruption."   

Unfortunately I believe that corruption is still an important problem in Romania. And there should be increased efforts to solve the problem of corruption. There is still a lot of corruption both at national (central) level as well as at local (regional) level.