On the 1^st of December, we celebrate Romania’s Great Union Day! We wish a joyful day of celebration to all our amazing team members from Romania!

Join us in discovering some fun and interesting facts about this beautiful country.

Did you know that?

• The National Day of Romania marks the Great Union between all historic Romanian regions.
• On December 1^st 1918, the National Assembly of Romanians was convened in Alba Iulia. It was unanimously decided to unite Transylvania, Crișana and Maramureş with Romania and consecrated what we now call Romania Mare (Great Romania).
• Romanians celebrate every year with patriotic events, especially military parades, the most famous being the one in Bucharest at the Triumphal Arch (Arcul de Triumf) and the one in Alba Iulia. At the same time, all over the country there are smaller military parades or wreath-laying ceremonies at the heroes’ monuments.
• In the country’s cathedrals, churches and monasteries, the specific “Te Deum” service is performed, which commemorates the heroes of the Romanian nation who fought for the Great Union in 1918.
• Romania’s National Day is also marked as a culinary celebration that comes as an opening of the Winter Holiday season. Thus, many Romanians celebrate on December 1^st with a glass of vin fiert (mulled wine), țuică fiartă (mulled brandy), traditional mici or fasole cu ciolan (beans with pork).
• The national flag of Romania is tricolor, with the vertical stripes, starting from the lance: blue, yellow and red. The meaning of the three colors is as follows: blue represents air, the noblest element and symbolizes gentleness, beauty and good faith; yellow is the symbol of strength, wealth and purity, and it also represents the color of wheat harvests; red is the symbol of pride, joy, boldness and generosity, and it also symbolizes the blood shed in battles.
• In 1884, Timișoara city in Romania became the first city in Europe with public street lighting with electric lamps and the second city in the world, after New York.
• Peleş Castle in Sinaia, Romania, was the first castle in Europe lit entirely by electricity, powered by a castle installation, and the heating system from 1888 is still functional today.
• Bran Castle in Transylvania is famous for spawning the original vampire legend of Count Dracula.
• The Peri Monastery, in Săpânța, Maramureş County, is the tallest wooden building in the world (78 meters high and a seven-meter cross at the top of the church).
• The Black Church, from Braşov, is the largest edifice of worship in Gothic style in South-East Europe. When the construction of this church was finished, in the 15^th century, it was considered “the biggest church between Vienna and Constantinople”. Here is also the largest pipe organ in Europe, with 4,000 pipes.
• The statue of Decebalus, from Orşova, from the Danube Cauldrons, is the tallest stone sculpture in Europe. It is 55 meters high and 25 meters wide. 12 sculptors-alpinists worked at it for 10 years (1994-2004), and the work cost over one million dollars.
• The Danube – Black Sea Canal is the third longest man-made waterway, after the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal. It is 95.6 kilometers long and connects the ports of Cernavodă and Midia Năvodari to the Black Sea. Transports from Australia and the Far East to Central Europe thus have at their disposal a 400 kilometer shorter route.
• The Danube Delta is the best preserved delta in Europe, and since 1990 it has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage, being considered a biosphere reserve.
• With a length of approximately 152 km, the Transfăgărășan Road connects the two historical provinces of Muntenia and Transylvania. The most famous tourist attractions on the road are: Vidraru Lake, Bâlea Lake, Bâlea Waterfall. “Convertibles in Romania”, the show that the “Top Gear” team – Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May – made in Romania says about Transfăgărășan that it is the most amazing road ever seen.
• The Romanian terrain is distributed roughly equally between mountains, hills, and plains, offering something to every type of tourist. The country has an opening to the Black Sea, so you can also enjoy the beautiful beaches and seaside resorts.
• The Romanian cuisine has been influenced by Austrian and German cuisine, but it also has a strong Balkan cuisine component. Ciorbă (sour soup), mititei or mici (grilled ground meat rolls), mămăligă (similar to polenta), and sarmale (grape leaves or cabbage leaves filled with rice and minced meat) are featured commonly in main courses. Traditional desserts include pască (a type of sweet bread made especially at Easter) and cozonac (special sweet leavened bread served at Christmas time).
• Many Romanian athletes became known worldwide for their performances in sports: Nadia Comăneci (gymnastics), Gheorghe Hagi (football), Simona Halep (tennis), Cristina Neagu (handball).
• Nicolae Paulescu, Romanian doctor, educated in Paris, professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Bucharest, is the inventor of insulin.
• George Emil Palade, biologist, doctor, Romanian researcher, born in Iași, graduate of the Faculty of Medicine in Bucharest, permanently settled (after the Second World War) in the USA, is laureate of the Nobel Prize in Medicine, in 1974, for discoveries in the field of cellular biology, more precisely, for the discovery of ribosomes.
• Petrache Poenaru is the one who invented, while he was a student at the Paris Polytechnic, the world’s first fountain pen, patented in 1827 and called, at the time, “the porter’s pen without end, feeding itself with ink”.
• Emil Racoviţă is the founder of biospeleology (the science that deals with the study of organisms that live in caves). Scientist, explorer, graduate of the Faculty of Law, from Paris, but also student auditor of the Faculty of Sciences at the Sorbonne, participated, between 1897 – 1899, in the “Belgica” Antarctic Expedition, his scientific observations and research being published in 60 volumes, more than everything that had been written on this topic until his time.
• Henri Coandă is the inventor of the jet engine, and Aurel Vlaicu is the one who invented the arrow-shaped plane and the one who also built his own plane with which he managed to fly.
• Ştefan Hell is a German physicist, born in Romania, where he spent his childhood and adolescence, attending the Nikolaus Lenau High School in Timișoara. In 1978, he emigrated to Federal Germany. He is the laureate of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2014, being the one who laid the foundations of 4Pi microscopy.

We extend our thanks to our Nobel Country Ambassador Alexandra Roxana Ceoranu, who kindly accepted to share with us these interesting facts and beautiful photos of Romania, as well as some personal thoughts:

“I am proud to be Romanian thanks to the famous Romanians who changed the world with their inventions, with their books (Emil Cioran, Mircea Eliade).” – Alexandra Roxana Ceoranu (Nobel Country Ambassador from Romania)