It is almost painful to discuss the election results, chiefly because nothing is unexpected, most voters see a completely different reality than I do (or, if you will, they see the same thing but interpret it differently) and there is no way I can ever bridge this gap. Not only that, but it's virtually impossible to do so, even if I tried. I gave up trying long ago.

Days or weeks ago, while talking to a British dude who had come to Canada on a “work and holiday” visa, it transpired that he thought that Britain was overrun by Eastern Europeans. I pointed out that tabloids are not the most accurate or sane source of news. On January 1, when the members of this significant part of the British printed press all went to say “welcome” at Heathrow, there had been a rather thin showing of newcomers. He started blabbering about how UK will leave Europe. A German girl who was “just traveling” (i.e., not on a work-travel visa) chimed in about how Eastern Europeans and especially Romanians are invading German cities, setting up illegal camps.

Even before that conversation I met this Belgian girl who’s teaching French in Toronto (she also speaks Flemish). She’s quite sexy, I smiled to her, she smiled back, I asked her where she’s from, she answered, she asked me where I’m from, I said “Romania” and she told me, matter-of-factly, that she just went to a gypsy band concert and she enjoyed it.

There are similarities between both of these events, in that they made me sad and my initial curiosity and desire to get to know them was somewhat tempered by the apparent misunderstandings. Still they are somewhat different in that non-menopausal women continue to smile unabated even when they consider you a Gypsy, while most low-income European males tend to start radiating a palpable hostile vibe the moment they learn you are Romanian. Arguably not a big problem here in Canada, but when you travel in Europe, the barrage of hostility can totally ruin your trip.

LE: The solution I see is changing Romania’s name to Dacia, but that has very little chance of being accepted. Why is that, I don’t know.

This leaves me with very little room to manoeuvre. It is not my calling to teach people the error of their ways. Though I could technically call myself Canadian (I’ve been a citizen for quite a while), that would seem like a cop-out. “Eastern European” is too vague and elicits further inquiry. I might start answering the question where I’m from with “Essos” or “I’m Dothraki” since Game of Thrones is insanely popular.  Sadly, I’m too white and my forehead too flatsmooth to pass myself as a Klingon – not to mention that the younger people may have difficulties placing that in the Universe. Yet another option would be to call myself “Zamo, the Chinese man who can jump.”

Since in most schools in the English-speaking world grammar is not taught (and nor is math, at least not seriously), the litmus test on whether you are “Canadian” or not is your accent. Mine is not strong, but I occasionally mispronounce lesser known words (words which I have mostly read rather than heard). I sometimes mispronounce even words I have heard. In short, though I can certainly present myself as “Canadian” that would leave the impression of unresolved internal conflicts and would leave my interlocutor struggling to figure out where I’m from, then trying to find a neutral manner to ask where I was born.

The Romanian winning parties are not all that different from Eurosceptics. Their main raison d’etre is trolling the country’s president, whose term expires in a few months anyway. Already, the main alliance against him dissolved. Still, every second public comment of any Romanian politician is meant to insult or demean the president. It is extremely hard to imagine Romanian political life after his retirement. These parties don’t care much about Europe and their leaders lack of understanding of what “political life” is and seek to constantly export the kind of fundamentally neurotic and dysfunctional political climate from Romania to Europe (not that Europe’s is so much better, but it pays a bit more attention to appearances). It is for this reason (not Basescu’s – the president – behind the scenes scheming) that Victor Ponta – the PM – is repeatedly snubbed and ignored on the European stage. Which brings us to the next part, making sense of the European choice for nationalism.

Sources / More info: wiki-gitanes