Seeing this (scroll down to the seventh snippet of news, about the Frenchie at Romanian monasteries) made us at once jump with joy and remember one of the most surreal moments of our life so far in Romania.
It goes back to the days when Romania joining the European Union was beyond anyone’s wildest federal fantasies, a time when foreigners were routinely skinned for every penny they had, at every opportunity.
Legally.
The story is this: we were staying at a rather good hotel (the Sport) in Poiana Brasov. It was not state owned (it had already been in private hands for some time), and was used (we think it still is) to host tourists from Britain skiing in Poiana on package tours.
Yet ridiculously, they (like many other hotels, museums and state institutions at the time) practised double pricing: Romanians paid one price, foreigners not from former socialist countries paid another, higher price.
On this particular trip, we went with an English friend who happened to be married to a Romanian. They naturally shared a room.
And then, at check out time, all hell broke loose.
We – being 100 per cent foreign – had been presented with a bill for the foreigner price. We were not happy, but that was how it was. We paid.
Our English friend and her Romanian husband on the other hand posed a problem: what price should they pay?
The hotel’s solution was to give them two bills: one each. She got a bill for half of the foreigner price, he got a bill for half of the Romanian price.
A fierce lawyer who never minced her words she went (quite rightly) beserk. Not necessarily because of the price she had been asked to pay (had she been in the room alone or with another foreigner she would have happily paid the foreigner price). No, she went beserk over the sheer stupidity of charging two people a different price for a night they had just spent in the same bed.
She got nowhere, but made her point. Double pricing ended more or less everywhere shortly afterwards (maybe word got round that she was on the loose) and quite frankly we had not heard of the practice for some time now. That it was still going on – in a monastery of all places – comes as a shock.
So well done SOLVIT (a substance which almost certainly works wonders on leaky bathrooms too).
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In Hungar the tour of Budapest’s parliament was free for Hungarians, thousands of forints for everyone else before they joined UE. Now all EU citizens have to get the tour free. Non citizens still have to pay.
Now I think of it, sometimes it was worth paying more. At Peles Castle there was always a massive queue for the Romanian entrance, while the foreigners’ entrance was queue free. Cost three times as much though.
I remember when the ski lifts in Poiana were also dual priced. I tried to pass myself off as Romanian but despite the gaudy nylon ski suit, the planks of wood as skis and a whiff of tuica on my breath I was still stung for full price. I think it was the patient queueing that gave me away.
Actually this is happening nowadays too, but at state level not at individual level. The best example is the first registration tax applied on cars – foreign car owners need to pay a fortune, Dacia owners needed to pay nothing or starting from January the 1st they only need to pay a fraction of the price.
All the procedure is of course masked under the name of “environmental tax”, but still knowing damn well that Romania only produces Dacia in 1.4 litres and the Mercedes from 3 litres and up is produced in the West.
This discussion reminded me about the times when Fly Taxi held the monopoly at Otopeni Airport: the auction for the contract stated a prerequest that all taxi cars serving the airport must hold a trunk of at least 499 litres and surprise – the Renault Kangoos (or whatever they were) of Fly Taxi held a trunk of… 500 litres.
I wonder what would happen if you had dual nationality? Split the difference?
happens still in Vietnam, Laos. Was there last summer.