Rocio, a young Cuban woman, moved to Romania almost four years ago, after obtaining a scholarship at the Faculty of Letters, specializing in Romanian and English Language and Literature. The young woman told on TikTok about the cultural shocks she experienced when she arrived in our country
By the Observator editorial team on 05.05.2024, 10:42
“Three things that were a shock for me, the first time I came to Romania”, Rocio begins his story. When she first arrived in our country, the first thing that shocked the Cuban student was the weather: “I came in November and, obviously, it was very, very cold. I come from a Caribbean country and , obviously, it’s summer all year round. The lowest temperature I remember was 10 degrees. For us, 8 – 10 degrees meant a very hard winter. (…) When we set foot, for the first time , outside the airport, I thought I was dying there because I felt a cold that penetrated your bones”.
The young woman also revealed details about life in Cuba, telling her followers about the difficulties she faced while living there. “Another thing that was a shock for me when I came: the shops. (No. In Cuba) there are no shops for clothes, appliances, furniture. In Cuba there are only shops that are food or mixed ones that have a bit of all, but at the same time they have nothing (…) At the moment we speak, the stores are empty and those that have something (no goods) are in dollars and normal Cubans do not have dollars because the salary is in Cuban pesos and they have to change them to black because it is not possible, that is, the state does not give you the opportunity to change when you want”.
Although incomprehensible to some Bucharesters, who are dissatisfied with the way in which public transport is carried out, Rocio praised the metros and buses in the Capital. The young woman tells that, in Cuba, there were days when she simply did not have anything to get to school because the means of public transport did not run or the tickets were much too expensive for normal citizens.
“And the third thing that, for me, was a shock is the transportation. Just like the stores, it seems like something very trivial, but for me it was a shock to see how good the transportation was. I was in college in Cuba and I had nothing to go with. There were days when I had no way to get to school. There is a lot of hitchhiking. I have never seen anything like that in my life I lived in Cuba for 21 years and I think I know more cities in Romania than in Cuba.”
@rocio__016 -
