After two years of repatriation (and culture shock)

[English translation of previous article.] It seems that two years of repatriation passed quickly, and after all sorts of experiences and complaints, some contained in the below articles, some friends and acquaintances asked me (just as I asked myself in first article) if still, the decision to repatriate was good or not.

Although in those two years more or less pleasant things happened, still the advantages of being home prevail to the other disadvantages. Reasons to live in one place or another are numerous and different for each individual or family, so probably makes no sense to detail my personal reasons to live in Romania. But shortly it is about living close to family, relatives and friends, classic kindergarten and school for children (instead of foreign ones), the holiday house in a mountain village and how it disconnect me from the city life, etc.. Other aspects of social life has changed much in Romania, and although I met many people who still don’t know that, it is quite possible to live in Romania having very little to do with state institutions, officials, queues, payments counter, etc. 

Professionally, even if the working environment is more advanced in western countries as I detailed in other articles, and in Romania I had some not very pleasant experiences with jobs, however, I believe the value and experience I can bring to a company operating in Romania is more important than the value and experience I can bring to a company working abroad. While companies from western countries practice a lot the "attraction" of employees from large corporations to small companies in order to import experience and make them more credible, in Romania Romanian managers and owners (usually those without working experience abroad) are scared when a more experienced specialist than themselves apply to an open position, and they would rather prefer to remain with their archaic way of working and thinking than to risk hiring someone who would bring added value to the company. 

Thus, after I was hired by a Finnish company that relocated me in Romania and unfortunately closed local business after seven months, then by another company with Romanian owner who kind of abusively ended our collaboration after ten months of activity with only three days notice (after disagreements about unfair working style, fraud and other unfair reasons), and then after trying more or less successfuly the self-employed type of work, I feel like I finally found a very interesting western company operating in Romania (Cluj-Napoca) and where it seems that it is possible the other way, that eventually there exist modern western style working environments also in Romania, occidental attitude of managers and the standard employment contract (excluding all kind of contract combinations for tax evasion) and also respect for employees in western style. Unfortunately there are still too few such companies, but still enough to have one (in the city), so that to force others to become competitive in order to attract specialists they need. It is interesting that not all western corporations with offices in Romania have this attitude, but only those that are run by managers who effectively worked abroad. The other companies still retain the Romanian owner mentality.

Altogether, the decision to repatriate was for me a correct one, though not without all sorts of adventures, but at least life is not as boring as in some of the western countries, where everything is or seems almost perfect and where it seems that there is not much essential to solve in everyday life. Regarding the culture shock, I think I head for the third phase, the adjustment to new culture, although I will still try to criticize and comment everything else should be different in Romania, but also what is good or excellent in comparison with the western countries.