Romanian Mentality Course: Former Culture Minister Opens School

A new course aiming to help foreigners understand Romania and Romanians is running from mid-March in Bucharest, organized by the new Paleologu school, which focuses on humanistic and diplomatic studies. Founded by diplomat and former Culture Minister Theodor Paleologu (in picture), the school offers  a six-lecture series on Understanding Romanian Mentality, which is being marketed to foreigners “for whom understanding Romanian mentality is either a professional need or a matter of survival.”

The course will look at some of the features of living and working in Romania that are regularly on the lips of expats, such as traffic, bureaucracy and corruption. Attempts to be made to put these phenomena in context and look at history behind modern Romania, as well as considering traditions, such as hospitality, and how the country has adapted to modern sociological changes, like urbanism. Classic Romanian literature and modern works analyzing the Romanian psyche will provide sources of reference the participants.

The course will be run by Theodor Paleologu himself in the Paleologu family home on 34 Armeneasca Street in Bucharest. The house belonged to Alexandru Paleologu – Theodor’s father - the Romanian essayist, literary critic, diplomat and politician who lived 1919 – 2005. Theodor Paleologu has studied and lectured in politics and philosophy at a number of universities, including the Sorbonne in Paris and Harvard in the US, and has served as Romania’s ambassador to Denmark and Iceland.