What the newspapers say: July 30, 2010 

One newspaper reads on Friday how Romanians in Greece are handling the crisis. Elsewhere in the news, the government plans to pass a normative act to compell owners of houses to rehabilitate the facades. Last but not least, when they talk about Romania, foreigners want to know about Transylvania.

Romania libera reads about the 20,000 Romanians spending their holiday in Greece and the way they cope with the protests in Greece. Unsatisfied by the governmet’s decision to decrease transports licences, greek truckers, who paid high amounts for previous licences almost blocked the entire country as they refused to transport any goods, including petrol.

There are plenty of Romanians who travelled by car to Greece and who find themselves at odds: petrol stations opened yesterday night but each car could get petrol of 30 euro only as transporters are still on strike.

Tour operators declared for the newspaper that many Romanians chose Northern Greece to spend their holiday and they can fill up tanks in Bulgaria without a problem. Even so, the number of Romanian tourists in Greece dropped compared to last year because of the economic crisis and not because the Greek protests.

The Greek government is taking serious action to end the strike of the truck drivers and declared that if they refuse to do their job, they risk to lose their trucks and their licence or can even get arrested.

Elsewhere in the news, Gandul reads that the government prepares an ordinance ruling that all house owners are compelled to rehabilitate their facades otherwise can face prison or fines. According to the ordinance, house owners will be compelled to rehabilitate the facades of the houses at their initative or at the request of the city hall.

If the owner does not have an initiative, the city hall will summon them individually and owners will have to do it in six months time. If the owner does not comply then works will be undertaken by the city hall and the money will be recovered from the owner until the work is final.

If the owner does not pay up, he/she will be sued for the recovery of debts and the judges can even decide to leave the owner without the house if he/she does not have the money to pay expenses.

Evenimentul Zilei reads that, for foreigners, the Romania’s new tourism slogan does not seem too impressive those who choose to spend their holiday in Romania. A Polish declared for the newspaper that Romania is all about its wild nature and looks nothing like a garden.

I found out that Romania is a beautiful country browsing the internet, not from TV or a commercial, the Polish said. Her friend, Monika Mikolagayk, also from Poland said that the new slogan, Explore the Carpathian garden is pretty weak compared to Romania’s advantages.

Medieval cities and Transylvania seems to be the number one on the foreigner’s lists when visiting Romania. A Swedish foreigner interviewed by the newspaper declared that he is interested in visiting Transylvania as well.