Essentials to live in Romania

You should bring as much sanity and patience as you can, because life here certainly takes its toll on both.  What can you find easily here? Bors, homemade wine, taxes, paperwork, bad driving and lousy customer service.

Ok now, to answer the question as it was intended the things that I miss that I bring or would recommend to bring are mostly food/drink items and maybe good jeans.

Denim jeans here are of lousy quality and design/fit in general here or are overpriced.  I've found nothing that compares to the quality of some American Levi or Wrangler jeans.  True designer jeans are also hard to come by, but there's plenty of knock offs to be had.

As for food, one can get most items or ingredients, except maybe authentic asian food ingredients.  I love Thai food and have never found galangal or straw mushrooms here.  Occasionally I find lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves in Selgros.  Also things like good peanut butter, marshmallows, chocolate, and American or Dutch pancake syrup are hard to come by and again, are often poor quality.

A lot of electronics can be found here, but it's usually cheaper to get them from abroad and bring them and save the inflated importing and VAT costs.  For example a XBOX one console purchased in the US will come out to about 200 RON less than it costs here.

I'm sure this list can be expanded, but this is what comes to mind at the moment

Romaniac
Expat.com Experts Team

My suggestion...if you like reading...bring some of your favorite books and magazines, there are some book stores which sell english written books but it rather limited.....also if you are coming from the Americas your cell phone ay likely not be able to adapt here this was my issue...so if you are staying for a while here...get your updated phone here.....

I am going to second marshmallows. I tried to explain the novelty of S'mores to my Romanian friends, and they wanted me to make them - but do you know how hard it is to find the ingredients for S'mores in Romania?

Hershey's Chocolate - I could only find Cookies-n-creme, which is possibly the worst flavor of Hershey's

Marshmallows - I was only able to find a few bags - and these are not like the American kind. They are not as soft

Graham Crackers - uh, good luck. Allegedly these exist at Auchan, but neither I nor the very helpful store clerk could find them.

I am going to bring all of these from America next time I come back. Also, maybe some good American craft beer. You can find all sorts of wines and liquors in Romania, but good luck getting stuff like Sweetwater 420. I'm pretty sure my suitcase is going to be full of S'mores ingredients and beers instead of clothes on my next visit.

I brought good ranch dressing and some of my favorite hot sauces (tapatio, sriracha, Frank's) last time I came. I was able to find ranch at the grocery store, but it was a mere shadow of the glory of Hidden Valley.

Also, cilantro. I can't find it anywhere. I guess I'm going to have to grow it myself. I miss Mexican food.

magnolia15 wrote:

I am going to second marshmallows. I tried to explain the novelty of S'mores to my Romanian friends, and they wanted me to make them - but do you know how hard it is to find the ingredients for S'mores in Romania?

Hershey's Chocolate - I could only find Cookies-n-creme, which is possibly the worst flavor of Hershey's

Marshmallows - I was only able to find a few bags - and these are not like the American kind. They are not as soft

Graham Crackers - uh, good luck. Allegedly these exist at Auchan, but neither I nor the very helpful store clerk could find them.

I am going to bring all of these from America next time I come back. Also, maybe some good American craft beer. You can find all sorts of wines and liquors in Romania, but good luck getting stuff like Sweetwater 420. I'm pretty sure my suitcase is going to be full of S'mores ingredients and beers instead of clothes on my next visit.

I brought good ranch dressing and some of my favorite hot sauces (tapatio, sriracha, Frank's) last time I came. I was able to find ranch at the grocery store, but it was a mere shadow of the glory of Hidden Valley.

Also, cilantro. I can't find it anywhere. I guess I'm going to have to grow it myself. I miss Mexican food.

Magnolia,

Yes! Funny I just mentioned cilantro/coriander yesterday on the Hungary forum I grow it, since indeed it's about impossible to get fresh cilantro here, not to mention fresh jalapenos, which I also grow, along with several varieties of scotch bonnets and habaneros. 

While you can't find Sweetwater 420, you might find Sierra Nevada in Auchan from time to time.  Auchan usually has a decent range of imports.  While I don't care for American beer at all in general, and I'm not a fan of IPA's myself, you might try some of the European IPAs on offer at Auchan if you haven't already. 

Hot sauces, yes another one you hit on the head.  I do bring the good stuff back from the USA in bulk (I'm a big fan of Dave's gourmet sauces if you've heard of them).  Authentic Siracha can be found usually in Selgros.  Unfornately, Romanian eating establishments have a very poor understanding of Mexican food.  They often think that throwing some corn kernels and spicy ketchup (instead called sos mexican) on anything passes as Mexican food

Romaniac