During my trip to Romania I had the opportunity to visit the place where the village scenes from the movie Borat were recorded. Although these scenes are said to take place in Kazakstan, they were actually shot in a small romani village about 100 km from Bucharest. This village came to my knowledge after seeing the documentary "When Borat came to town" where some peoplefrom the village wanted to sue Sasha Baron Cohen, the director of Borat for depicting the villagers as rapists, halfwits and prostitutes without really explaining to them what they agreed to do.

First thing I saw was horse carriages hurrying through the village, spreading dust in the air. Like Texas, the taxi driver joked before he went back.

I walked through the village up on a nearby mountain. Up on the mountainside the houses got quiet fancy, and people were carrying some heavy buckets of concrete for some construction.

 The view on the mountaintop was beutiful, with green mountains towering up all around.

 The surroundings of Glod

On my way down some curious smiling children approached me. Some other people did not like my prescense which was fully understandable after the Borat issues.
To my surprise though, some villager on the street invited me for coffee. He and some relatives were sitting
outside their house sorting blueberries they had picked. The communication was mostly non verbal as I cant speak romanian and they couldnt speak English. After a pleasant time,  I decided to leave and asked if I could take a photo with them.

 
A romani family that invited me for coffee

They where really excited about it. Some guy shouted something and even more people from nearby
joined in front of the camera.
 
Later in the village center, a horse carriage stopped and the guys sitting on it saluted me gladly and wanted to be on a photo. The romanis seem to be very proud about their horses and carriages.

Romanis, proud of their 8 legged vehicle

I could easily be seen that many romanis work hard as most work in a village like Glod are manual. They generally cant afford machinery, electrical tools and such.  Yet a lot of people
think about them all as lazy thieves, without ever having met other romanis than desperate ones dwelling in the streets. When I then tell about my experiences of romani village life, some people reply with a face showing discontent that romanis are different, they sit on the floor and travel by horse and etcetera. How could such things even be an issue?

We need to stop looking so much at each others differences and instead see how we better can live together and cooperate. Trying not to generalise so much about each other is a good first step.