Author Archives: Fatca Pop

About Fatca Pop

Fatca Pop is a dreamer, adventurer, cook, and blogger. Fatca was a hairdresser, company secretary, and teacher.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year

Posted on December 20, 2025 by Fatca Pop

Hey Cluj may update you this Christmas, we may not.  In any case, here’s a few things we may be doing this holiday. Trying new things at the Christmas market. The Cluj Christmas market has a special kind of corndog, … Continue reading →

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The cancelled Romanian curriculum, reviewed.

Posted on December 17, 2025 by Fatca Pop

Some authors were seen as too hard for students.  Why?  Well, they were presented in chronological order. At first, this sounds crazy.  If you were teaching English, you wouldn’t start with Bede.  If you were teaching French, you wouldn’t start … Continue reading →

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Starting a business in 2026? Things have changed :(

Posted on December 17, 2025 by Fatca Pop

You might have heard that the Romanian government has frozen the rise in minimum wage for 2026.  Some businesses apparently asked for that.   Things are getting tight for everyone, taxes are rising, and it will also be more difficult for … Continue reading →

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How retired people help the economy

Posted on December 17, 2025 by Fatca Pop

A few industries, especially the vice industry, would have us think that older adults are a drain on the economy.  Those who want to cut pensions, who have less compassion for the elderly in need, see them as a burden.  … Continue reading →

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Peaceful Protests in Romania

Posted on December 16, 2025 by Fatca Pop

Romanian literary figures criticise new year 9 Romanian language curriculum Something is wrong with the new language curriculum, apparently.  Over 200 members of the Romanian language academy have problems with it, claiming it could raise functional illiteracy. Why?  According to … Continue reading →

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Finnish education information

Posted on December 12, 2025 by Fatca Pop

There is a lot of misinformation about studying in Europe.  For European union citizens, some countries are free to study at.  Some students come to Romania from western Europe because the cost of living here can be lower.  That said, … Continue reading →

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Can AI be used to learn languages?

Posted on December 9, 2025 by Fatca Pop

Some languages have more regular prosidy than others, or are more phonetic than others. English and French have a common phonomenon that doesn’t really exist in Romanian (and probably not much in German, Dutch, Estonian or Hungarian either.) That is … Continue reading →

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Update on the Mississippi Miracle

Posted on November 26, 2025 by Fatca Pop

This is about Cluj, not Mississippi, right? Well, as we’ve shown before, Cluj businesses which claim to provide services in English (including those that translate advertisements into English), use bad English that no native speaker can understand.  Therefore, we think … Continue reading →

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How medical refugees come to Romania

Posted on November 20, 2025 by Fatca Pop

Different countries have different attitudes toward refugees.  The process in many European countries seems backwards.  Many people who are allowed to live in Belgian, for instance, are not allowed to apply for work. Romania asks its refugees to work.  After … Continue reading →

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24b is a bilingual bus

Posted on November 14, 2025 by Fatca Pop

You may have heard a few languages in Cluj.  We often hear French, German, and of course Hungarian in addition to Romanian.  A few people speak English, but when we hear it, it is more like Romglish (Romanian with a … Continue reading →

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