TBH I wouldn’t advise either.

don’t believe the overoptimistic hype of the media either (particularly with a US spin or if you are being told stuff from your potential universities trying to get hold of an expensive foreign student). remember you are an intelligent young lady living in a high income area of the USA. people running universities will say anything to get you to study there and will deny all the problems

Putin, as you appear to have realised, is trying to go back to soviet-style government and is doing so using the free market (with the actual (if perhaps unknowing) collusion of the EU) by keeping control over energy prices!

To be brutally honest people in the rest of Europe do not care what happens to human rights in Moscow as long as their gas/electric bills are cheap. The recent gas scandal in Ukraine actually reinforced the Soviet borders (which still exist) because the EU enforced and old soviet contract.

As for the EU, they only want countries like Romania to join them so they can get cheap labour; the men to work on building sites in countries like Britain (to drive down wages for british people) and the women to work as waitresses/shop assistants/minimum wage jobs or worse still as prostitutes..

many of the people in the rich countries of Europe (such as the UK, France etc) hate the other poor countries as they think their taxes go up for subsidising them. In many old EU countries immigrants from the new EU countries are harrassed and attacked in the streets; there are many movements to abolish the EU altogether and go back to strong borders.

If you go to Romania to study and get a first class degree you may still be stuck there, although technically you are supposed to be able to work in France, Germany or England you will be offered only jobs as a waitress (or less savoury occupations) because of your nationality.

Even if you have an American accent the immigration authorities won’t believe you.

Romania is associated with “Roma” or gypsies and sadly these people are hated everywhere and accused of crime.

Some countries won’t let you in even if you are “allowed” to be there, other dodgy things happen like if you have a boyfriend in your country the immigration authorities won’t let him in (they say he may be a trouble maker) and try to split you up

Russia is still viewed with suspicion, same as it was when I was a kid. The cold war still exists, although sidelined a bit by the current middle eastern conflicts. Both are merging together and potentially compounding global instability as Washington becomes increasingly angered with a lot of countries elections not going the way the US wants; and the ever-increasing influence of China over the global sphere.

this is the real Europe today – “fortress Europe”, people looking uneasily at each other across the borders.

Of course there are good people in every country but they don’t have the power or do things like become cops or immigration officers!

That said, have you considered studying in the UK? The unis here always want foreign students, the weather is better, despite all the hassles above people are friendlier and sometimes more tolerant of people from different races/cultures – I am Asian (although I was born in the UK) and I am mostly accepted by everyone else….

Also we speak English here so you don’t need to learn another language as well (although its always good to speak other languages)

firstly, apologies for getting your gender wrong; I missed your first post and you may have had your user profile showing “female” at one point! don’t worry, people sometimes accidentally do this and its only recently we had gender indicators on user profiles. A friend of mine signed up on here and he did the same thing..

its not really like the films or BBC world news sometimes portrays this country – not everyone follows the traditions or support the monarchy; they are just there.

We have stopped wearing bowler hats as well, you can get decent food here, and most of the red telephone boxes were taken away because people piss in them.

Nowadays the Royal Family are just rich celebrities like David Beckham etc; people don’t have to follow them if they don’t support them, no one comes to cut off your head if you make jokes about them (and anyway every time they play sport they fall off their horses or injure themselves).

there are lots of other elite families in every country who have as much power but don’t publicise it. Many other European countries have kings/queens as well…