“We’re going to Romania!” we said to the server at the cafe we frequent in Idyllwild. Her response was along the lines of “Oh, I’d be so scared traveling places they don’t speak English!”

She’s not alone in that feeling. I’ve heard that same sentiment from dozens, if not hundreds, of fellow English speakers in America. As I wrote here, Two Reasons not to be afraid of traveling outside the English speaking world, which talks about just how hard it is for most travelers these days to actually find a place no one speaks a least little English, one really doesn’t need worry. 

Here in Romania that is as true as anywhere.  One Uber driver explained that, “no problem here, speaking English is every Romanian’s second hobby”. Which after 2 weeks here I can say seems to be the case, but it leaves this odd questioning hanging before me.

Once upon a time in Hungary

In 1996 I made my first tour around Europe, backpacker style through 8 countries in a month. The least English speaking place of any of those was Budapest, Hungary where it was legitimately common to walk into shop and have no one that spoke any English. 

The primary second language at the time was Russian, as were most of the tourists.  Funny how those go hand and hand.  Back then what I did find however was that everyone my own age (24) and younger spoke some to a lot of English, whereas nearly everyone over 30 didn’t. The youngins were eager to practice and quite often some random under 30 person in the shop or on the street would lend a hand (or tongue?), whether need or not.  Honestly, you can still handle most basic needs nonverbally.

Bucharest is not Budapest, nor is it still 1996

I was expecting Bucharest, Romania to be a bit more like Budapest, Hungary at least as far as language was concerned. However, 20 years later everyone, and I mean everyone in Bucharest seems to speak English. Most even do so not just at a rudimentary level, but fluently.

English fluency is so common here it seems almost odd after a while to start a conversation with “Do you speak English?”. The tipping point for me I think was when the stock boy at a local market answered my question on where to find something obscure fluently with “Oh, sure cornstarch is over here, there are two kinds this is the coarse kind, but this over here fine kind which I think is what you want.” 

In 2 weeks here and I can’t recall a single interaction where I didn’t consider the other party fluent or nearly so. This isn’t purely tourist facing businesses, but then isn’t talking to general laborers either.

How do you start a conversation?

I’m at the point here that I simultaneously assume everyone does, while also feeling awful about just “assuming everyone does”…  

I’d really love to hear in the comments how you all navigate this?

While this opinion has long been stewing about everything from WordPress plugin reviews to Amazon and Ebay seller reviews where anything less than a 5 stars is seen as failure, this is what really triggered it.

Once upon a time we would leaf through Lonely Planet where we travelers would read fairly unbiased and neutral reviews of places on tourist trail. Granted, that missed a lot of things both due to the time to print, as well as the practical limits of page count, but at least back then what you read had some credibility.

Then the internet happened

People discovered online that they could publish their own reviews of all the places they’ve been and share their experience with other people, how wonderful! Only, after a very short time the peoples of the internet also learned that everywhere from the comments section on yahoo news post to review sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor and more that there were a lot of other people expressing their opinions of things as well. Somehow they all decided that the best way to get heard over the noise was to be as extreme as possible in their speaking.

So if I were to review TripAdvisor like one of its reviewers would, I’d say “TripAdvisor is the absolute worst website on the internet for travelers. Everyone that writes review on it either has no idea what they’re talking about or is just incapable of providing an honest useful review. Avoid it like the plague really you could die from just reading it!”

A fair and thorough review of the “Best Mexican [food] in Seminyak”

For two people who love mexican food the food at Chara, the subject of the above review, is good. However, I can not conceive of universe in which this restaurant and it’s food could be considered 5 stars “excellent” in anyone’s book. Frankly, 4 stars “Very Good” would be a stretch for both the restaurant as well as the food it serves, but at least then I could sit with “well they enjoyed it more than me” instead of “what can they possible be thinking?”

Maybe, in a bubble of space that ignores the world outside Seminyak and outside Bali, but reviews on site like this should not ignore the outside world.  The star/circle/point ratings aren’t “relative to what’s available next door”, they’re based on your sum total of experience or shouldn’t they be?

Having visited every Mexican food restaurant in and around Seminyak, including Chara multiple times. I’d say that Lacalaca is actually “the best Mexican [food] in Seminyak”. That’s doesn’t really say much considering the size of and location of Seminyak, but none the less I’m really fine with either earning the title of “Best Mexican in Seminyak”. Neither Chara nor Lacalaca however warrants 5 stars “Excellent, OMG one of the best meals I’ve had”. That’s not an insult, that’s reality for anyone that’s ever had a delicious meal at least once in their lives.

Lacalaca has some delicious fish tacos with flavors that suggest some care went into balancing them. In my book I could and did stretch things give Lacalaca 4 stars, even though there were at least a couple of meals we had there that were only average.  Chara however was never better than 100’s of other mexican restaurants I’ve happily eaten at and forgotten.

Crowdsourcing data needs to be smarter

Crowdsourcing reviews doesn’t serve the readership when the highest rating is essentially the default from which to lose stars/points only for gross deficiencies. Systems need to exist to moderate reviewers all or nothing mentality unless your only giving them an all or nothing choice.

TripAdvisor, and the most popular of review sites like it I think are beyond hope. Nothing short of resetting everything and changing their scoring systems would really help.

The one exception I’ve found in this sea of useless untrustworthy reviews is Foursquare. On Foursquare you simple say Good, Neutral, Bad. Then, as I understand it, 4sq actually does some artificial intelligence processing of your comments pulling out key words including positive or negative speech to formulate its 0-10 rating as well as it’s tags and filtering. This, I think, is why I find there ratings and filtering so much better than TripAdvisor’s. Plus it’s a smaller pool of reviewers that seem more savvy and to care more.

How about you?