it's a mix of cultures: the original population was a part of thracian tribes(the language was similar) which are mentioned since the 6 th century BC. the borders were pretty similar to those of today only that there was a larger sea opening(that territory is now in ukraine and bulgaria). the first foreign influences were the greek who had colonies that are now important cities. skiping 6 centuries of wars and an alliance with the wrong roman(the adversary of cesar)we get to 106 AC when the romans decid to conquer us after 3 unsuccesful atempts to make a lasting alliance. time passes, we learn latin, the romans leave and although we remain under the influence of the eastern roman empire most of the invading tribes pass trough here and leave their litle mark.
the next important event is the invasion of the hungarians in the eleven century. their own historians from the time describe how they defeated local kingdoms but now they are trying to say we were never there and that transilvania should be theirs. anyway the 2 remaining parts, Valahia and Moldova have centuries of war with the turks, the hungarians who became the austro-hungarian empire, and later poland, russia and different nomadic tribes brought by these powers to fight here. apart from our wars with them they also fought each other over this land. the result is our language has so many influences it's hard to completely learn for a non native: there is the thracian substrat( this particular tribe was called geto-dac, from the greek and roman words to describe it) the latin strata (60 percent of the language) and a slavish suprastat with hungarian, bulgarian, turkish and other influences.
because constantinopol was relatively closer than rome we became orthodox as religion and that had a debatable effect. except for russia all the other nations around were of different religions and they did not like ours. the good effect is that we were and are very tolerant of other religions.
this was an on the spot general outline of history and i apologize if it's a bit desorientating
in the present day the problems come from the gypsies. every one in the world knows of them. as origins they come from asia, around india somewhere. they were brought as slaves and were later released. they are nomadic and have kept this habbit(you can find them everywhere) and because of the harsh conditions many have a criminal record. this is a subject where romanians don't fit with the rest of europe, as we are pretty racist towards them. when they were freed thefts culminated. our first president actually had a projekt to send them back to asia but never finished it. i think the reason for why romanians have a bad name is the fact that on passports the ethny is not specified and many of them do not declare themselves of gypsi origins and nobody can force them to do so. it's estimated that there about 3 million in romania in the present with most of the problematic ones being abroad. when france where start sending them back the crime rate here increases proportionally. many people say to send them to school and they'll civilize. the problem is they don't like it and get married at 11. both families want them to get married, the children want it. and the state simply can't take away all the children cause it's a common practice. there is no sollution to it