This is the lowest form of mockery (and, eventually, of self-mockery) one could ever meet. The mișto (En. “cool”, but the term has gone way off that initial meaning) is about turning everything into futile jokes; about taking one’s life entirely as an endless joke. Romanians will tell you a vast variety of jokes about Bulgarians, Jews, Arabs or Hungarians. Those living in South Romania will tell you jokes about those in the North and the other way around. Of course, one might argue, this happens mostly everywhere in this world. I agree, but not to the extent to which everything turns into a bunch of jokes and into mockery.

Just the other day, after going down the mountains, while waiting for the train, I was having dinner at one of Sinaia’s larger restaurants. Most of the restaurant was taken by this big foreign group. Romanians sitting at the few other tables left started being very curious about the group. They started making jokes about the menu of the group, jokes where the waiters joined in. The fact that the group had a glass of țuică included in the menu, that the members of the group came from Bulgaria, the way they were dressed (even though they looked similar to Romanians), everything was a good topic for mockery. And - in this case - the group had given these miștocari no real reason for all this moronic show.

Working in the tourist industry, I often overhear discussions between guides and drivers, hotel managers and staff, airline clerks and travel agents, so on and so forth. If a plane is late, they will start mocking at the airline (even though that delay is produced by weather conditions). If a group asks for no dairy products on a menu, that is a good reason to start mocking at the group’s being stupid. And, even though Romania is no heaven in terms of infrastructure, when Romanians travel abroad, they will look for the tiniest crack in the asphalt and start mocking, in a show meant to hide, once again, their frustrations, lack of (real) education or their very being narrow-minded.

But the best topic for a mișto is someone that is different. For Romanians do not like things or people that go off the standards (anyway, their standards that is). Using my trekking poles while going down the mountains this summer (poles that I happen to use in order to protect my knees), I turned into the main attraction for the clients of a village bar: “is there plenty of snow up there?” / “you comin’ from the North Pole?” a.o. A society the members of which otherwise would not even help an epileptic struck by a crisis in the middle of the street, is very curious and interested in the Difference. But not to the point of understanding it or helping the epileptic. Nay, rather to find a reason for mockery. To laugh at it and at the epileptic. For the mișto is funny only to the point where it becomes annoying (for its being endless and omnipresent) and painful.

Both good and bad things give enough reasons for one’s mișto. Romanians usually cover the bad situation-generated miștos with a supposedly intellectual saying: “A face haz de necaz” (En. to laugh at one’s misfortune). Found in a high dose in every Romanian’s blood, this saying entitles them to spend a day or two, a year or a lifetime mocking at everyone and everything, including themselves. As for the happiness-generated miștos, it is enough to go to a Romanian wedding and witness a joke pushed to the grotesque and even beyond, not to mention that infinite list of to dos and don’ts.

The mișto is so important for Romanians that there are TV series featuring this and nothing but this. And, apart from the 5 o’clock news (those about crimes, adultery, rapes and disasters including a lot of dead), respectively soccer for men and soap operas for women, these series are the most popular TV productions. Beyond anything, the mișto is one of the main reasons for the Romanian society’s being so stiff to development or for its very slow pace of evolution. A society that laughs out loud at someone’s belching on purpose in a classroom, at the traffic one blocks while idiotically parking the car, at corruption, at its own history, present or future cannot see much difference any time soon. And this is Romania.