Romania

Located in southeastern Europe between the Carpathian Mountains, the Danube River, and the Black Sea, Romania has a population of 22.5 million, with 90 percent identifying themselves as Romanian, 7 percent as Hungarian, and 3 percent as belonging to other ethnic groups (NIS 2001). Romanians are proud of their two-thousand-year history. The formation of Romanian language began in the year 100 C.E. when the Roman Empire conquered the local population, the Geto-Dacians, establishing a province covering much of the current Romanian territory. Following hundreds of years of foreign influence and organization in smaller principates, present-day Romania took shape in two stages by the union of Moldavia and Wallachia Provinces (1859) and Transylvania (1918).