Introduction

It seems only fitting that this blog’s first entry should coincide with the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. After all, the author is nothing if not a child of that tumultuous 1989, when revolutions (velvety and otherwise) swept across Eastern Europe. Xenofornia is being born 20 years after Eastern Europe was dragged out of communism by young idealists who were not afraid to risk, and indeed lose, their lives. To honor that, I hope to keep the voice of this blog hopeful and open-minded, or at the very least, free of unnecessary sarcasm.

But the past makes only for half of the story, and half the author. The other one is firmly anchored in the present and was shaped by Western values acquired over years of American education and living and working on both coasts of the Unites States. If the first half was marked by oppression, the second was marked by opportunity. More than each half taken separately, it is the complicated and uneasy relationship between the two that shapes and powers this author.

At times funny, at times baffling, California seen through the lenses of a twenty something Romanian expat is, well, different.

So here it goes.