Circle of friends

No, not the Quakers. This is the local expat group in Timisoara.

Started out with all the expat NGO workers getting together once a month to hang out and discuss any issues which had come up. Then it expanded to include Romanian NGO workers as well. Now, it's basically an "all are welcome" group, but English is the main language.

I met some Americans, some Romanians and a Spaniard-Scot. I spent most of the evening talking with the American representative of Nestle and two Romanian guys. We ended up going to Arcade for dinner. Arcade is a lovely restaurant in the Bastion, the remaining walls of Timisoara's defrence against the Turks. The food is great, the prices reasonable and it's got a really nice atmosphere.

We talked a lot about the differences in marketing products in Romania and the USA. One of the biggest is "Milky" which is basically a chocolate-covered wafer with flavoured cream in the middle. Quite tasty. Turns out it wouldn't do well in North America. Why not? Not enough chocolate! The chocolate on it is very thin (spray-painted on, as he said) and Americans like thick chocolate. We also discussed the Milky commercials and various marketing strategies. All in all, a very interesting evening.