top of page
Romania
Binecuvântată
Phonetic pronunciation: beenéh-coo-vân-táhta
Language: Romanian
Meaning: Blessed
 
​
Instinct and will. Lucidness and confidence. Everything in Ana-Bella's life took place as and when it should – or, at least, that’s how she believes it did. She grew up among books, in a countryside oasis that protected her from the innumerous rationings of Soviet communism, and soon embarked on an optimistic migration, free from bitterness or unrealism. Her Portuguese is inclusive, her diction is zen, her posture serene and weet, safe and satisfied. "You have to let it flow," she says. Because, with more or less heart, life will decide the rest.

​

Ana-Bella Miheșan
Born in Cluj-Napoca, Romania
40 years old
​

"It is a pain in my heart". Ana-Bella MiheÈ™an has lived in Portugal since 2015 and has yet to meet anyone who, upon discovering she’s a native of Romania, knows more about that country than merely some prejudiced cliché about gypsies. Telling her that her homeland is the birthplace of Dracula also reflects little knowledge about her country, but it‘s still an upgrade, since it was the real person of Vlad III, whose nickname "Drakul" translates to "The Impaler", that inspired Bram Stoker to create the fictional character of the charming vampire that successive generations of bibliophiles and film buffs from around the world have been dreaming of – in nightmares or wet versions. People never happen to know that Romania was the home, for example, of aviation pioneer Traian Vuja or insulin creator biologist Nicolae Paulescu. They don’t even mention the Dadaism founding poet Tristan Zara, the avant-garde sculptor Constantin BrâncuÈ™i, the renowned soprano Angela Gheorghiu, nor the iconic Nadia Comăneci who was the first gymnast in history to obtain a maximum score of 10 points in the Olympic Games.

​

Ana-Bella's first lesson is that in Romania people aren’t all gypsies. Only a percentage of the population belongs to the Romani ethnicity, as it happens with Portugal itself. Some efforts at integration were developed during Nicolae Ceausescu's communist dictatorship, but the reality is that, after the fall of that regime in 1989, the Romanian gipsy community returned to a lifestyle of their own, between nomadic begging and the sedentary abundance that wealthier families show off architecturally, in palaces. In her second lesson, Ana-Bella clarifies why it isn’t surprising that Romania has given the world several leading figures in different areas of science and culture: “In addition to the country having a rich culture and a very beautiful landscape, people there are very cultured, well-educated and polite”.

​

Ana-Bella fits that picture: she’s a trained physiotherapist, followed that career inspired by her own mother (who wanted to be a doctor at a time when her family only approved that choice for men) and speaks several languages, including not only Romanian, English and Greek at an academic level, but also Spanish learned from watching soap operas, Italian acquired while working in a company of that nationality and Portuguese, which she has been improving since she settled in Santa Maria da Feira. It is not surprising, therefore, that, in a conversation, she mixes two or three of these languages, in a way that, at least to Latin ears, always sounds natural.

​

Education issues have shaped her, in fact, since childhood. On the one hand, until the age of 11 she lived in a regime in which school performance was mainly seen as a reflection of the character and temperament of an individual, and she complemented the rigor of that formal education with the domestic intellectual freedom provided by her parents, who always sought to stimulate the curiosity of their five children and have them research whatever they wanted in the “two huge libraries at home”. A chemical engineer, her father was a “staunch communist”, but Ana-Bella assures that he wouldn’t have supported the regime if he had experienced the hardships that affected other families. “We never felt the pains of communism very much because we never lacked what to eat. We lived part of the year in the campagna [countryside], we had everything we needed at home – meat, eggs, vegetables – and my mother prepared everything – made fruit juices, bread sweets, etc. I know there were people who spent hours in queues because food was rationed and they could only buy a small portion of milk and bread for each family, but we never lacked anything. If I had, maybe it would be different…”.

​

Following the same logic, it was not in search of a better life that Ana-Bella left Romania. Her first experience as an emigrant was in Greece, where two of her brothers had already moved. Having always been very close, the siblings missed each other and in 2008 the physiotherapist decided to move to Athens to see her nephews growing, starting by working as a tour guide for groups of Romanians sightseeing along the seaside spots in the city of Katerini. "I also did a lot of physiotherapy there, including for two football teams, and I was even thinking about opening my own clinic," she recalls. The country's economic situation was already worsening and fears were mounting, but that was not what affected her the most. What hit the hardest and changed everything again was love.

​

Leonel is to blame. Ana-Bella had met the Portuguese injection molding designer in Romania in 2006, when he accompanied some football player friends on a competitive trip to the country, and the emotional connection was fast and intense. Today, both of them recognize that, “yes, it was love at first sight”, and they say it without irony, with a serene security. That certainty may come from the fact that the relationship had two different cycles. First, the long-distance dating wasn’t easy and the separation came naturally after a short while. Years later, though, when a brother-in-law of Ana-Bella who worked as “a coach and was crazy about football” asked her to contact her Portuguese ex-boyfriend so he could help out with “something related to S. L. Benfica club”, the two ex-lovers rediscovered one another, finding themselves more emotionally available and matured. "Maybe it was just a matter of timing... In 2006 it wasn’t the right time for us, but in 2014 we resumed contact, we became more united and, as being separate was going to be a catastrophe again, we decided to get together". Ana-Bella was the one who emigrated. “I felt that, as a woman, I should be the one to move”, she says, and, after visiting Romania to explain everything to her parents, in 2015 she headed to Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport, in Oporto.

​

“It was the 6th of December and I had a valise [suitcase] so big, so big, that I just thought: ‘Is this really what I want?’”, she recalls. "I was a little scared, it was going to change my whole life... But, when I saw Leo at a distance with that beautiful smile, all my worries were gone". Ana-Bella never felt any doubts again and, when analyzing her own path, she considers that everything happened as and when it should have. “It wasn’t a difficult change. It all went smoothly, as it always has in my life. I had a very strong instinct, I felt that this was really my man… I don't know…”. (Suddenly, he lowers the TV volume on the match he’s watching and asks her from the other end of the room: "You don’t know? Haven’t you looked at me?". He was listening to the whole thing. They both laugh).

​

The welcome in the foreign land was beyond reproach. Leonel's family hosted the Romanian bride very well, his friends quickly became her companions too and the biggest mess was only with the Language. “At first it was chaotic”, says Ana-Bella. “With all the languages ​​I know, I mixed everything up and I even started to speak Greek here. Then I would give up and speak more in Spanish and English, because I had no confidence”. The TV shows on cooking helped out and, in 2017, the house was finally in order: with the birth of Maria, only Portuguese was spoken at home, whether good or bad.

​

In this new country, there was no xenophobia – it never seems to apply to beautiful women, in fact – and, "among very dear people", the only discomfort felt in Santa Maria da Feira by the Romanian physiotherapist was with its bureaucrats. At post offices, for example, it was very difficult to pick up mail orders because, when asked to show a proof of identity, all Ana-Bella got at the time was her Romanian Citizen Card and that document doesn’t include a signature. Only with the intervention of the municipal Migrations Office was it possible for her to overcome the Portuguese administrative intransigence.

​

Meanwhile, Ana-Bella's life goes on between her doing her chores at home, caring for the small and lively Maria, taking zumba and body-jumping classes, and, of course, her practice of physiotherapy and massage sessions, in which she practices deep manipulation and applies all her better energy. On certain days, she takes refuge in Portuguese churches that, although not orthodox as those of her home country, still provide her the tranquility she seeks. “Any church will do when what one wants is the feeling of peace. We can pray to God anywhere”, she proclaims.

​

From time to time, someone still tries to guess her origin from her accented Portuguese. There are those who thinks she’s Spanish, Brazilian or from some nationality other than Romanian, and when she gives them the correct answer, the reaction is rarely good. "It makes me sad because it isn’t true what people think of Romania and I don’t like them to talk about appearances", she confesses. “We shouldn't talk about what we don't know because people are very suggestible and then they get the wrong idea, like the one that Romania only has gypsies. Of course this isn’t true! We’re very humble and we didn’t have many political opportunities for development, but the country has almost everything, many good things, strong individualities and, every year that I go there, everything is more modern and more spectacular”.

​

Despite the flaws of its people in terms of geopolitical culture, Portugal has been a good host. Ana-Bella says she was welcomed, that she feels “very well integrated here” and that Santa Maria da Feira is “a wonderful city, with tranquility, with clean people and without violent events like robberies and things like that”. Other Romanian words that translate her life on Portuguese soil are "siguranţă", "libertate" and "încredere" – security, freedom and trust – but the physiotherapist continues to state that "binecuvântată" is the one that most literally represents her life. It is "blessed", she says. Looking at her notes on experiences, dates and sensations that she didn’t want to forget mentioning in this conversation, Ana-Bella feels that the list is both reductive and just. “I could say a lot, but the main thing is that I was very lucky and that I can only be thankful,” she states. "I’ve always been where my heart felt well and it feels very well here". â– 

​

​

bottom of page