Interesting point you make re: small businesses - my friend runs a web development shop, and he was telling me about how they keep accounts, and "accounts", because declaring a profit is a good way to ensure a tax inspector will arrive and won't leave until you bribe him to go away.

Interestingly, this phenomenon isn't limited to Romania - a Latvian friend running a furniture company does the same thing for the same reason - for the first two years of his business he filed genuine books - the first year, they came asking for a bribe, he refused - the second year, they raided him and took all the machine tools - so now he just "makes a loss" every year and they don't bother him.

Similarly, a Lithuanian friend who used to run a telco found himself stuck in the middle of a lover's quarrel between the state telecoms regulator and another telco who had paid a bribe to win a tender, which he then bid for and made things awkward.

Corruption is no joke - I think many underestimate the chilling effect it has on everything from civil liberties to tourism to business to tax revenue collection - if your tax collectors are corrupt, you are well and truly on the road to hell.

Re: Romania feeling safe, you're right - which is in no small part why my experience in Bucharest was such a shock - it was at total odds with the Romania I'd experienced up to that point.