[on his biography] In 1981 my father visited a congress as a dentist in West-Germany and decided to stay; my mother and I followed him in 1983. I probably never really got used to it [living in Germany] and always asked myself if it wouldn't be better to return to Romania. After I graduated [in Stuttgart] I went to Bucharest to study, in spite of my parents wishes, that I should rather study in Berlin or Munich or even in America, in Los Angeles or New York. But I didn't want to live in another country one more time. It already had been a traumatic experience for me as a child to come from Romania to Germany. (...) I grew up in Cluj, the Transylvanian city of Klausenburg, which is in the north of the country [Romania]. The cultural influence of Germany and the former Austro-Hungarian Empire is still strongly visible there, far more than in Bucharest, which is in the south of Romania. In Germany I was seen as a Romanian immigrant and when I returned [to Romania] I was seen there as a German. Since I didn't return to my homeland [Transylvania], but went instead to the main capital [Bucharest], it took me a few years anyway to feel comfortable and to call it my home.
