I first met Stefan Constantinescu shortly after arriving in Helsinki. He’s an easy-natured guy who will invite you to sit down if you look lonely and after a few minutes you get the sense that he’ll tell you anything if you bother to ask. We talked about Texas, telephones, and women. As the conversation veered towards politics (this was during the afterglow of Obama’s inaugural), Stefan said something like, “Rather than bang your head against the wall trying to change an unfair society, it makes better sense to move to a country that matches your values.” I strongly disagree with this notion for pragmatic and sentimental reasons but like many hard truths, it stuck with me.

Stefan and I met for dinner on a semi-regular basis to chat about politics, work, and the weather (a subject not to be taken lightly in Finland). We also explored the possibility of opening a taco stand in Saigon (still on the table). Like many of us, Stefan has a love-hate relationship with America but his adamant refusal to return to the States intrigued me and I figure this is an ideal place to begin my series of interviews with people about America (if you’re game, email me).

Here’s Stefan’s authorized bio: Stefan is a college dropout who spent 4 years in University taking every “Introduction to…” course offered. After realizing that he had no idea what he wanted to do, he got a job working with computers. In his spare time he began writing a blog about mobile phones, and after a year his hobby turned into a full-time occupation. Thanks to the internet’s ability to let him work from any cafe with an open hotspot, he moved to Finland to be closer to the number one handset manufacturer, Nokia. Like almost any young person, Stefan was eager to change the world. He joined Nokia and left his blogging gig, with the goal of becoming a product manager of a device that would sell millions. A miscalculated move cost him his job and cut his career short after 13 months with the company. Stefan is now writing again, and is also more humbled. Instead of trying to change the world, he is now looking forward to the world changing him. He plans to relocate to Asia, a place he has never visited, sometime in 2010.

And now some questions…

1. Your track record includes Romania, New York City, Texas, and Helsinki — so where are you from?
The “where are you from?” question always stops me in my tracks since I don’t know whether I want to tell the unabridged version or just save time and say the United States.

I was born in Romania during the 1980s. My family was given passage to the new world after Ceauşescu was killed. My father served some jail time for anti communist protesting, so they wanted to “reward” him with a visa. My mother never wanted to leave Romania, it was my father who insisted. It took a year to get the paperwork in order, and during that time we lived in Italy. Once that was finished we landed in Florida, stayed there for yet another year, but the climate was unbearable so we packed all of our belongings into the back of the free Ford Taurus provided by the American government and went to New York.

If I had to pick any one place in terms of being the most influential to who I am today, it would be New York City. I spent over a decade living exclusively in the borough of Queens. From the fantastic teachers that shaped the way I think, to the multicultural experiences I had on a near daily basis, to the endless potential for entertainment, NYC delivers everything you would ever want, as long as you work hard enough to actually earn it.

My family succeeded at achieving the America dream by buying a house on Long Island. This was in the late 1990s, before the housing bubble burst. Once I started going to University at Stony Brook, my mom heard about hospitals in Texas paying NY wages, and that living down south was literally half the cost. After some research we packed our bags again and moved to a suburb just north of Fort Worth. We flipped our barely 4 year old house on the island for twice what we paid. With debt erased and a clean slate in a new city, life restarted.

I hated Texas since day 1, so when I got a chance to become a professional blogger I purchased a ticket to Finland one month after accepting the job offer. I had a dream to get a job at Nokia, which I accomplished, but that’s another story.

2. Do you see yourself as an American?
Having lived over half my life in America, you’d think I’d consider myself an American, but frankly I don’t. Once you stepped through the front door of my parent’s house, you entered Romania circa 1988. The stereo was always playing either Queen or Modern Talking, the furniture was dark and heavy, art was hung up on every square inch of the wall, English was never spoken inside, and dinner with everyone at the table was a daily custom that was never broken. As liberal as I am with how I dress and how I view the world, there are some ideals and morals I was raised with that America probably hasn’t seen since before the feminist movement.

What is an American anyway? To be an American is to be an immigrant hungry for bettering yourself and the lives of your children. If you’re not doing that, then you’re just enjoying a ridiculously high standard of living and material possessions, both at prices far lower than what the rest of the world pays.

3. Will you live in America again?
When I graduated high school, me and my friends all jumped into a car and we drove across America. I was shocked to see that every city is pretty much exactly like every other city. The same stores, the same television channels, the same layout with a huge mall in the center of town, movie theatre attached, and a TGIF across the street. America, for a country so large and with such a huge population, is literally copy and paste from sea to shining sea.

For me to go back, rent prices in NYC would have to fall. Drastically fall. That’s it really. Call it being ignorant of the pockets of culture on the west coast or buried deep in fly-over country. Call it being arrogant for wanting to rub elbows with Wall Street bankers, super models, journalists, musicians, and people from every single country in the world. Call it nostalgia to want to return to where I grew up. Call my desire for New York City whatever you want, but to me, those 5 boroughs, that is America.

Sentimental feelings aside, I love the fact that I don’t have to worry about my health care here in Finland. I also dig the education system, which is free, and saves me the $40,000 a year I was surrendering to SUNY Stony Brook. Words can not describe how awesome it is to be on a 3 hour flight and then land in a country with a totally different language, culture, and views on life. The population of the EU is roughly half a billion people compared to America’s 300 million, but the 27 nations that make up that union are diverse enough to make travel actually interesting. People always say that Europeans are more well traveled compared to Americans. That’s because in America if you travel for 3 hours you end up in a state with the same commercials airing on television, the same gigantic mall, the same this, the same that, it’s all just the same. What’s the incentive to leave the house? In Europe you take a train ride and end up in a genuinely totally different place.

I like that.

4. Is there anything you miss about America that you don’t find in Europe?
Puerto Rican girls.

5. What song says ‘America’ to you?
Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ and pretty much anything by Johnny Cash

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Acid Pauli w. Johnny Cash — I See a Dark(er)ness
Because Stefan mentioned Johnny Cash, I’ll take that as a sign to repost this great mash-up from 4 years back. You’ve got Acid Pauli of the Notwist throwing a grindy acid track underneath Johnny Cash covering Will Oldham and the result is an emotional piece of glam pop techno chintz. Perfect for the drive home this Thanksgiving.