After spending nine months teaching English in Romania, Jane Bradley, from Wolviston near Billingham, returns more than two years later and finds that some things will never change.

BEING back in Cluj was a bit of an unexpected culture shock. Maybe last time I was there it wasn't such a great leap - I was a poverty stricken student, living in a shared hovel with dubious heating and eating dodgy sausages - my new lifestyle in a concrete block apartment on a £40-a- month Romanian teacher's salary wasn't too different to what I already had.

But this time, I was firmly ensconced in Western, capitalist life when I decided to take a trip back to the post-Communist society. Not that I'm exactly flush for cash now, but I live in a nice flat, waste money on rocket salad and sun blush tomato bagels at the sandwich shop across the road from my office and can just about afford my increasingly problematic Topshop habit.

This time, the contrast was more dramatic.

In some ways, Romania is on the up - brand-new houses (as opposed to the dreary blocks of flats put up by the Communists) are popping up all over the city and travel agents are offering affordable package deals to Greece, Turkey and even Africa. But it seems the rich are getting richer and the poor are staying firmly where they are.

Amputees, who often had their limbs removed for fairly minor reasons because they couldn't afford expensive health care under the Communists, still beg all day just to buy a loaf of bread, and my friend Sally's day centre for disabled people is full of highly-intelligent and resourceful wheelchair users scraping by on a £20-a-month disability allowance and living five to a room.

She teaches them English and computer skills to help them get a job, but, as not many offices have disabled access (despite a new law insisting all new buildings should provide it), their options are limited.

So, for the first couple of days, I was walking around in a daze. I took every rude shop assistant personally and became more and more irritated by little Romanian eccentricities that used to wash over me when I lived there.

I must digress here. Romanians believe you can get appendicitis from a dirty swimming pool, that your ovaries will freeze if you walk around on a cold floor without slippers on, and all sorts of terrible things - a sore throat, even deafness and blindness - will strike you down if you're caught between draughts coming from two separate windows.

And nothing - I mean NOTHING - will make them doubt these gems of medical knowledge. I have tried drawing pictures of how the appendix cannot be touched by swimming pool water, and proving (with the help of my GCSE biology knowledge) how completely unconnected your chilly toes are to the well-insulated organs inside your body, but I failed in my quest.

The irony is that Romanian doctors are actually very skilled and incredibly well trained. On the one hand, GPs prescribe tea for absolutely everything from a cold to a stomach ulcer, which I'm not sure does a whole lot of good, but on the other, you can see a specialist for anything you like, as long as you're willing to wait in a queue for a few hours.

My dad was critically ill in Romania last year (a long story) and although the hospitals weren't a lot of fun to be in (the intensive care ward had a guard armed with a baton to keep out untimely visitors, a left-over of the Communist ideal of everybody having a job, no matter how useless) the doctors were fantastic and saved his life.

In fact, my dad's surgeon, Dr Lasca, has become a bit of a celebrity in Romania. A few weeks ago, another doctor went mad during an operation and chopped off the penis of the man he was operating on. Apparently, Dr Lasca is the only doctor in the country who has the expertise to reconstruct the missing organ and has been featured on chat shows across Romania. What a claim to fame.

But bizarre medical experiences aside, after a couple of days in Cluj, it began to feel like home again. I met up with all my Romanian friends, enjoyed the odd glass of tuica - homemade 80 per cent alcohol plum brandy - and even ended up at a ball at the school I used to teach at.

Walking into the Balul Bobocilor, the "Ducklings' Ball" to welcome the new students into the high school, I saw all my kiddies had grown up. The little 12-year-olds I had taught in the middle school two years ago were now in the ninth grade and were wearing make-up and the tiniest skirts I've ever seen. I must be getting old. And, worst of all, my favourite, a sweet little boy called Tudor, who used to pick flowers for me on the way to school every day, had turned into a sullen teenager. "I don't bring flowers anymore, teacher," he said, turning red and walking away.

A couple of days later, I got a call from the local newspaper, The Clujeanul. A journalist, Dana Depta, wanted to interview me. "We heard you came back and that is interesting for us," she told me. A slow news week? Imagine the headlines here: "A foreigner visits Darlington - twice!". I don't think so.

Whether or not the country enters the EU in 2007, Romania will always be Romania. They will always chase you with slippers in fear of your ovaries, they will never learn the concept of queuing and they will always believe that slanina (raw pig fat) is a delicious delicacy.

Hopefully, EU laws and investment won't change the country fundamentally, but just make it easier for people to survive, discourage the brain drain to the West, and once again enjoy being Romanian.

Watch this space.