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Can you locate all 50 provinces of Spain?
Can you locate all 16 states of Germany?
Can you locate all 12 provinces of the Netherlands?
Can you locate all 20 regions of Italy?
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Romania's counties are easier to learn as historical provinces than as shapes. The country was assembled from Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania and a few smaller lands, and the county map still follows those seams: the Carpathians split the interior from the plains, and most counties sit on one side of that arc or the other. Learn where the arc runs and where the Danube turns, and the map falls into place. This page is the whole set, and the game asks you to put each name where it belongs.
A județ is Romania's top level of local government. Each has an elected county council and a prefect appointed by the national government, and each takes its name from its capital city or from a river or mountain, with the exceptions that make it worth learning: Bistrița-Năsăud and Caraș-Severin are two places joined into one name, and Maramureș is a historical land. Bucharest is not part of any county. It is a municipality with county rank, and the county of Ilfov wraps around it on every side.
Counties were restored in 1968, after eighteen years in which the communist state had replaced them with regions on the Soviet model. The map has barely moved since, so most of the names match the pre-war ones. The statistical grouping above the counties is the eight development regions, which are not governments at all: they exist to share out European funds and to publish statistics, and they are what this game uses for its groups.
The best clue on the ground is the number plate. A Romanian plate starts with a one or two letter code for the county, which is the same code the ISO list uses: B for Bucharest, CJ for Cluj, TM for Timiș, CT for Constanța. Like the rest of the road system it is otherwise national, so the plate is the one regional marker a photo is likely to carry.
Two pairs cause most of the mistakes. Dâmbovița and Dolj both begin with a D and sit on opposite sides of the Olt, one beside Bucharest and one far to the west. And Argeș, Arad and Alba are three A counties in three parts of the country, in the south, the west and the centre.
Each group can be played on its own from the start dialog. The regions are the best way in: six or seven counties at a time is a manageable bite, and the groups line up with the historical lands rather than cutting across them.
Ilfov has no city of its own to point at, since its administrative centre is Bucharest, which is not inside it. It is the small county that surrounds the capital, and the way to place it is to place Bucharest first. It is also one of the smallest counties by area, which makes it a tap target to aim for rather than a shape to recognise.
Tulcea is the end of the Danube, where it splits into the delta before the Black Sea. The delta is the largest and best preserved in Europe, and most of the county is channels, lakes and reed beds that no road crosses. On the map it is the county with a ragged eastern edge, above Constanța and east of Galați.
Timiș is the largest county by area, in the far southwest on the border with Serbia and Hungary, and its capital Timișoara is the city where the 1989 revolution began. It belongs to the historical Banat, a land shared with Serbia and Hungary, which is why it is the one that feels furthest from Bucharest.
Covasna is the small mountain county in the centre-east, up against the curve of the Carpathians. It and its neighbour Harghita are the two counties where the Hungarian-speaking Székely community is the majority, which is why their names are often heard in two languages.
41, plus the municipality of Bucharest, which has the same rank as a county but is not part of any. The set has been the same since 1968, when counties were restored after the communist period of regions, and that is why the game has 42 targets.
The Romanian word for a county, and the top level of local government. Each has an elected council and a prefect appointed by the government, who represents the state in the county. The next level down is the commune, of which there are over three thousand, which is too many for a map game.
A statistical and planning grouping of the counties, used to distribute European Union funds. They have no government of their own. Seven are blocks of four to seven counties, and the eighth is Bucharest with Ilfov. They roughly follow the historical lands: Nord-Est is Moldavia, Sud-Muntenia and Sud-Est are Wallachia and the Danube coast, and Centru and Nord-Vest are Transylvania.
The number plate, which begins with the county code: B for Bucharest and IF for Ilfov, CJ for Cluj, BV for Brașov, and so on. It is the one regional signal in the picture, since signs, markings and bollards are the same across the country.
Timiș, in the southwest, by area. Ilfov is the smallest county, and Bucharest, which is not a county, is smaller still. Bucharest is also the most populous by a wide margin.
Dâmbovița and Dolj, which share an initial and sit far apart. Argeș, Arad and Alba, three A counties in the south, the west and the centre. And Vâlcea with Vrancea, which look alike on a list and are in the southwest and the east.
More European maps in the same shape: Poland Voivodeships, Portugal Districts and Ireland Counties.
