Greater Govanhill spoke to Daniel Radu, co-founder of Transylvania Shop and Coffee. Daniel discusses his life previous to opening the shop in 2020 and his love for Christmas trees.

Portrait by Simon Murphy. This photo forms part of his Govanhill series. Check out Simon’s Instagram for more.

Daniel Radu is one half of the couple behind Transylvania Shop and Coffee, which opened on Victoria Road in May 2020. Just as many businesses were considering closing up for good, Alex and Daniel took a leap of faith and, despite the challenges of the past year, their business has thrived. Not only that, but they have livened up the neighbourhood with their Christmas market, Halloween spectacular and Pride celebrations – taking just about any opportunity to bring something a little extra to Govanhill. I used to go horse-riding all the time back home. This is where this outfit is from. I still have four horses back there. My plan is to find a wee farm and bring them here.

In Romania, horses are an important part of our culture. They even have their own special day. On the 7th January, St John’s Day, horses are taken on a tour through the town and priests go out and bless them.

The horses that have been at our events in Govanhill belong to a friend. There are rescue horses and ponies that are now used to comfort children or people with disabilities.

I am not a city boy, I’m from a village. I used to live in the Highlands. When we had to move to Glasgow in 2016, I started crying, saying ‘I hate it, I hate it’. But I got used to it.

I’ve been here for such a long time, this is my home. This is everything to me now. But I still like to go to Romania for holidays.

During the pandemic we were made redundant from our jobs in hotels. We looked at our savings and went to the bank to see if they would lend us more to start something of our own. I wanted to be independent.

We weren’t sure how to introduce our food to new customers. When you come to our home, we always have a bottle of wine on the table and a platter with salami, cheese, eggplant, all sorts of food. We decided to do the same and offer everyone a chance to taste our products first.

We are Christian Orthodox. When we are fasting, we are not allowed to eat anything that comes from an animal. So we have lots of vegan food too.

Read another profile from our Behind the Portrait series here

Around 95 percent of our customers are British. It’s the opposite of most Romanian shops. People are even coming from Mull and Iona to buy things from our shop. It’s crazy.

I think it’s because we are different. Some people say it’s because we are gay. I think it’s because we offer something to the community. We are very open. We are always telling people that we are happy about where we come from.

We have decorations in our shop that belonged to my boyfriend’s great great grandmother. They’re more than 150 years old. Normally they are given to a daughter for her wedding present.

There’s a huge difference between the people in Transylvania and the people in Bucharest. We are much more relaxed. They alway seem like they’re running around. We’re not in a rush.

My grandma is very proud. But I can’t call her just my grandma. She is like my mother and my father too. She used to take care of us.

People are people. My grandma was very open minded about me being gay. Who cares what you’re doing as long as it’s not causing anyone harm.

We have big plans, but want to take everything step-by-step. We just opened a second shop, but if you go too fast, you get complaints. At the moment, this is enough.

There are not a lot of flowers on Victoria Road. Once I saw many bees trying to feed from the flowers for sale outside the hardware shop. I thought ‘there is something wrong here’. So I plan to put out barrels of flowers to attract more insects and birds.

I think we should all plant more trees. I used to buy Christmas trees that were on sale and plant them by the hotel we worked at in the Highlands. Earlier this year, I went to visit them and they were so big. It made me very happy.

We never had trouble, but some kids stole some flowers once. I was like ‘ok you can steal them, it doesn’t matter’. As long as they take care of them, they can steal them. What can I do?

I love to be active. When my grandma was tired, she used to say ‘look at the nice weather, go outside and leave me alone’. Now, I love to go walking and camping with my boyfriend and dog. I like discovering new places.

I met Alex on Facebook through a mutual friend. We got chatting and after four days he flew to Bucharest to come and see me. He said he was coming to meet a friend, but he was lying – he came to see me.

I feel like the shop is our baby. Even when we’re taking days off, if our staff are very busy, we’ll come in and help out. From working in hospitality, we know how to speak to customers, how to deal with complaints.

We have our standards. We clean everything. I think we’re a little obsessed. If the council are late, we’ll clean the street outside too. We are more than happy to do that here.

Many people have preconceptions about Romanians. We’ve had people tell us that if they had known that Romanians were like us, they wouldn’t have voted for Brexit. We changed their minds.

This profile first appeared in Issue 4 of our magazine. If you missed bagging a copy, you can purchase one here.