Pop

At Grandiflora

excerpt In the town square, behind Gustav Café, there is the variety entertainment ale-house with the strange name Bucharest Hotel (it has room only for women-artists), Mr. Cocoşel's winter public house. Ancient house, rather long and low, the hotel twinkles its

Victory Street In Autumn

The Bucharest people have the right, in the beautiful autumn days – especially on Sundays – to populate Victory Street, so that between 11 and 12 the carriage traffic becomes impossible. From Capsa and up to Palace Square, especially on the pavement, there is a true

A Boyar's Sin

excerpt I couldn't make out too much from the hunter's stubborn taciturnity. Sandu, the publican, kept talking again and he was either unable to tell me or feigned to be ignorant of the things that I wanted to find out. And he tried to dazzle me by talking too

Tănase Scatiu

excerpt At Scatiu's they had prepared two tables: one for the minister and for the high-brow people, in the large dining-room; the other, for the rabble, in a room downstairs. Scatiu's plans were really great; he wanted to offer the minister a feast of fifty people,

Old And New Squires

excerpts Chapter XV. Scenes of Social Life The beautiful autumn days of the year 1817 had already flitted along with the joys they bring to pass for the inhabitants of Romania. Winter had made quite an early appearance and the western wind had by now started to blow in

The Story Of Romanian Gastronomy

excerpt With this, we can consider that the era of medieval, traditional cuisine was over and the modern Romanian cuisine begins. In the same year the young Miclescu couple went on their honeymoon – 1880, the first Romanian cookbook with Latin characters was printed.

Editor's Note - Memento Vivere

It seems almost provocative to launch such an issue on the local pleasures, pastimes and delights, while nowadays a troublesome Romania appears as plunged into unending economic and social difficulties, striving to cope with various shortcomings and weaknesses. However,

Woolen Gardens

European travelers such as Antonio Maria del Chiaro were struck long time ago by the uncommon abundance of woolen carpets in each Romanian home, be it aristocratic, bourgeois or peasant. Carpets were laid mainly onto the walls of the rooms, but they also covered the beds,

On Snatched Souls And Their Stories

Popular belief has it that Death is an old crone, carrying a scythe. She scythes people and snatches away their soul. Or she sips their breath and again, snatches their soul. Or simply touches them lightly but cruelly with her frozen wing. And snatches their soul. As a child

A Last Judgment That Lacks Heaven

The relevance of iconography for the study of the history of mentalities has been uncontested in the Western cultural space for the last few decades. The seminars organized in Aix-en-Provence on the relationship between iconography and the history of mentalities as far back

The Romanian Death Iconography Or A Different Kind Of Assisted Death

In the field of iconography the rhetoric of the end manifested itself initially as a history of silences, the absence of the motif being possibly equally significant as its presence since, as Michel Vovelle demonstrated, images interest us as expression of a selective, oblique

The Earth. Beliefs Of The Romanian People II

THE END OF THE EARTHI wrote in my other books about the popular beliefs regarding the future ending of the world and, consequently, of humankind as well as of the Earth we are living on. It goes without saying that the stories about the destruction of the Earth are scarce