Bucharest Meet Amsterdam
Life is nothing but a perpetual interrogation mark placed above that strange and intriguing image of our very own childhood… and where does it even start to provoke our conscience? Remember that grumpy and oversized street, your everyday neighbors that couldn't restrain
Condemned To Noise
Newspapers have recently brought to us the information that Bucharest is one of the noisiest cities in Europe. When it comes to bad things, few people do a better job than us at reaching the superlative. As far as I am concerned, I did not need the press to identify the
Bucharest – A Collection Of Smells
Photos by Dan Hayon excerpts My first adventure in the capital city, sometime in my early adolescence. Confusion and ecstasy, fear and the excitement of the unknown, as though in a foreign country where, strangely, everyone speaks my own language. A dizzying cocktail of
Sunday Morning. A Bourgeois Walk In A Post-Communist City
clockwise from top left: Smardan St. , Stavropoleos St. , Caru cu bere pub (2), Stavropoleos Church (3), Russian Church. Early Sunday morning before 10 A. M. , the city offers its first surprise. It is empty. The bare streets are visible in all their twisted length, without
The Town Within The Town
Government Palace in Victoriei Sq. a fragment from the novel Derapaj (Skid), Iaşi, Polirom 2006 Maria’s life glowed with a murky sort of splendor, her past, though committed to oblivion, constantly closing in on her and obscuring her thoughts like the spots of a solar
Bucharest, Images From A Backpack
No matter how much you tried to humanize it, to make a mental projection of it as seen through a magic lens which deforms the world and makes it look more beautiful than it actually is, no matter how much you looked for its weaknesses, you'll never find a new vision,
Current Houses
Several TV channels have been offering lately, especially on the lazier weekend days, shows about houses. They're filmed at more than sluggish speeds, with repeated shots and, usually, presented by voices that just can't contain their admiration for the ideas of
Stop And Show Me Something Green!
I used to play this game when I was a child, I played it so often that, from one day to the next, I always remembered to keep some leaves of grass, small leaves or even an entire plant, root and all, in my pockets, socks or sleeves. Little children played it too, later on.
Bucharest – Little Summit In Paris
I hadn't wanted to leave Bucharest during the NATO summit (2-4 April, 2008). Why should I have left? I'd have left after and not before it. To me Bucharest seems to be now exactly how it should be all the time. Less traffic in the center, more traffic on the outskirts
Horizontal Archeology
They used to call it little Paris for its French-style buildings and atmosphere. But now Bucharest looks like a little globalization of various epochs. The trouble is that you do not have to dig vertically for those epochs like archeologists, because builders have amassed
Mitica Is Dead
Revolution Square Last time when Bucharest was flooded, when in some districts the water rose as high as half of the Dacia car parked on the sidewalk, none of the Romanian reporters or newscasters failed to draw a comparison between our capital and a “European” one.
Bucharest – An Oddity Surviving Against All Odds
Bucharest (Rom. Bucureşti) has been some sort of oddity since the very first days of its existence. The legend has it that it was founded by a shepherd, named Bucur, and it was later named after him. Not remotely as glorious a godparent as the goddess of wisdom (the case