Nic

Proposal: To Rename Bucharest As Sadrest

Go take a walk down the boulevards of Bucharest these days and breathe deeply. With your nostrils widely open. What a wonderful scent of spring! Without feeling it, in this package made up of the perfume of snowdrops and violets, you have just breathed in some sulfur oxides,

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

Gambrinus Ale House, A Stylish Ruin

Peeled off plaster, broken windows, rats scuttling at ease day and night. And above all, the filth. Complete and utter filth reigning supreme over a piece of downtown Bucharest. But also over a piece of our past. The only part still living is the sign above the door, reading

The Construction Of Saint Joseph’s Cathedral

Red bricks are the distinctive feature of this construction, next to the white rosette, a huge round window above the main portal: thereby, the reader has most certainly recognized the Archbishopric of Saint Joseph's Cathedral. It is one of the landmark buildings in

Suspicious Fires

The house at 8, Visarion St. In recent years, many owners of monument mansions have deliberately left them to decay, or have set fire to them in order to be able to demolish them – Assan’s mill devastated by suspicious fire.  Culture Minister Adrian Iorgulescu has

New Buildings And Old Facades In Bucharest

1 2 1. Hotel on Victoria Road. The remake of the former National Theatre façade kept this operation away from the attacks against the tall buildings from the historic center. 2. The replacement of the old buildings from Lipscani area. The pseudo-classical pediment and

The “Black Hole” Historical Center

from left: Old Court ruins, Manuc's Inn, Lime-Tree Inn galleries, passageway on Lipscani St. The other day I was wandering through the Historical Center of Bucharest, the capital city, that is, the place from where the sun rises for all of us Romanians. The name –

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.

Michel Bührer: Cannibal City

Michel Bührer: Bucharest A Cannibal City and White Billboards exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, 10-11 2008 Bucharest, a “Little Paris” of the ghettoThe exhibition of the Swiss Journalist Michel Bührer, Bucharest, a Cannibal City/White Billboards

Blizzard In Bucharest

a fragment from The Blind, Chapter Two of Corpuri de iluminat/ Dark Bodies Through Sfântul Ştefan, beyond the old Height and over the tramline in Bărăţiei, a phanariot and decayed Bucharest drained under the snow; a balcony fallen onto its side reminds you that once,

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

Primitive? In Great Company!

As I was translating with much esteem Mr. Vintila Mihailescu's text entitled Neo-Western-Supremacism, it suddenly dawned on me: the inyourpocket presentation he discusses, one fascinated with primitive Romania, shows an attitude somewhat similar to that of Englishman