1989

22 Spătarului Street, Bucharest (see also in Romanian with illustration)  The siblings Béatrice and Hrandt Avakian set up their collections independently, nevertheless evincing a shared predilection towards Eastern art, to be accounted for among others, perhaps, by the

political scientist Let us start from the end: thank God Romanians are Orthodox, have not totally renounced the traditional values of the village (where 45% of them are still living, a record in Europe!), do not seem to show an ethnically-grounded morbid penchant for suicide,

Minimal Joys  To fully take delight in minimal joys – here is one of the irreducible experiences of joy in the East of Europe before 1989. The minimal joys mustn't be confounded with the simple joys. It is one thing to enjoy a piece of hot bread and a glass of wine

Corneliu Bucur has been the manager of the ASTRA Museum of Traditional Folk Civilization since 1990. In 1965, he graduated the Babes Bolyai Faculty of History and Philosophy in Cluj. In 1981 he presented his doctoral thesis, with the following theme: Introduction in the

Chapter IVexcerpts The doorbell rang earnestly. I had noticed, during my long career as an art scholar, that all of my doorbells manifested a sort of unexpected zeal, an eagerness that suggested that these tiny technical devices strove to reach the condition of an animate

It was not easy for Romanian literature to evolve up to Ioana Bradea's novel, to its so provokingly violent title (itself a sophisticated, impudent blend of meanings and connotations as long as the dictionary designates just one object: a pipe)! And to think that once

One of these days, a good friend of mine reminded me of how we used to court. It was his way of laying stress on the snail-like progress of things from Mrs. Grundy dates to the first touch or hand squeeze, and then to their ultimate glory – the kiss, which usually happened

excerpt Diogenes remembers he was not even ten when, together with other children, he would creep in mock secrecy among the neighbors' maize shocks, particularly if the neighbors in question happened to be in possession of a daughter of marriageable age, known to repair

Romania is a national state, at least that is what every Romanian constitution agrees upon, and more than 20 national minorities, which are represented in the Romanian parliament, live on the territory of this state. It is not at all easy to live among such ethnic diversity,

I was born and I spent my childhood in the capital of the country that is called Romania, a state that at that time had prided itself for about a decade with the name of Greater Romania, which was a creation of the preceding generation, but also the outcome of a long series

The Ukrainians of Romania live in several compact, or relatively compact, areas in the counties of Maramures, Suceava, Tulcea, Caras-Severin and Timis. Historical sources state that Ukrainians have been dwelling in the northern part of the country (Maramures and Suceava)

My grandfather Mehmed Ali was an old-fashioned Turk. He wore a long beard and the traditional Turkish costume. Each morning he would sit down next to the charcoal, the earthenware pot filled with live coals, sip his coffee and puff his long-stemmed chibouk. He would often