Iona

Editor's Note

Only when dialogue and tolerance begin to work at normal parameters, will truths be understood in their essence, and applied in the practice of life.  Hoping that a book may constitute a celebration even in these unpredictable, amazing, and occasionally grievous times,

Sightseeing

Visiting cities, a consumer tourist practice, is usually presented in the same image wrapping like shopping in a boutique, or attending to a show: one goes for the glossiest package, the funniest label, the wildest excitement vouched for. As a tourist product, a city is

Photographs - A Different Kind Of Bucharester Pedigree

7 January 1839: The Science Academy in Paris announced the arrival of a new art: photography. 39 days later, on 16 February 1839, the historic invention was reported in the Jassy magazine Albina Românească. The first camera – a daguerreotype – known and used in Bucharest

Everything Must Go, Or 5 Reasons Why I Stayed In Bucharest Instead Of Moving To Paris, Florence Or New York

I've always been fascinated by this city. Still, I can understand it doesn't easily translate to others. Here is a list of things one should try to perceive as charming, although - by all standards - they don't qualify as such:1. Filth. It is the quintessential

Bucharest As An Alternative Space

It may be said about some cities that they are theatrical; that – in other words – they look like a stage set. Take, for instance, Venice or Naples. It may be only an illusion, however, given a host of plays by Goldoni or Eduardo de Filippo whose plots revolve around

Recent Public Memorials In Bucharest: Paul Neagu's Century Cross

Paul Neagu's Century Cross was set up at Charles de Gaulle Plaza (the former TelevisionPlaza), Bucharest, in September 1997, as a memento of the 1989 anti-Communist riots. It is a six meter wide lenticular bronze disk with a large cross pattern on both faces made up

Everyone With The Bucharest He Deserves

After my first visit to Bucharest, in the mid-eighties, I returned to my native province with a splitting headache; I recounted the details of this anecdote elsewhere* – anyway, they had to do with two mugs of beer and a few mititei – spicy burgers – swallowed on a

The Birds Of The Sky

excerpts It was in 1985 when a young woman who had applied for an emigration visa to West Europe and was not granted it was looking for a master of Oriental practices to get strength and self-protection. She was afraid she might be arrested, and her intention was to acquire,

Bucharest Wit

In Romanian, Bucharest is a plural noun. This implies it is a multifaceted city, dazzling in its diversity. However, it is not a conglomerate of villages, of boroughs, like London or New York. There are not self-contained neighborhoods, each with its main street (High Street),

Chronicles Of An Optimist

excerpts NOISES OF THE CAPITAL For reasons I cannot exactly explain, the flow of ideas circulated by the independent press has strikingly dwindled to a mere trickle. One can only put it down to the times of fatigued irritation we are living through as we wait for the much

Magic Lantern Projections: A Dialogue With Octogenarian Actress Dina Cocea, Honorary Citizen Of Bucharest

The oldest recollections of actors of your generation used to begin with the scene of a provincial school festival: the future star winning a well-known, sympathetic audience made up of parents, grandparents, family friends, touched aunts. The memory of past reality is overwhelmed

Familiars Of The Old Royal Court

excerpt …sage citoyen du vaste univers. [1] La Fontaine With you I liked to live through, in the memory, my thirty years of voyages, with you, again, should you not feel bored, I shall live through, in the memory, my childhood and early youth. This will entail returning