July 2009

Ci-Co; Romania during communism

by Craig Turp July 22, 2009 Bucharest

 The Romanian History Museum (MNIR) recently launched a major new website, www.comunismulinromania.ro, the front-end of a project designed to look at the communist period in Romania in a ‘serious, objective way.’ Mainly a photo archive, we liked the communist-era adverts the best. It’s good to know that if Bucharest In Your Pocket had been around [...]

4 comments Read the full article →

Report what Mazare does with Constanta, not what he wears

by Craig Turp July 21, 2009 Romania

 Scandal! The mayor of Constanta, Radu Mazare – who is not, we should point out, our favourite Romanian politician by any means, and we would usually be the last people to jump to his defence – has been in the news the past couple of days following his somewhat controversial appearance on a catwalk at [...]

4 comments Read the full article →

Catch this villain!

by Craig Turp July 17, 2009 Bucharest

 From the website of a Bucharest hostel: EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!!!!! REMEMBER: 1 EURO=~4.3 LEI/RON/NEW LEI (THEY ARE ALL THE SAME THING) There is a guy who scams travelers in Bucharest, please watch out for him and help us catch him!!! He is blond, tall, well dressed and speaks very good English, he says his name is [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

That Bucharest cinema experience

by Craig Turp July 16, 2009 Bucharest

 Number one son was seven yesterday, so as part of his birthday celebrations we took him to the cinema to see Ice Age 3, in 3D. Not the greatest film ever made (not even the greatest Ice Age film ever made) but as the target audience is seven year olds, not thirtysomethings, who are we [...]

11 comments Read the full article →

Map of Bucharest, 1979

by Craig Turp July 13, 2009 Bucharest

 We cleared out the attic and dusted off a few old books at the weekend, including an absolute gem: a tourist guide to the capital written by Dan Berindei and Sebastian Bonifaciu, published in Romanian in 1979. Thankfully lacking the usual homage to Romania’s president at the time which blight so many works of the [...]

6 comments Read the full article →

Little Emil and a little bit of motorway

by Craig Turp July 13, 2009 Bucharest

 Romanian newspapers are reporting this morning that Prime Minister Little Emil Boc yesterday promised to have a 30km stretch of the of the Bucharest – Ploiesti motorway finished by the end of this year. Truth is, in a rare moment of lucidity, Little Emil said no such thing. What he actually said was ‘we have [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

It rains, it floods. No more than you would expect of a city with a Third World infrastructure

by Craig Turp July 12, 2009 Bucharest

  Remember, the scenes above are not the result of a river bursting its banks because of freak flooding, but of nothing more than some heavy rain. In Bucharest it rained heavily on Saturday evening, and a little this (Sunday) afternoon. Still, for a city whose infrastructure is no better than that of a Third [...]

8 comments Read the full article →

← Previous Entries