July 2009

The Romanian Riviera: It’s expensive and the weather’s awful

by Craig Turp July 10, 2009 Romania

 Just a quick couple of thoughts on why Romania’s seaside hotels are empty this year… 1. They are too expensive. Average prices of all kinds of hotel are far more expensive than in Turkey, Greece or Bulgaria. In exchange for higher prices visitors rarely get full board, or All Inclusive as its now known, and [...]

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Bucharest’s urban gardens reveal genius of city’s plan for Historic Centre

by Craig Turp July 8, 2009 Bucharest

 Walking around Bucharest’s Historic Centre yesterday, trying out a few new places for the next issue of Bucharest In Your Pocket, we couldn’t help thinking how green and really rather organic Strada Lipscani looks. A little like an urban garden… What Bucharest city council have done is little short of genius. They dug massive holes [...]

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Forget Hagi, Comaneci, Nastase and the countryside; it’s time Romania took a gamble

by Craig Turp July 7, 2009 Bucharest

 So, the bottom has fallen out of the Romanian tourist industry. Adevarul reported yesterday that the number of incoming foreign visitors had fallen 13.3 per cent in the first five months of 2009 (compared to the same period of the previous year). In actual numbers, that means just 2.7 million people arrived from January to [...]

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Bucharest renames metro station which does not exist

by Craig Turp July 6, 2009 Bucharest

 As of today Bucharest has eight new metro stations. Or, to put it correctly, Bucharest has eight metro stations which have changed their names. Or does it? Erm, no, actually, it doesn’t. It has seven stations which have had a name change, and one pie-in-the-sky, figment-of-somebody’s-imagination which has had a name change. For now we [...]

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Something new: An enjoyable Romanian wedding

by Craig Turp July 6, 2009 Romania

 Bucharest Life has never liked weddings. Sitting for hours at a table making polite conversation with people you barely know never held much of an attraction. Our own wedding was as a result delightfully simple and, even if we say so ourselves, quite brilliant. Held on a Wednesday night in a curry house we invited [...]

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Bucharest Life gets it right for once

by Craig Turp July 2, 2009 Bucharest

 Back in January we made a few predictions for the coming year. Not all of them have so far been entirely accurate (though the year is still young), but today, one proved to be spot on. We said that Anamaria Straus, a wealthy business woman who killed a young student, Tatiana Duplei, on Sos. Kiseleff [...]

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