As we are sure you already know, Bucharest’s Lispcani’s district was featured in the New York Times on Sunday, in an article which, without flattering ourselves, we would generously suggest is not as good as our vastly superior – in that we refrain from using words like ‘gritty’ and ‘artsy’ – article we wrote for the latest issue of Bucharest In Your Pocket. It even, we would suggest, fails to reach the level of this one we did for Wizz Air.
Anyway, this throwaway piece of travel writing is not what set us to put finger to keyboard. Oh no. For if you click through to Past Coverage, it opens up a wealth of NYT writing on Bucharest from days gone by.
There’s a brief despatch from March 1990 (so brief we think the copy/pasting went a bit wrong), but best of all is this gem from 1987. We loved this comment best:
“Most Bucharest restaurants seem unwilling to serve foreigners…”
(insert your own sarcastic comment about nothing changing…)
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Romanians are cunts. I was attacked tonight as I tried to take a picture of building in Piata Amazei. A guy wet to pull a knife on me! It was nuts! Romania is backward.
Oh, it means you got your lesson with gypsies…
Keep defending them because Romanians don’t carry knives only gypsies do. In gypsy language it’s called “shuri”, one of their most defining words…
There is a God after all…
You have to tell us more about this. Where were you attacked? And why exactly? What exactly did they take offence to? And what kind of people are we talking about?
I don’t understand one thing: what do foreigners have with the Lipscani area?!?!
Those are some not-so-old ruins which could easily be classified as a pile of rubble and bulldozed down.
Don’t they have enough ruins in Scotland or France?! Those are much older and much better preserved, my opinion is that foreigners should be tired of ruins and they should come here for the Communist architecture.
Because that’s what they’re missing in their countries – Communist architecture. You know, a UK magazine classified the Dinamo stadium as one of the most beautiful in the world, especially for the Cold-War Era style in which it was built.
So this is to see in Bucharest – Communist architecture not piles of rubble from the 20′s!
Wow, Americans were travelling here in 1987!