On Saturday we went to Bucharest’s Village Museum, one of those few sights in the capital that we can safely label Essential without looking stupid.
We’ve always liked it, though we have a few reservations (mainly the fact that it presents a somewhat false idyll: most Romanian villages are simply not like this).
Anyway, this weekend the Village Museum was even better than usual, as it was playing host to an arts and crafts fair, this one in honour of the patron saint of Bucharest, St. Dumitru/Dimitrie.
There was dancing from some Macedonian girls and boys (boys not pictured)
There was kitchenware for sale a plenty...
We also – while wandering around – found an old carousel we had never seen before, and which might just make the cover of the next issue of Bucharest In Your Pocket.
A possible cover for BIYP 63
Anyway, we came to the conclusion that the Village Museum should have something like this on every weekend, or at least once a fortnight, if only during the summer months. The place was packed on Saturday; packed with locals and with foreigners, and almost made you think that Bucharest might just have a future as a tourist destination.
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@GeronimO; does Frutti Fresh still exist? :-s I haven’t noticed their juices in a while… actually the word is that the Micula brothers who own the factory are in deep sh*t and about 100 million Euro short…
) That was the golden age of Frutti Fresh, as well as the golden age of Bingo in Romania. Now I see they’re trying to re-invigorate Bingo…
You know, back in 97-99 when the CDR was in power and the only way people could have fun back then was to watch tv and walk in the park, Frutti Fresh was a big hit.
It was much cheaper than Coca Cola or Pepsi and people would buy Frutti Fresh every Sunday evening and watch TeleEuroBingo on tv while crossing the numbers on their bingo cards
They should have a modern village section in the Village Museum – lurid half-built mansions, huge satellite dishes and joker Poker bars serving hard liquor and Frutti Fresh
Actually Romanian villages used to be just like the Village Museum represents them
But this happened well before the communists began the forced industrialization and began moving people from villages and into the newly built suburbs in order to work for the giant factories that the country had.
So up to 1950 or so you could see the Romanian villages exactly as the Village Museum represents them. Obviously today everything changed, beginning with the fact that most villages benefit from paved roads, most villagers went work in Italy or Spain and they sent money home etc…
I have a cousin from the village of Stoina (Gorj county) who is like 10 years older than I am and he went to work in Spain a few years ago. And now he works in Spain but he’s also building a home in his village which he wants to have like 17 rooms. Personally I don’t know anymore what’s the situation there, my father just came back from a wedding and told me what he heard but I keep wondering what’s the use of owning a 17-room home when the toilet is in the courtyard and when the owner lives like 3000 km away… it’s beyond my understanding, but this is how the Romanian villages changed in time.