March 2010

Ever heard of market forces?

by Craig Turp March 29, 2010 Bucharest

 We caught the fag end of a debate about occupancy rates in Romania’s hotels and pensions yesterday afternoon, a debate held on the – in our opinion – rapidly deteriorating Realitatea TV news channel. (Given that we consider the standard of reporting on Realitatea to never have been all that good, you can imagine how [...]

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Romtelecom Clicknet: Customer service fail

by Craig Turp March 28, 2010 Bucharest

 Incredible. Just days after we were singing their praises, Romtelecom’s excellent internet service Clicknet has let us down. Very badly. Not, we hasten to add, in terms of the internet connection itself. There can be no doubt that Clicknet supplies the most reliable internet service in Romania. This is not the issue. The issue is [...]

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Photo Opportunity

by Craig Turp March 26, 2010 Romania

 Dear Bucharest Life Reading the news that Romania’s coast will not be forming part of the country’s new Tourism Brand, I dare say we can assume that as a result, our glorious beaches will no longer be promoted internationally, neither on television nor in printed promotional materials? Bearing this in mind, I wonder if you [...]

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Romanian Tourism Ministry gets it (partly) right. At last

by Craig Turp March 26, 2010 Bucharest

 Now there’s a nice surprise. News reaches us today that everybody’s favourite Tourism Minister, Elena Udrea, has taken the sound advice offered here by our good selves (and, we doubt not, in many other places by many other people) and finally realised that Romania – as a tourist destination – cannot be all things to [...]

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Strike! Why we’re right behind Romania’s teachers

by Craig Turp March 23, 2010 Bucharest

 We have in the recent past written at some length about what we think of Romania’s education system (or, rather, about the tiny part of it we have any experience of), and to save any of you from reading that long post again, our thoughts are basically this: we think we get a good deal. [...]

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Copied from Wikipedia

by Craig Turp March 21, 2010 Media

 Apparently, an Amazon.com ‘user review’ of a guidebook we wrote a few years ago claims that parts of the book were ‘lifted from Wikipedia.’ Really? Knowing full well that they were not (we have the original words – and they were original, all god-knows-how-many thousands of them – on a hard drive somewhere), we wondered [...]

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Everyday scenes of Bucharest Life…

by Craig Turp March 18, 2010 Bucharest

 Took the kids into Lipscani yesterday for a St. Patrick’s Day Guinness (it’s good for them), and just happened to have – for once – the camera with us. A couple of things caught our eye. Firstly, the overhead power/internet/TV/telephone cable situation is clearly getting worse. We took this picture at Piata Universitatii: Ignore the [...]

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