Primii care s-au bucurat de zapada au fost, bineinteles, copiii

As eagerly awaited as Christmas itself (but not, of course, as eagerly awaited as the highlight of Christmas: The Economist’s Double Issue), it’s time once again to play Romanian TV News Christmas Bingo.

You know the deal.

As all Romanian media outlets follow the same formula when reporting news and events, you can usually guess exactly what cliches they will use at certain times. Christmas is one, hence Romanian TV News Christmas Bingo.

Try it.

Over Christmas and New Year, tune in to the news every now and then and tick off these cliches/scenarios as they get rolled out:

Pensiunile se pregatesc pentru turisti. There will be a report from a pension in a village somewhere (probably Maramures) where there will be much talk of preparing for the arrival of turistii.

In (insert name of village here) pregatirile pentru Craciun sunt in toi.

Turistii (when they arrive) will be interviewed in front of a masa belsugata and will say how wonderful it all is.

There will then be a report from a border crossing point, as Romanians working abroad come home for Christmas. Bonus points for spotting the phrase:

Masinile Romanilor din strainatate sunt supraincarcate cu cadouri pentru cei dragi de acasa.

On Christmas Day itself, the news of the birth of Isus Hristos will be reported as if it were just that: news.

Some brave souls will – whatever the weather – take a Christmas Day walk on the pier in Constanta, by the casino. A Pro TV camera and reporter will be there to greet them. (This exact scenario will be repeated again on New Year’s Day).

Early in the afternoon on Christmas Day, you should expect a report from the Vatican. The following words will be used:

Papa Benedict a vorbit despre (whatever he talks about) si a zis si cateva cuvinte in limba romana (cue Pope saying Craciun fericit). Again, this exact scenario will be repeated on New Year’s Day, except the Pope will say La multi ani.

Boxing Day the action moves to the ski resorts. Zapada (if of course it arrives) will be numai buna de ski. Iubitorii de sporturile de iarna au luat cu asalt statiuniile de pe Valea Prahovei.

In the days running up to New Year’s Eve, there will be reports on how much a night out in Bucharest’s clubs will cost you. There will be much use of the word ‘inedite‘ to describe the ‘surprize‘ being prepared by cele mai luxoase cluburile Bucurestene. Cue interview with manager club who will tell us how his/her club is preparing ceva nemaivazut in Romania.

On New Year’s Day, there will then be footage of tineri dancing in one of the clubs featured the day before.

The prize for ticking off all of the above is a fortnight’s self-catering holiday in the North Korean gulag. Good luck.

—
On a serious note, we are depressingly certain that there will be a number of news stories from hospitals on New Year’s Day, as once again the most cretinous members of the population cause yet more serious injury with fireworks and firecrackers.

And, if you have noticed the similarities of this post with that of our Easter Bingo competition, then we are guilty as charged.

Don’t blame us: blame the Romanian TV news channels.

Why do we do it?

Why do we watch questionable talk shows on questionable television channels (in this case Antena 3) knowing how loaded the content is, how subjective the guests are and – to all intents and purposes – knowing exactly what will be said.

Last night the subject was a report that had been run by Al Jazeera (watch it below) about Romania organising Nicolae Ceausescu-themed tours of places where the former Romanian dictator was born, lived and killed. As we have more than a passing interest in tourism in these parts, we watched it.

We should have known better.

Antena 3′s headline (which ran across the bottom of the screen) was the ludicrous: ‘Elena Udrea cheltuie bani publici sa-l popularizeze pe Ceausescu‘ (Elena Udrea is spending public money to make Ceausescu popular).

If you watch the report, listen out for the great line: ‘Ceausescu’s nephew, who has turned his uncle’s home into a shrine, wants nothing to do with the commercialisation of the former leader…‘

Anyway, back to Udrea. As much as we are out of character in leaping to her defence, it needs to be said that she isn’t spending public money to ‘make Ceausescu popular.’ She is spending public money on organising and then promoting a Ceausescu-themed tour which will be sold to a small niche of visitors which happens to like that sort of thing. (And believe us, such a niche exists).

Though we haven’t taken the tour ourselves (neither has anyone: it barely exists as an idea) we doubt it will be used as an attempt to popularize Ceausescu or to rehabilitate him. No, it is simply a niche tour for a niche market.

For – dare we ask – why shouldn’t Romania organise Ceausescu tours? Really, what is the problem? To us it reeks of hypocrisy and – for want of a better word – snobism. We want tourists, appears to be the message, but only a certain kind of tourist doing certain things, such as telling us how lovely our countryside is, how fantastic the Bukovina monasteries are and how we have the most beautiful women in the world. That is the kind of tourist certain people in Romania appear to want.

Radu Tudor, the presenter of last night’s show, said that it makes him sad that ‘the only thing Udrea can find in Romania to promote is Ceausescu, when there are so many wonderful things.’

No, Ceausescu not the only thing she has found to promote. It is one of many things. All Udrea is doing is appealing to a certain market that is interested in such things. As there is a niche for these things, why mot milk it?

There are tours of Nazi bunkers in Berlin. Why? Because there is a market for them.

Honestly, as magnificent as they are, not everyone loves Maramures and the bloody monasteries. (A point we have made before).

If you don’t like Ceausescu tours, don’t take one.

Self-congratulatory post begins:

It’s been all go these past few months at In Your Pocket offices across Europe, as researchers and editors have been feverishly plotting GPS coordinates for the more than 50,000 hotels, restaurants, bars, clubs, cafes, embassies and such like that we have in our database.

The result was made available to the public at large yesterday: maps.inyourpocket.com

Every city we cover (there are more than 70, and the list is growing all the time) is now available as a map-led guide, with seamless links to our main website inyourpocket.com and back again.

The main website has itself also been given a bit of a facelift (regular readers of Bucharest Life may already have seen the new look in fact, as we have been linking to the test version of it for some time) and was – it’s ‘blowing our own trumpet’ time – recently named by The Guardian as one of the world’s best 50 travel websites, as well as the Daily Mail’s Website of the Week.

Self-congratulatory post ends.

Oxford University last week published reports on press freedom in a number of countries in Eastern Europe: Bulgaria,
Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia.

Romania does not do very well.

The reports are based on a number of in-depth interviews with key local media people, and while no report of this kind can ever be considered fully objective or definitive, there is much here that will ring true with anyone who has the slightest knowledge of how the Romanian press works.

You can read the executive summary here, and the specific Romanian country report here.

There are links to the other country reports here.

There is TV show currently running on state-run TVR 2 called Pasaport de Romania (Romanian passport).

The premise is simple: find a foreigner somewhere, bring him to Romania and then throw him in at the deep end in a village in the countryside. Add in local costumes, food, alcohol and animals for maximum comic effect and if the foreigner copes well enough he gets an honorary Pasaport de Romania.

Anyway, not being huge television fans, we were only made aware of this televisual delight a couple of weeks ago when a friend called to ask if we would be interested in taking part.

Having long ago decided to stay as far away from television cameras as possible (we have a face which is far more suited to radio), we said no. But having been told that the whole idea was to feature people who had never been to Romania, we wondered why we – who have been here a while – were being asked to appear?

Our bullshit radar went into overdrive.

Out of curiosity we took a look at the episodes of Pasaport de Romania available on the channel’s website. We recognised no fewer than three of the ‘Romania virgins’ who were ostensibly visiting the Romanian countryside for the first time. Most are comically shown arriving at Otopeni, even though they live in Bucharest.

The programme was on TV again last night, and Mrs. Bucharest Life recognised the star: a well-known face in Romanian real estate, apparently.

It’s not a bad programme, and is really quite amusing (especially when you know the people involved) but they do need to drop the pretence that those taking part have never drunk palinca or eaten mamaliga before…