Bucharest’s Arc de Triumf is to benefit from a €7 million makeover. The city’s Mayor Sorin Oprescu signed a contract today that will see work start in the Spring. He hopes the refurbishment will be finished in time for December 1st, Romania’s National Day, when lots of soldier boys pass underneath and Romania shows off its military hardware in a rather Cold War-esque parade.

Besides restoration work on the Arc itself, the project will also include the construction of a pedestrian underpass underneath the busy roundabout which surrounds it. Until now, getting to the Arc required nerves of steel.

What was not stated today was whether or not the renovation of the Arc will be followed by the permanent opening of its viewing deck. We would hope so. It seems daft spending all this money if people will not be able to climb up to the top. (At present, the viewing deck is opened only on a couple of days each year).

Bucharest In Your Pocket issue 75 is done and dusted and at the printer. Here is the cover:

Features this issue include a look back at the Bucharest earthquake of 1977, books about Romania in English (including some reviews first published here, as well as a cracking new sketch of Paul D. Quinlan’s Carol: The Playboy King by Chris Lawson) and Bucharest’s tallest buildings.

New venues to look out for include Mircea Dinescu‘s restaurant Lacrimi si Sfinti, on Strada Sepcari, and what is perhaps our new favourite bar, Laboratorul de Cocktailuri.

We would also like to point out that the guide includes a listing for Malagamba, which is very much open! It was closed for a few days in January following an overzealous visit from the financial guard, but has since reopened and is as good as ever. Alas it seems news of the reopening has not spread as quickly as the news of the closure did.

One of the funniest travel books ever, Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, has been turned into a film. It has been written and produced by – and stars – comedian Tony Hawks, who wrote the book. It will be released in the Spring of 2012.

The premise, for those of you not aware of it, is simple: Hawks bets a mate that he can play and beat the entire Moldovan football team at tennis.

Here’s the trailer:

As you will probably know if you have read this, we spent the festive season at our in-laws in Petresti, Satu Mare, at the other end of the country. Having completely forgotten to book flights back when we should have done in October, we ended up driving. The experience was, surprisingly, not all bad.

It helped greatly of course that we could avoid the hellishness of the Valea Prahovei. We don’t think that a day of the holidays passed by without the television news channels showing a three-hour traffic jam between Comarnic and Busteni.

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No, instead of the Valea Prahovei route we took the Valea Oltului option, driving via Pitesti and Ramnicu Valcea to Sibiu, where we spent the night in order to ‘live test’ the newly published Sibiu In Your Pocket, which by a miracle of printing, publishing and distribution was sitting on the reception desk at the Sibiu Ibis not four days after we had uploaded the final version for the printer. (Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t get things done double quick in this country).

The next morning we completed the journey via Alba Iulia, Turda, the nightmare that is Cluj (there is no by-pass), Zalau, Tasnad and Carei.

All in all Bucharest – Petresti is about a nine hour drive, only slightly more than the usually overly-optimistic Google Maps says it will take. Not bad, but it should be remembered that with motorways between major cities it would be doable in around five and a half hours.

At present there is a motorway only on the first 110km of the journey (the old Bucuresti – Pitesti motorway). There is also an odd bit of recently opened motorway somewhere in the Turda area, about 35km or so, which goes from the middle of nowhere to the middle of nowhere, but a total lack of signposting makes it useless. We did in fact see it: the DN1 passes underneath an impressive looking viaduct at one stage, but finding out how to actually get to it was beyond us.

Anyway, lack of motorways aside, the point (yes, there is one) we want to make is that the state of Romania’s national roads is really rather good. At least better than many people appear to think it is.

In fact, the only dodgy bits we hit on the entire journey were when passing through cities, and on the county road between Bobota and Carei, the last leg of the journey. While on the E68 and E81 the road surface is invariably impeccable: nary a pothole to be seen.

Of course, portions of dual carriageway are few and far between, the road passes through way too many villages and the need for motorways remains huge. But the next time somebody says Romania’s roads are terrible, ask them exactly what it is they mean.

Closing its doors: Baneasa Airport

It’s official. Bucharest’s Baneasa Airport, widely considered one of the worst in Europe, is to close its doors to standard commercial traffic, although it will remain open as a private airport for the personal planes of the rich and famous.

All of the budget airlines currently making use of Baneasa will move operations to Otopeni on March 25th. This is great news for Bucharest.

First impressions count, and there can’t be too many people who have arrived in Bucharest at Baneasa and thought ‘What a modern, efficient place this is.’

Otopeni on the other hand (expensive taxis aside) is a decent airport, though the new departures area is eerily empty at the moment.

Not for long.