Here’s the cover of the latest issue of Bucharest In Your Pocket:

We are offering a fortnight’s holiday self-catering in North Korea to anyone who can name the church in the photo.

For those who are looking for something a bit more sophisticated than boiled grass and fried weeds, we should point out that the new issue features reviews of some outstanding new places to eat in Bucharest.

First off there are the new menus at the Radisson’s Prime Steaks, featuring the best steak in the world, the Irish Hereford:

The Irish Hereford. A steak we made surprisingly light work of

Then there is the renovated, revamped, renamed and reopened Cafe Athenee at the Hilton:

It has thankfully kept its classics (such as the legendary burger) but added a few new dishes, like the deliriously good (if a bit pricey) Shepherd’s Pie.

The InterContinental has a new signature eatery too: Modigliani, which takes over where Madrigalleft off.

Up at the Crowne Plaza there are three new places to eat: a revamped Brasserie, the seafood-led La Veranda, and the showpiece Vinyard.

In Old Town/Lipscani Bob Lobb has opened Tibo’s (though he has some serious competition on the steaks front from Red Angus just around the corner), while David Larkin has pulled it off again with Oscar’s: his latest Irish pub which promises to be his best yet.

Read about them all – and loads, loads more (from October and November’s opera and ballet schedule to and abridged review of Along the Enchanted Way) – in Bucharest In Your Pocket.

Pick up a copy at these Bucharest hotels, pubs and restaurants, or from Tourist Information in the Piata Universitatii underpass.

Or simply download the PDF here.

A tripod, yesterday

The plot, in a nutshell, is this: humanity has been conquered and enslaved by The Tripods, unseen alien entities who travel about in gigantic, terrifying three-legged walking machines.

All very well you say, but what’s the Bucharest connection to The Tripods?

Well, last week, we spent a great couple of days making a batch of very short videos in and around some of Bucharest’s most famous sights for the In Your Pocket channel on You Tube.

To do so, we used a very ordinary HDD video camera, a remote microphone which was tucked discreetly under the collar, and… a tripod.

Now, the consternation that said tripod caused in any number of Bucharest’s churches and museums would have had you believe that The Tripods had been broadcast in Romania the night before, and that much like the orginal Orson Welles staging of War of the Worlds, people had thought it was for real.

At the Stavropoleos Church, the old lady who ferociously guards the entrance looked at the tripod as though the devil himself had walked in. She ran off to find one of the resident nuns, who, falling for our ‘we’re just tourists’ story, agreed to switch on the lights inside the church so that we could film the quite stunning interior.

(We should point out at this stage that there is in general no great problem with filming inside Romanian churches: every wedding, Christening etc. we have ever been to has been filmed from every possible angle. It is simply the tripod that appears to throw people).

At the Old Court Church we were unceremoniously shooed off the premises by the elderly yet fierce-looking caretaker, though not before we had heroically sneaked some footage of inside the church.

At the Village Museum the woman selling tickets said the presence of the tripod meant we must be professionals (when she sees the results she will know that we aren’t), and that we needed to pay a fee if we wanted to film.

Aware by now that we had already lied to a nun, and that eternal damnation therefore probably awaits (although the donation we made to the church should help a little), we decided to play it straight, and said “OK, we’re professionals. How much?”

“You need to go and negotiate,” she replied.

Ah. Negotiate. That wonderful word.

We thought better of it, and went back to plan A. “Actually, we are just tourists,” we said. She amazingly didn’t question us anymore and promptly sold us tickets, the tripod being admitted for free.

Elsewhere around town it is refreshing to report that we had no hassle whatsoever. Even outside the Interior Ministry the men in suits sitting in their cars left us alone. Only one lone policeman objected to our presence, though that was merely to say he didn’t want to be filmed. The only other place we were prevented from filming was at Piata Universitatii, but again, we were simply told to keep off the grass.

So we should count ourselves lucky. Others (including one regular contributor to this blog) looking a bit too professional have had far more hassle than we did last week.

Now, if you will excuse us, we’re off to church to ask for our souls to be saved.