Nicolae Ceausescu

Why monopolies are crap

by Craig Turp September 23, 2009 Bucharest

 The commercial arm of the state news agency, Agerpres, is the only archive we know of specialist stuff from Romania’s past. We really do wish there were other sources. We got in touch with them earlier this week, about a photo we wanted to use to help illustrate a feature we are running on the [...]

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Most Bucharest restaurants seem unwilling to serve foreigners

by Craig Turp September 2, 2009 Bucharest

 As we are sure you already know, Bucharest’s Lispcani’s district was featured in the New York Times on Sunday, in an article which, without flattering ourselves, we would generously suggest is not as good as our vastly superior – in that we refrain from using words like ‘gritty’ and ‘artsy’ – article we wrote for [...]

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How environmentalists must miss Nicolae Ceausescu

by Craig Turp September 1, 2009 Bucharest

We didn’t live in Romania during that part of the country’s history mistakenly known as ‘the communist period’ (mistakenly because genuine communism demands progression towards an age of abundance: what went on here and elsewhere in the so-called communist world was anything but, and more akin to state fascism), and although we – like many other westerners – visited the country it was difficult – while sitting in a hotel in Poiana Brasov – to gauge in any real depth just how barely tolerable life was for ordinary people.

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Ci-Co; Romania during communism

by Craig Turp July 22, 2009 Bucharest

 The Romanian History Museum (MNIR) recently launched a major new website, www.comunismulinromania.ro, the front-end of a project designed to look at the communist period in Romania in a ‘serious, objective way.’ Mainly a photo archive, we liked the communist-era adverts the best. It’s good to know that if Bucharest In Your Pocket had been around [...]

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Map of Bucharest, 1979

by Craig Turp July 13, 2009 Bucharest

 We cleared out the attic and dusted off a few old books at the weekend, including an absolute gem: a tourist guide to the capital written by Dan Berindei and Sebastian Bonifaciu, published in Romanian in 1979. Thankfully lacking the usual homage to Romania’s president at the time which blight so many works of the [...]

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Little Emil and a little bit of motorway

by Craig Turp July 13, 2009 Bucharest

 Romanian newspapers are reporting this morning that Prime Minister Little Emil Boc yesterday promised to have a 30km stretch of the of the Bucharest – Ploiesti motorway finished by the end of this year. Truth is, in a rare moment of lucidity, Little Emil said no such thing. What he actually said was ‘we have [...]

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Opening of the Bucharest Metro, 1979

by Craig Turp May 20, 2009 Bucharest

 As we explained a couple of weeks ago, our six year old is currently obsessed by metro trains, and in his quest for knowledge now spends the two hours he is allowed each day on the computer scouring You Tube for videos about metros. Yesterday he came up with a gem. An original report on [...]

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