R.E.M.
excerpt I am going to tell you of things that happened back in 1960 or 1961, when I was still a little girl, no more than 12 years old. I was living with my family in Moşilor Street, in one of those queer houses, with the second floor protruding a little, with two very
What We See
excerpts …Once, when his wife's condition showed signs of deterioration, Marcu entered the Sfînta Vineri church, on his way home from the shops he had called at to collect his rents. He prayed a long time and fervently, though he could hardly concentrate, choking
Bucharest Wit
In Romanian, Bucharest is a plural noun. This implies it is a multifaceted city, dazzling in its diversity. However, it is not a conglomerate of villages, of boroughs, like London or New York. There are not self-contained neighborhoods, each with its main street (High Street),
Chronicles Of An Optimist
excerpts NOISES OF THE CAPITAL For reasons I cannot exactly explain, the flow of ideas circulated by the independent press has strikingly dwindled to a mere trickle. One can only put it down to the times of fatigued irritation we are living through as we wait for the much
Magic Lantern Projections: A Dialogue With Octogenarian Actress Dina Cocea, Honorary Citizen Of Bucharest
The oldest recollections of actors of your generation used to begin with the scene of a provincial school festival: the future star winning a well-known, sympathetic audience made up of parents, grandparents, family friends, touched aunts. The memory of past reality is overwhelmed
Bucharest - Memory Walled-In
Architecture represents a means of interrogating history. Rather ominous, it is to be feared, when the question applies to the Romanian capital. Why so? The way Bucharest has been subjected to transformations in the last century accounts for the living changes affecting
Walking With A Cane In Bucharest
Bucharest Again It is hard to explain the emergence of a language and the birth of a nation – they seem to be part of a mystery. All of a sudden, history records, in some part of the world, an unknown nation and a new language, probably derived and related, but new.
Memory And Strolls
If you read travel notes by simple tourists or people on journalistic, cultural or political assignments, from the 1920s or 30s, if you peruse recurrent images about a Bucharest imprinted with evil or good charms, equally decrypted and encoded, moving and repulsive, you
Voyage To Southern Russia And Crimea, Through Hungary, Wallachia And Moldavia (Paris, 1837)
excerpts Chapter III: BUCHAREST-WALLACHIA (…) My advice to the fatigued traveler who arrives in Bucharest is to pay his first visit to the excellent Turkish baths which we were to try ourselves soon. These establishments, mostly situated in the quarter by the Dâmboviţa
Bucharest Described By Sulzer At The End Of The 18th Century
Among the foreign writers who passed through or stayed in Bucharest and who, on this occasion, wrote their impressions, is Franz Joseph Sulzer. He was from German Switzerland; he joined the Austrian army and due to his achievements became a captain. In 1776, Sulzer was invited
Inferiority Complex On The Dâmboviţa Riverbanks
There existed in cultural Bucharest between the world wars a sort of upside-down provincialism that believed only in the City of Light: What's new in Paris? There was always something new to talk about, even if, in some cases, the new from Paris had been seen around
The Bucharest Tarafs - The Picturesque Emblem Of A Fascinating City
Ever since the mid-18th century, the city off the Dâmboviţa banks has enjoyed a particular sentimental popularity, not only from the point of view of its merry, party-loving, enterprising inhabitants, but also in the memory of tourists, who christened Romania's Capital