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from left: rundown houses on Lipscani and Mosilor, Dimbovitza river from Hasdeu bridge, street in Cotroceni Bucharest smells exquisitely during the time of lindens and rain. Vigorously soaked for a half hour, the city heals even from the stenches that make you ill. Under

Photos by Dan Hayon excerpts My first adventure in the capital city, sometime in my early adolescence. Confusion and ecstasy, fear and the excitement of the unknown, as though in a foreign country where, strangely, everyone speaks my own language. A dizzying cocktail of

clockwise from top left: Smardan St. , Stavropoleos St. , Caru cu bere pub (2), Stavropoleos Church (3), Russian Church. Early Sunday morning before 10 A. M. , the city offers its first surprise. It is empty. The bare streets are visible in all their twisted length, without

In those days they used to go to the Eastern Station, visiting some acquaintances: friends, as they might, after all, also have called them. Except that on this point, at least, Olga was right: they were not their friends; indeed, there was no way or time when they could

Government Palace in Victoriei Sq. a fragment from the novel Derapaj (Skid), Iaşi, Polirom 2006 Maria’s life glowed with a murky sort of splendor, her past, though committed to oblivion, constantly closing in on her and obscuring her thoughts like the spots of a solar

from left: buildings on Calea Victoriei and at Rosetti Sq. , University of Bucharest, building in Unirii Sq. According to the data from the latest statistical yearbook published in 2002, the average income per capita outside Bucharest is 82% of the average income of a person

The theme of the provincial man leaving his small town, a closed universe deprived of any kind of perspective and diving into the unknown, attracted by the Big City where he thinks he'll hit it big and get rich overnight, was and continues to be a successful recipe

No matter how much you tried to humanize it, to make a mental projection of it as seen through a magic lens which deforms the world and makes it look more beautiful than it actually is, no matter how much you looked for its weaknesses, you'll never find a new vision,

Two neighbors are greeting each other on the alley in front of my block. One of them is complaining that he can't stand the heat and he looks as red as a boiled lobster. We can't even get out of the house, Sir! We're taking care of our little one too, our

In history, the diurnal has always been a distorted image of the nocturnal. In daylight, events are the way we want to see, feel, and understand them. The nocturnal rejects such a compromise for the tranquility of crowds. It has existed next to us since the dawn of history,

Bucharest is a city that is difficult to describe, and difficult is a term that tends to suggest the word impossible. Many of us have probably at least once in our lifetime been in the situation of talking about the city that we live in. And, just as probable, among the

Photo: Mihai Duţescu I'm reading an article written by Roberto Segre about the architecture intended for the working class, an architecture that has changed the landscape of the towns only in the twentieth century. Until then, poverty did not have such a great influence