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A Day In The Life Of The Romanian Athenaeum

When I was a child, and later, as a teenager, I circled around the Romanian Athenaeum without knowing what the edifice was good for. Then I began to think that it had been built for George Enescu… And when I first entered the concert hall, climbing one of its spiral staircases,

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

At The Fair

Yellow and blue streetcars, princely coaches, churlish carts and bikes and a lot of folks on foot…From so many streets and ways, like on as many arms of a huge river waves upon waves of people are flowing as if into a boisterous sea, unto the barrier at the end of the

The Bucharest Of Former Times

Volume I, 1871 - 1884 The Christmas of 1871? My young age then was so eagerly waiting for it. By 10 o'clock the night of the Eve, the shrill voices of the carolers would resound all over Bucharest. In those days the carolers were children from the edge of town, children

Şuţu Palace

Director It was March 29, 1832 when the commissar of the Red District of Bucharest replied to Postelnic (Minister of Foreign Affairs) Costache Grigore Suţu with an approval to resume the works on the surrounding wall of the garden You have begun to raise. Symbolically

The Mogoşoaia Bridge

excerptsThe Beginnings With the passage of time the ancient road was called by sundry names: lane, bridge, promenade – as if it needed any name or title, this street of streets whose reign over the city goes back two hundred years. Victory Promenade! The Nation's

Laugh To The Left

In the visual arts, the laugh, the ridicule and caricature have a certain regime, which is rather different from the one developed in literature, mainly because it is an expression of criticism and contempt much more immediate and politically engaged. Starting in Germany

Empty Bottles

Emptyyyy bottles! Buyyyyyyyyin'! This dramatic call, like that of the ancestors, which we have all heard at one time or another in Bucharest slums, reminded me of what happened to a friend of mine – it could be a comic thing, if it was not tragic – who went to Sovata

Don't Know: 40%

A few days or so ago, the Romanian press offered us, its obedient and flabbergasted beneficiaries, another opportunity to please and sharpen our minds. A new Gallup poll. And what is Gallup? Gallup is some sort of a modern, computerized Pythia. Claiming scientific positivism

Own Goal With Actor And Accountant

It was common knowledge that Iacint Manoil was a lady-killer. He was so ugly that they were impressed. And so direct in his stupidity that he came over as honest. Like a millstone. He was an actor. Only those very beautiful or as ugly as sin can make a career in this profession.

100 Years At The Gates Of The Orient

excerpts Episode no. 33At the Vizier[1] Meanwhile, not long after the crescent had entered a Christian cloud, much to the heathens' grief, three men's shadows on three horses' shadows were more like crawling than riding towards the vizier's palace.