Hop

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

Like most people living and working in Bucharest, I've often wondered what it would be like to live in any other European city, to actually be surrounded by civilized human beings and not to collect a ton of dust on your shoes and clothes after a day's trip to

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

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,

top row: around Bishopric St. , Capşa restaurant, Magheru Blvd. , in Cismigiu gardens (see also Them in Gallery) If we take an X-ray of the articles published by the major Romanian dailies, we get an overwhelming abundance of unsettling, grotesque events created by outbursts

The house painter. He has a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and his appetite for work is equal to nothing. His torn t-shirt doesn't give you any clue on the fee he will demand at the end of the day after slothfully varnishing a wall which can neither resist nor

Peeled off plaster, broken windows, rats scuttling at ease day and night. And above all, the filth. Complete and utter filth reigning supreme over a piece of downtown Bucharest. But also over a piece of our past. The only part still living is the sign above the door, reading

Red bricks are the distinctive feature of this construction, next to the white rosette, a huge round window above the main portal: thereby, the reader has most certainly recognized the Archbishopric of Saint Joseph's Cathedral. It is one of the landmark buildings in