I’m sitting in front of 4 flat screen TVs, only one of which has the sound on – KISS TV – filling the canteen with the sound of rap and soft porn images. Next to KISS is Realitatea, a Romanian news channel, where sound isn’t needed: so far I have learned there is a big meeting going on in Brussels about “the pact that stabilised Europe” (I’ll believe that one when I see it). They have several crawler texts on the screen one of which contains financial information and share listings, another one with “urgent” news updates. (more…)
Category: All articles
The Wrong Way to Run a Blog
Inspired by the BBC’s new Sherlock Holmes serial, I have decided to turn our company blog into a personal blog. Instead of monthly updates about various issues I will write more frequent posts about what’s going on around me. (more…)
3 Romanian Film Directors
This video was found in our archives, translated into Romanian and published in Jurnal National (click here).
If you want to see the video without reading all this text, go to the end of this article (scroll down).
The Story Behind the Video:
The ending of the year (2011) seems to be a month of nostalgia, particularly in Romania where the media are wallowing in a sea of memories based on unanswered questions about the 1989 revolution. Searching for answers gives editors pages of material (the biblical phrase “old wine in new bottles” springs to mind) and characters like Petre Roman, Romania’s first post revolutionary PM, get wheeled onto TV chat shows to discuss their memories of Communism. (more…)
Memories of Bucharest in 1990
In 1989 I taught myself to be a journalist (I had no idea you could study it in university). By the end of that year I was covering the Romanian revolution for Scotland on Sunday, a newspaper that was too “Scottish” to send me over to witness the action on the ground. I didn’t get here until January 1990, which I thought was far too late, but there was still plenty of drama on the streets of Bucharest. (more…)
A Day In The Life of Alina Serban
photo by Vadim Ghirda
You may be wondering why I’m writing so much about Alina Serban? Am I being paid by Hollywood (or Media Pro)? Am I in love? Have I got nothing better to do? The explanation is simple: when I went to speak with the magazine Decit o Revista they asked me what I was working on and I said “Alina Serban”, and they said “Can you do one for us too?”. So I did and here it is. Meanwhile, as an update to the article, my spies tell me that Alina is now in London attending an audition at RADA, the top British acting school.
It’s eight fifteen in the morning and I am hurrying towards the underground station at Piata Romana with Alina Serban, the dynamic young Roma actress. Alina has a puppet show at nine o’ clock at a kindergarten in the Militar area and we’re running late. We squeeze into the commuter crowd, change at Piata Victoriei and get another train to Crangasi. She calls her colleague Elena Rotaru, (more…)
Sighisoara Needs Your Help
This article was also published in Romanian on Hotnews.
Anyone who knows Romania is aware that Sighisoara is a pretty amazing place. Guidebooks describe is as the only medieval citadel in Europe that is “lived in” and the old centre is one of the “must sees” on the Romanian map. But I have avoided the place for about 5 years for a number of reasons: I was seriously put-off after visiting a so-called “Medieval Festival” (a grotesque combination of kitsch and heavy metal); and it takes so long to get there by car from Bucharest (over 5 hours) and the train doesn’t exactly hurry. (more…)
An Actress to Watch Out For
This article was also published in Romanian on Hotnews.
Whenever a great Romanian actor dies someone tells me that this is the latest chapter in the decline of Romanian drama. Romanians can be very negative about their future and this negativity is projected onto the arts where they tend to see a glorious past and a miserable future. But I am not Romanian and I don’t share these views.
I am from Edinburgh, a city which hosts the world’s biggest theatre festival but is actually a deeply un-cultural place where alcohol and football are far more important than arts. (If you want to understand Scotland, read Irvine Welsh.) Like most of my compatriots I know little about acting and have no comment about the ancient Romanian actors whom people here hold so dearly. But whenever I go to a Romanian play or film, which is rarely as I am unable to resist the escapist attractions of Hollywood, I see great young actors. I recently saw Periphery and was mesmerized by the charisma of Ana Ularu. (more…)
Romanian Senate Relaxes Road Traffic Law
The Chinese Ambassador to Bucharest once compared the building of motorways in his country to what’s been achieved in Romania. He said that both countries have been engaged on motorway building for about 20 years and while the Chinese have built over 40,000 kilometers of motorway during that time, Romania has barely managed 150 KM. He offered Chinese help in building a ring road for Bucharest, but his offer was ignored and Romania’s capital city remains in gridlock. (more…)
Swedes Sue Romanians Over the Name Ice Hotel
Getting to Romania’s Ice Hotel involves a hair-raising ride in a cable car to a frozen lake two thousand metres above sea level. Every December the family who run it cut blocks of ice from the frozen lake, bind them together with a mortar made of snow and water and build a small hotel that lasts until May. They also construct an ice chapel complete with a kitsch sculpture of the last supper and a frozen Jesus on the cross. (more…)
Adrian Severin hangs on Gaddafi style
Romanian MEP Adrian Severin is being hounded by the Bucharest press to resign from the European Parliament for his part in an 8-month long Sunday Times sting operation. Two undercover journalists from Britain’s biggest weekly broadsheet, masquerading as directors of a lobby company, approached over 60 Members of the European Parliament with offers of 100,000 Euro a year for proposing amendments in the European Parliament. (more…)