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…)
Category: On Romania
Ordo Quod Chaos
This article was also published in Romanian, on the Dilema Veche website.
My view of Romania over the last 10 years is that it has been developing in a steady, predictable and incremental manner. The key policies of capitalism which were put into place almost immediately after the 1989 revolution – free elections/press/travel, rule of law, property rights – have been steadily strengthened. Every few years there were rumours in the media that Iliescu, Nastase or Basescu are about to become dictators, but each of these has proven to be a chimera; each one of these leaders has done a bit to consolidate this stability. (more…)
What’s Wrong with Romania?
This article was first published in the Hotnews Blog “Contributors”.
Someone recently asked me what’s the main factor that prevents Romania from realising its economic potential and I said, without hesitation, “the inability to delegate”. Delegation is one of keys to running a successful organisation (or countries for that matter) but in Romania the principle of delegation – making people responsible for their work – does not seem to be understood and this is one of the reasons why the public sector is so dysfunctional. (more…)
Why Romania?
Shop front in Brasov
This article was translated by Iulia Marusca and published in the Hotnews blog “Contributors”.
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I’m reading a book that has helped me crack a mystery that has troubled me for 20 years: why do I live and work in Romania? People have been asking me this question since 1990 and my answers – “the people…the warmth…the challenges…” – always sound a bit unconvincing. I am strangely unable to explain what it is that keeps me here.
Anthony Bourdain, author of Kitchen Confidential, which is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, gave me the answer even though he doesn’t mention Romania once in the book. He describes the madness of investing in the restaurant business in New York City: (more…)
An update about the France-Roma-Romania argument
Nicolae Gheorghe
This article was first published on the Economist’s website Eastern Approaches. It is worth looking at the Economist’s version of the article as it has been quite well edited, tightened up and de-personalised and made suitable for the Economist’s more anonymous style. I intend to print out both versions and compare them as this will enable me to better understand the kind of article the Economist required (this was how I learned journalism 20 years ago: I would analyse articles I really admired and try and work out the style of the publication I was targeting. Easy. Many years passed before I found out that you could actually study journalism. Back then I don’t think I ever met anyone who had. (more…)
A Mass Grave Raises Ghosts of Romania’s Holocaust Past
photo by Elizabeth Ungureanu
This article was first published on www.time.com
One day in 1941, Vasile Enache was tending his cows in the forest of Vulturi, near the city of Iasi, 260 miles (420 km) northeast of Bucharest, when he heard people sobbing. He went to investigate and saw hundreds of civilians being marched through the forest by Romanian army soldiers. Enache didn’t know it at the time, but he was witnessing part of Romania’s “Iasi pogrom,” which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 14,000 Jews. (more…)
Cycling in Bucharest
It was an odd little car, very small, rather like a Smart car but without the style. Maybe it was a Russian version, or Indian. But what I was sure about was that the car was registered in Bulgaria (the ”BG” sticker was a dead giveaway). (more…)
“The most exciting filming I ever did”
After The Revolution was recently shown at the One World Romania Documentary Festival and we’ve also made new DVDs with the film, available upon request. Below you can read and interview with Laurentiu about how it took him 20 years to make this film. And this is our cool DVD cover, by Tudor Matei.
To see the trailer on YouTube please click here
What follows is an interview with the director of this documentary (Laurentiu Calciu), first published by the Marseilles Film Festival where “”After the Revolution” was launched.
The origin of the project?
The origin of the project is as obscure as the origin of the revolution itself. I had been saving money for a video camera for about ten years, hoping to make independent films one day – fiction, as documentary would have been impossible under Communism. It was dangerous even to take photographs in the street in those days, forget about filming. I had sent the money through somebody to a friend in Berlin, in the autumn of 1989. He bought me a VHS Panasonic M7, which was the only consumer camera at that time. It arrived by post the week before the 21st of December, when the revolution had already started in Timisoara, a city in the West of Romania. (more…)
Get on your bike and see Romania
You can see Rupert Wolfe Murray’s photos of his cycling journey here.
There are certain places in Europe that are known to be great for cycling. Amsterdam has been pro-bike for generations; in Copenhagen they say over three quarters of all journeys are made by bike; in Paris they developed the mass-bike-hire system and even London’s bouffant haired mayor, who cycles to work, is trying to improve that city’s reputation as the worst place to cycle in Europe. (more…)
Bucharest by bike
The best way to get round Bucharest is by bike. Bucharest has no ring roads and the result is gridlock. Getting anywhere by car is slow and frustrating. Public transport is good but very overcrowded.
Non cyclists tell me that cycling in Bucharest is dangerous, that Romanian drivers are crazy and that there are no proper bike lanes. But even the most insane speed freaks can’t do much in Bucharest where traffic moves at a snails pace (but watch out for the sons of the Nomenklatura who come out at night to race on the Boulevards). And if you keep your ears open you can hear the motorbikes and Kamikaze BMW drivers from miles away. (more…)