Bucharest's contrasts

The Sala Radio is one of Bucharest’s best-kept secrets – with great acoustics and the recitals broadcast on the radio. Its Radio Chamber Orchestra kept us on our seats last night with first a Romanian composer (Toduţă)’s charming piece - violin Concerto No.1 for String Orchestra. Then JS Bach : Concerto no. 1 in A minor for Violin and Orchestra, BWV 1041 F – with virtuoso soloist CRISTINA ANGHELESCU; and then a rollicking Mendelssohn : Symphony No. IV in A major, op 90 – Italian. 
The young conductor - Mattei POP - cut a gangly but effective figure on the podium

Pensioners can get a 3 month season ticket for 35 euros – that’s about 1 euro a performance! Little wonder they are such afficandos! And one of Bucharest’s ancient trams (number 24) takes you right there (from Piate Viitoreii). 
About time Bucharest’s dreadful butcher mayor took time off from destroying the past and looked at the spanking new trams Sofia is adding to its fleet……
Romania's best classic station - Radio  Muzical - is playing here now

At the opposite end of experience are the Bucharest shopping malls – I thought the Sofia ones were bad but the gargantuan Cotroceni one just across the Gara de Nord area is a really aggressive slap in the face. Typically, it has no information desk or display and is a therefore a nightmare to navigate. 

We had walked then bussed to see Robert Duval in the film The Judge which gives a nice portrait of small-town America and also has great performances from Robert Downey Jr and Bob Thornton. On the way home, in the heaving bodies and dark, we mistook a number 11 tram for a number 1 and had to retrack at the spaghetti junction around the equally offensive and gargantuan Carrefour. At this station, the tracks run at two levels – and, typically, there were no signs to guide us to the upper track….The journey was therefore completed with a combination of foot, bus and foot….Hats off again to Mayor (butcher) Oprescu! 

The drawing is Daumier's Gargantua!

Romanian art slowly emerges from the shadows

Bucharest’s newly-opened Museum of Art Collections is stunning – well worth the 20 year wait for its opening. 

Housed in a huge, refurbished palace on Calea Victoriei, it hosts in about 60 rooms private collections of art (in suites of rooms) which had been built up by individuals and families and then taken by the state during mainly the communist period: thus Elena and Anastase Simu Collection, the Iosif Iser Collection, the Elizabeth and Moses Weinberg Collection, the Ulmeanu Elena Collection, the Alexandru Phoebus Collection, the Hrandt Avachian collection. 

The museum boasts over 12,000 works including all artistic genres: painting, drawing, sculpture, decorative arts – most of it Romanian art and represented by artists like Nicolae Grigorescu, Stefan Luchian, Ioan Andreescu, Jean Al. Steriadi, Nicolae Tonitza Nicholas, Nicholae Darascu, Theodor Pallady, Iosif Iser and, my favourite, Stefan Popescu - shown here – 

as well as valuable pieces of folk art (icons on glass and wood, ceramics, furniture, fabrics XVIII - XIX). 

Romanian sculpture is illustrated by Oscar Han, Corneliu Medrea Milita Patrascu and Celine Emilian. European and oriental (Turkish, Persian, Japanese, Chinese) art can be seen - as well as icons, folk art, rugs (XVI - XIX), silver, porcelain and glass, furniture, miniatures. The Museum of Art Collections is a division of the National Art Museum.

It seems to take some time for the great Romanian paintings to see the light of day - unlike Bulgaria where I have found it so easy to view (and purchase) old masters in the various Sofia galleries and where I was, from the beginning, treated in a courteous and friendly way.
Not so in Bucharest whose gallery-owners for the most part are offhand if not aggressive.

It is only in recent months that I have revised my opinion of Romanian art which I had seen until now as dark and brooding if not downright ugly (eg Gheorge Petrascu). Jean Steriaid is one of my favourites - shown here.....
I owe this revision to books produced by the painter and art collector Vasile Parizescu the latest of which is a huge volume - with the great title Life as Passion - which details, with splendid pictures  the various art collections which have been developed privately in 20th Century Romania. Earlier this week, in the small antique shop in the arches of Ion Ghica street near the City Museum (you can get a great birds' eye view of the city centre by clicking on the appropriate button here), I chanced upon a large and weighty 380 page volume which itemises the incredible collection of business-man Tiberiu Postelnica (coincidentally the grandson of Ceaucescu's last Minister of the Interior and Head of the Securitate. You can imagine the process by which he came to accumulate the collection he now has and so shamelessly boasts about in this 380 page volume!!!)

A recent magazine article hints at how big money (and connections) have cornered the art market in Romania. 

But truly important collections, according to sources who wish to remain anonymous, belong to someone very discrete: for instance, the businessman Tiberiu Postelnicu owner Total Distribution & Logistics Group has a substantial art collection, with hundreds of pieces. Retired General Marius Opran, former adviser to Ion Iliescu, is known to have an important collection of art in his possession - worth 50 million euros (one of the pieces was a painting by Pissarro, "Carpenter"). Another important collector Adrian Zdrobiş businessman with a substantial collection of Romanian masters, family heritage, with dozens of pieces of Pallady Andreescu or Grigorescu.

Tonitsa is generally not a favourite of mine - but I make an exception for this nude - .
And a couple of the Grigorescus in the collection are shown below - the last being a self-portrait.

Cultural pursuits on a quiet Bucharest sunday

Just as I maligned the city in my last post, Bucharest is now showing me a kinder face. Dental treatment has forced me to stay in the city for a few weeks – and the cooler temperatures have made this – and brisk morning walks - a bearable proposition. Yesterday was a glorious day for walking – overcast and, at 20 degrees, about 15 cooler than is normal for this time of year. And the palm-sized Fuji camera acquired during the Koln trip gives an additional incentive to walk. Building facades we had taken for granted during our normal walks from Piata Victoerei to Unirii acquired therefore a new perspective as we traversed the side streets – deserted as they are (apart from some early birds in the cafes) during these summer weekends.

I had wanted to get some snaps of the houses in the area bisected by Hristov Botev street to the north-east of the concrete fascism of the Unirii area - but light drizzle forced a readjustment and we found ourselves veering around just before our destination; and arriving in the small gallery under the Military Circle chatting to a young, untrained artist who is an active collector of Romanian painters and member of the Romanian art collectors’ association.
It was the last day of Mihai Sandilescu’s exhibition – with paintings with a strong sense of colour I don’t often find here. They reminded me of Matisse and the towering (but strangely neglected) figure who was Caillebotte.

Mihai recommended we visit the current exhibition at the Bucharest Municipality Museum which turned out to be a marvellous collection of paintings devoted to the Romanian House – temporarily lent by private owners (downstairs was another temporary exhibition – of less interesting works for sale at reasonable prices). I go some new names for the file in which I am making notes on Romanian realist painters of the past century – a file which now has about 60 names and 50 pages.
The visit gave me nine new names – Artachino, Constantin (1870-1954); Baesu, Aurel (1896-1928); Alper, Juan (1857-1901); Cismaru, Mihai (1943-2003); Catargi, George (1894-1963); Darascu, Nicolae (1883-1953); Ghiata, Dimitir (1888-1972); Ludeosanu Aurel Popp (1874-1960); and Popescu, Cicerone (1908-70). We were now more than 3 hours into our cultural walk which culminated in a quick visit to the second hand bookshop on Strada Ion Ghica – unearthing 2 good-looking current German guidebooks to Romania (for 5 euros each) and a pristine (and Romanian) edition of Umberto Eco’s stunning On Beauty (for 10 euros).
Then on to the Anthony Frost English bookshop where its manager gave me an illuminating insight into the current booktrade.

Suitably chastened and all the more determined to break my Amazon habit, I emerged with four books – Bucharest Tales (in the New Europe Writer series);Vassily Grossman’s A Writer at War; Friedrich Reck’s recently rediscovered and amazing journal from the Nazi period - Diary of a Man in Despair - which has the poetic power of a series of Georg Grosz paintings combined with some Brecht poems (and this from a scion of the German aristocracy) The book is also reviewed here.
The final book was one of their 45% off bargains – another in the delightfully-produced New York Review of books series The Gallery by John Horne Burns.

The painting and book visits and chats were so filling there simply wasn't an appetite left for the planned visit to the newly-opened Museum of Art Collections back nearer home at Calei Victorei......   

different municipal styles

Over the past 6 years, I’ve basically spent most of the winters in Sofia and the summers (apart from 2008) in the Carpathian mountain house – with 6-7 weeks each year in Bucharest. So I’m in a good position to compare and contrast two (neighbouring) countries which are enjoying only their second brief period of freedom after half a century of communist control and several centuries of Ottoman domination. Each has its reasons for feeling different eg Romanian a romantic language in a sea of Slavs; Bulgarian still Cyrillic in its lettering.

Romania is aggressive – both in the size of its buildings and in social behaviour – Bulgaria much more modest in these respects. For more on the differences, see this post.
Yesterday I noted another difference - under the control of Sofia municipality, the Sofia City Art Gallery (to which this blog has often paid tribute) flourishes. Under the control of Bucharest municipality, 5,000 paintings apparently languish with nowhere to be displayed – apart from 2 rooms donated by ArtMark which manage to display about 15 of them. A rich Romanian émigré with an empty palace in the city offered the Bucharest mayor the palace rent-free to give the paintings an outlet – but the offer was turned down. Too much trouble for the lazy mayor whose favourite hobby is demolishing such old buildings. 

Bucharest and Sofia appeared recently at the very bottom of the list of livable European cities - but Sofia at least tries and has indeed many features which make it highly attractive. It's where I go to cycle. swim and wander pleasurably visiting friends in small galleries!
The gouache is a Zhelezarov - of Sofia's women's market 

Optimism, realism and scepticism

First, a welcome to my new readers from the Ukraine – northern neighbours who, my statistics show, have been my most faithful readers over the past week.

I wanted to return to the issue of what has been learned from all the reforms which Britain has attempted in the running of its public services and machinery of government in the past 40 years (raised in a recent blogpost) but have been distracted by the glorious weather which followed the few days of cold and mist. 

First snow of the autumn was on the Bucegi mountains opposite on 22 September (see shot above) but the afternoon sun on the terrace has soon had me stripping off. Today is the third in a row of such superb weather and makes me even less inclined to pop down to Bucharest for its current festival of radio orchestra music. Bucharest inspires very different feelings in me from Sofia – and indeed from some other ex-pats who love the place.

For me Bucharest is only a stopover for better places – but don’t let me discourage those who want to taste its “blowsy charms”. The Sarah in Romania blog is one of the most sympathetic to (if also angry about) the city and marked Bucharest’s birthday with an appropriate post -

This is not a post to list the hundreds of dreadful, illegal demolitions. It is not a post to slag off Mayor Oprescu and the architecture commission, nor the Chief Architect of Bucharest. I have written many of those and it's neither the time nor the place. I say only that after 553 years, while everyone else is trying to improve their cities, renovate rather than rebuild wherever possible, underline the beauty of their architecture and highlight their history whether it be joyous or tragic and syphon traffic away from the centre in order to make things so much more pleasant for citizens, Bucharest is attacked and disfigured by greedy, corrupt, lousy parasites right from the top down to the very bottom.

Those who move a finger are few and far between. I know they exist, that tiny 10%. There are associations, NGOs and individuals who care VERY much. But it seems like a flea up against a tsunami...This was a city where beauty stood on every turn, where every corner was a photo opportunity and where history, patrimony and heritage mattered.  A city (and a country for that matter) which valued education and promoted learning, where the university was renowned and the doctors admired. A city (and country) whose musicians exuded incredible poetry through symphonies and suites and whose concert halls were filled with names that would wow any 'mélomane'. Yes, times were hard, of course they were. But, on the whole there was respect and far more pride than we find today. There was elegance. 

Of course, one can still find beauty in Bucharest - that quiet, shy, almost reticent loveliness that brings a lump to one's throat every time one is confronted with it. You only have to read further back on this blog (and so many others besides) for examples. Perhaps, for the visitors as well as for many Bucharest residents, one must be told where to look - the splendid streets around Dorobanti, the hidden villas behind Unirii, the oldy-worldiness of Tineretului, the charm of what's left around Cismigiu on all sides, the elegance of Cotroceni and Icoanei - and that's just for starters. Bucharest demands to be loved. Few of us actually do. Indeed, there IS beauty.

I have also been rereading some books – eg Smile or Die: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich

Promoting the idea that happiness is within your grasp is in the interests of corporations trying to bamboozle an overworked and underpaid workforce. It's also favoured by churches trying to get rich quick off the American dream. Ehrenreich traces the fad from Calvinist self-control through Christian Science to blatant assumptions of the holiness of cash. Informing the uneducated and unmedicated that their plight is all their own fault is followed up by instructions for making anything you desire – from a new TV screen to a trip to Mexico – "materialise" through mind control. The censorship of negative opinion combines perfectly with the American policy of each man for himself in the best of all possible worlds.This is the philosophy that gave us the smart bomb, the space programme, sub-prime mortgages, plenty of psychopaths and Sarah Palin. Ehrenreich writes that America is unsurpassed in one area: "the reflexive capacity for dismissing disturbing news". .

Even right-wing newspapers reviewed the book positively.   

Ehrenreich savages the instigator of Positive Psychology and finishes on an important note about the importance of realism if not scepticism – an important theme in this blog. I hadn’t until now realised the possible significance of my latest little publication – on Bulgarian realist painting! 

The USA, as a reassessment of a 1960s classic reminds us, has a long tradition of what the book's title calls anti-intellectualism - 

there arose an ethos, a romantic conviction, that a popular democracy should favor "the superiority of inborn, intuitive, folkish wisdom over the cultivated, oversophisticated, and self-interested knowledge of the literati and the well-to-do." Practical experience mattered more than imaginative thinking, and vital emotion trumped anemic rationality. "Just as the evangelicals repudiated a learned religion and formally constituted clergy in favor of the wisdom of the heart and direct access to God, so did advocates of egalitarian politics propose to dispense with trained leadership in favor of the native practical sense of the ordinary man with its direct access to truth. This preference for the wisdom of the common man flowered in the most extreme statements of the democratic creed, into a kind of militant popular anti-intellectualism."

Bucharest antique fair

An antique fair sets up on Parcu Kisselev most weekends – and I have always found it rather pathetic – full of shady characters. Sad – as I have spent so many happy hours browsing the stalls of the puces in places such as Berlin, Brussels, Glasgow and Zurich. As it was such a lovely day today – and I knew the Xmas stalls would also be up – we went out and hit gold. First a large snow mountain painting with a superb old frame - bought apparently in a Puces in Aachen (signed R Sagner. We got it for 100 euros (frame alone worth that); then a heavy cast-iron bell for the Sirnea door with a colourful Wallony type cock (25 euros); and, finally, a very large cast-iron frog (30 euros) - which will keep the stone duck company we picked up in a fantastic open-air stone carver's gallery on the border between Drama (Greece) and Bulgaria! Between times, we hit the normal Bucharest selling technique – when I was criticised for not spotting the 2 supposedly original sketches contained in a Steriadi Catalogue. “It takes some brain to learn to identify such things”, the gypsy guy apparently said ironically - as if we were not worthy to look at such precious things that only connaisseurs would appreciate. He wanted an incredible sum for the catalogue - about 400 euros! The aggressive, arrogant attitude we encountered several times in similar dives in Bucharest. Clearly apologies are due for disturbing such “cultural elites”!

Oprescu destroys more of Bucharest's heritage

More destruction here of irreplaceable monuments. Sarah’s blog tells me today that I wish I had known – I would have risen from my sick bed, taken a dozen eggs and thrown them at the police. More pictures of the destroyed heritage are here
A visit to the Anthony Frost English Bookshop last week – and this time not just browsing but to buy some books since Amazon can no longer receive my orders. I have to wonder if this is not connected with the hack-atack to which the site is now subject – in view of Amazon’s craven removal (under American pressure) of Wikileaks from its computers. For the moment, I am happy to use the technical difficulty (which Amazon informed me yesterday they cannot solve) as an excuse to boycott the internet shop for their role in this affair. And, certainly, I was able to pick up at this great bookshop (just past the National Gallery, hidden by Biserica Kretzulescu) 3 books which either are not available on Amazon – or cost more (not least when postage is considered). So the past strikes back!
I am amazed there is a market here for the high quality stock they have - certainly the staff are great but it is a pity they don’t seem to have the space for events.
A great bird’s eye view of Bucharest to which my attention was drawn by the Survival Guide for Expats.
There is also a December/January issue of the Inyourpocket Guide to Bucharest

Nicusor Dan, president of the association Salvati Bucurestiul, tried to stop the demolitions of Friday night and Saturday morning on Berze/Stirbei Voda. The foreman didn't have copies of the demolition order and the police were called. Unfortunately a little later, police arrived from sector 3 saying they had the order from Oprescu to continue the demolition and if he didn't get out of the way and let the demolition team do their job, he would be fined and charged with disturbing the peace... The police stood guarding the site to stop anyone trying to prevent this outrageous and illegal destruction. By 13h30, the work to murder the house was under way again, the official papers arriving at...um...14-14h30.

Books

A delightful day yesterday at the Annual Book Fair held in the huge Pavilion Expo beside the grotesque Stalinist Press House – which was „hoaching” (as we say in Scotland) with people. Shows that the intellectual habit is still alive and well here - despite the generally appalling nature of TV (although there are still some BBC3 type TV programmes). Fours hours passed before we dragged ourselves, rather wearily, from the scrum (and noise) weighed down by plastic bags with the results of our raids. The first two stalls took some time to negotiate – they were a Greek publisher and the Italian Embassy respectively and were not busy. But in the first I was seduced by a superbly produced book on Balkan poetry (with heavy velvet paper and old grey photographs) - 520 pages (all in Romanian) for 10 euros! And, although the Italian Embassy wasn’t selling books, it was displaying interesting editions of (some of) their older writers and had someone on duty happy to talk to us. They had, however, no Albert Moravia!
I was also very pleased with a new book on Bucharest – from village to metropolis (Romanian and English) by Giuseppe Cina, an Italian Professor of Urban Planning at Turin Univeristy; and a collection of the water colours of Romanian buildings by Gheorghe Leahu (both published by Capicel). I snapped up a book with Dan Dinescu’s black and white photos of Maramures; the land of wood which I had long lusted after – reduced to 2.5 euros – and, on opening it at home, immediately regretted not having bought 4 copies (for gifts). A book with the Sapanta cemetery painted headstones (actually carved from wood) completed the Romanian part of the haul. Wallony Region had a nice display – with copies of their great Espace Nord series (Belgian authors of the mid 20th century) on special offer. The final purchase was bought with some guilt – since we have so little space in the Bucharest flat – but I simply could not resist the 500 glorious pages of Cooking with Herbs and Spices (Hermes House) despite already having one book on each already - but up in the mountain house!
My visit to China at the beginning of the year – and the preliminary reading I did for it – has developed my interest in the country at both political and literary levels. A combination of the antics of the political class of the West and Daniel Bell’s books (The Canadian who has taught at a Beijing University for the past 15 years) have made me more sympathetic to the idea that the political model which could emerge there. ChinaBeat offers one of the best perspectives on modern China and this post has an interesting (if jaundiced) summary of a recent book.

Heritage and change - destroyers and builders

Yesterday I had my first set of winter tyres fitted on a car – not just because of my experience a few weeks back but because a law could be passed very shortly making it compulsory to have them at this time of year. And I didn’t want to be caught out with a mad scramble – and rising prices. Although I’ve had the car for 14 years, it;’s done only 120,000 kilometres since, for long periods (and particularly winters), I’ve been elsewhere on assignment and the car has just languished in the street (on one famous occasion for 2 years on a Brussels suburb street). This will be the first winter spent in Romania – which puts more pressure on to find a properly sized urban flat. But prices are still coming down. House prices on the outskirts of the capital have apparently halved – and flats in the city are forecast to drop another 20% over the winter. But I would still prefer Sofia – or Brasov – to Bucharest.
I’m glad to report that Maritsa has now returned home safely from hospital – no rest for her – I bumped into her in the farmyard in the light rain and got some cream from her for my experimental mushroom soup.

I haven’t had an opportunity to refer to another great post which Sarah in Romania made a few weeks back. She shares our concern about the utter disregard the Bucharest city authorities (and most citizens) show for their architectural heritage which has so many gem; and this post danced on the grave of someone who was apparently one of the worst offenders – Stefan Damian. Thank goodness we still have people prepared to call a spade a spade! One of the main purposes of my blog is to reflect on the experience of trying to improve government – whether from an administrative or political aspect. The first twenty years of my life, I focussed on the political – the „what”. The last 20 years the focus has been on the „how”- on reforming the machinery of government. I’m still interested in the latter but, as the masthead quotation from JR Saul indicates, I think the value of technocrats is overrated and the role of citizens and the maligned politicians has to be asserted. And one of the things wrong with a lot of the reform writing is that it is too abstract. Change is a question of individuals – and we need more of the naming and shaming approach such as this Sarah in Romania post. I used it myself for the first time a few weeks back when I picked out a State Secretary and analysed his (outdated) declaration of interest form which appeared on the Ministry website.
We also need to celebrate more those who are trying to make a positive mark on life – and, as I noted on my friend Ion’s obituary, while they are still alive. One of the reasons I enjoyed Paul Kingsnorth’s book on the protests against the iniquities inflicted on the world by multi-national corporations is that it focussed on the individuals in different parts of the world who are risking their lives and livelihoods to protest against the destruction being wrought by people running these organisations. Business has been using the journal „portrait” for a long time to glorify their class – and most management books are little else than hero creation and worship. Only women like Rosabeth Kantor (with her marvellously mocking ten-rules-for-stifling-innovation and Shoshana Zuboff, it seems, are capable of resisting this inclination of business writers! But you don’t find such positive write-up of reformers – presumably because media ownership is so neo-liberal. And the publications of the reform movement tend to concentrate on ideas.
For example, I’ve wanted for some time to say something about one of the people I admire most – a Slovak friend of mine who, as Director of a training centre run on cooperative lines in a village, has utterly transformed an old palace, building up not only the facilities it offers (and the labour force) but commissioning local artists to create glorious murals to remind us of the place’s historical heritage and holding vernissages with painters from central europe, the Balkans, Central Asia etc. Walk into his huge office and he is almost lost amongst the books and paintings which are piled up around his desk. And his house is like a (living) museum – from all the artefacts he has brought back from his vacations throughout the world. He is such a lovely, modest man and I always feel a taste of heaven when I visit him at the Mojmirovce Kastiel.
And, while we’re on the subject of heritage, you must view this video - Prince Charles promoting his Transylvanian Trust – if you can stomach the posh accent which I fiind so difficult to take as a Scot. I’ve always felt sorry for this guy – a bit of a mummy's boy inevitably but his heart in the right place.

Stefan Damian has suddenly kicked the galeata. Bucharest is a safer place, structurally speaking... I would like to say I'm sorry and offer my sympathies to his family as one should do after the death of anyone, but since I am grieving for the assassination of beautiful houses and the slowly dying history and heritage in both bricks and mortar (and also because I may be many things but a hypocrite isn't one of them), I shall elegantly refrain, if you will excuse me. The article below from Vreau Dreptate reports on the mafia-controlled mass destruction of Bucharest bursting with patrimony and memories, history and stunning beauty - for money speaks louder than respect, homage or tears. Stefan Damian – who died recently – was one of guys who destroyed a great deal of what Ceausescu didn't manage himself and with just as much energy and absence of regret. See HERE in an extract from Romania Te Iubesc, Bucuresti Orasul Fara Istorie on Pro TV. The pix above is of the beautiful villa destroyed on str. Visarion. May its soul and the laughter that once resounded within its walls rest in peace. May those that demolished it be haunted all their days...
And HERE is one more article for you - a list of victims one by one, houses, villas, bijoux of architecture and bygone years - a city mutiliated by the very institution which is supposed to protect it.
Stefan Damian will be missed, but not by any lover of beauty nor national pride. HERE is an article from last February on the heritage Roumania's answer to the Demolition Man has left behind him...

Sala Radio

I’m glad to report on a great Syrian shop (with everything you could expect from such a shop – not least the glorious smell as you enter) in the Matache area just 10 minutes walk from the flat at Piata Victoreii – just before the corner which takes you to Sala Radio (equivalent of BBC) quite a salubrious area amongst the general squalour of Matache. I emerged with my rucksack laden.
Daniela had reported from the radio special prices for their CDs – instead of which we were taken in a very knowledgeable pensioned group on a tour around the studios! One of the two 2 lady guides was so bowled over with having a foreigner to chaperone that she arranged for a dungeon to be opened in the PR Office to make sure I could buy some CDs! The Studios are celebrating their 82nd anniversary – and the Enescu disc I am listening to is a 1951 recording of some of his pieces under his baton! Quite incredible! This city could grow on me! And I’ve just noticed that they have a special station devoted to Romanian villages . It’s some years since we attended one of their live concerts – and they have a good chamber performance tomorrow evening – so I’ve made a promise!
On the way back, we also hit an interesting Indian/Turkish tea/coffee house – with Nargilae. Thank goodness, political correctness has not hit this place!
As I listen to Enescu, I am preparing with the lamb (so rare to find here) one of my Indian specialities. Already, in my enthusiasm, I have overspiced it – with the green thyme powder and garam marsala powders I so seldom get a chance to use. So I have hurriedly added raw carrot and potato slices before She Who Has To Be Obeyed arrives back from Obor market and spots the excess!
It’s important I clarify why yesterday’s blow-by-blow account of the interrogation at the Beijing police station is so important (for me). Abstract discussions are fine – but what counts is being able to challenge individual behaviour and conversations. That’s why my post last month about the falsity of the Statement of Interests entry of the young Romanian high-flier State Secretary was, for me, so important. Why can’t pensioners everywhere track such things???????

keeping traditions alive

Had a nice time visiting the Carturesti bookshop yesterday – which spreads over about 7 floors and offers delightful varieties of tea and sweets. Emerged with about 12 books - many about Bucharest. It may be a city I profess to hate – but, amongst the aggression of the traffic and monstrosities of both Ceacescu and post-modernity, are so many glimpses of superb architecture from another world. Hats off to Arcub (the Arch association) which has produced a 3rd edition of their Bucharest – architecture and modernity, an annotated guide which offers a very friendly guide to the best of the buildings in the city. 344 of them to be precise! At another level, there is the flamboyant The Romanian National Style – produced with the support of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. It’s beautifully produced with glorious detail – often in full-page spreads. And all for less than 10 euros!
In Romanian language only is historian Adrian Majuru’s Bucuresti- diurn si nocturn – a collection of stories about people. He is one of the few who has tried to kick up a fuss about the neglect of the old buildings here.
Moving to modern times, Magda Carneci and Dan Hayon offer Bucuresti – a collection of smells – which captures, in whimsical black and white pictures, the sights a sharp-eyed walker can glimpse in the city. Amazingly, I also picked up Bucharest 2010 – survival guide for expats – which is a very useful collection of addresses and recommendations. I didn’t think the city was a place for ex-pats!
Romanian food also figured on the purchase list – I would recommend very highly the English version of Romanian dishes, wines and customs by Radu Anton Roman. A lovely collection of recipes, regional commentary and black and white pics of old Romania. A gem – worth every euro of its 15 euro price. More prosaic is A Taste of Transylvania produced by Maureen Carnell for the Hospice movement here.

My real finds I have kept to the last – first a small notebook for 2010 for craftsman and craftsmanship produced by a non-profit association dedicated to keeping alive the old building crafts. Exactly what I had been asking for while we were redoing our old house – and having the schite tiles put on the roof. Apart from the illustrations, there are lists of the masters of the various crafts (stove builders, blacksmiths etc) with their telephone numbers. Some of the names are amazing – mesteri de cuptoare; mesteri in impletituri; chirpicar; caramidar; stufar. The association website is www.ahiterra.ro
And, finally, a book about Italian cooking – but not any book – Beaneaters and bread soup – portraits and recipes from Tuscany by Lori de Mori and Jason Lowe. This must be one of the most beautiful books ever – both in its concept, language, pictures and layout. It is a real celebration not only of the simple, old cooking – but of the individual craftsmen in Tuscany who keep the tradition alive.

My thanks to Valentin Mandache and his great blog (Historic Houses of Romania) for the photograph which graces this entry. I didn't have such a picture and surfed to find one. I'm delighted to havefound such a blog.
http://historo.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/imposing-neo-romanian-style-house/