Owlspotting

The Romanian railway company CFR has launched a campaign to ban smoking on trains beginning September 1. All ash trays have been removed and people caught smoking on the train will be fined. Tickets will say: “No smoking on the train.” In the official release CFR (a state-owned beast) doesn’t mention anything about setting up […]

Two of my former professors at the journalism school in Bucharest, George and Bradut, have been chronicling the admission exam that is taking place this week at FJSC (1, 2). Over the years I’ve given much thought to this exam and whether it could be made more relevant. At the end of the day, the […]

It’s not easy to translate English-language movies into Romanian. Doing subtitles is bad enough as way too often cultural references and certain phrases hit a brick wall when meeting the translator. But even worse is the translation of the actual movie title. Sometimes, the translation reflects the title (which happened in the case of “Inside […]

Yes, the rumors are true: Romerican stopped in Targu Mures and for those 20 or so hours, time stopped as well. While I am sure he will offer a much more revealing review of the hostilities, allow me to preview what he will have to say by permitting you to indulge in some unrevealing words […]

It has been said for centuries that wine is the Holy beverage. I have seen people getting trashed on wine (both on red and the less holy white) and there wasn’t much saintly stuff to report about them. They kept stumbling on their way out of the bar, taxi drivers continued to try to scam […]