Owlspotting

A self-conscious Romanian joke says we Romanians are expert in everything. When confronted with this issue-usually when guests on talk-shows give their all on topics they know nothing about–my dad loves to play on that and say things like: “I’m the best soccer player among doctors and the best doctor among soccer players.” Yesterday I […]

In 2000, a couple of friends and I were looking for an unknown Romanian rock band to book for a party we were throwing at school. Someone gave us a demo CD for a band called ab4. We listened, we liked, we paid $300 and we let them rip. At the time, ab4 was nothing […]

Here are some pictures from Vama Veche. They were snapped by my good friend Andrei, who until recently was a photographer for the Mediafax press agency. Now he’s packing his bags for a master’s program in photography at Missouri.

I’ve spent a couple days in Vama Veche with Andrei and Bogdana, sleeping in cars, drinking, eating and feeling sick (some of us). Vama Veche is to many a non-mainstream paradise of the Romanian coast although its “alternative” status has been under heavy debate for the last five years or so. People campaigning to save […]

Yes, people in Romania have nicknames. The fun thing about them is that sometimes they are just sounds pieced together to sound a certain way (Dudu, Bobo, Lolo etc). A friend of my brother’s has been a nickname magnet over the years. He now has nine and out of respect some people refer to him […]

Here are some great Romanian music videos I had the pleasure of coming across in the past few weeks. They say plenty about Romania so let’s get down to business. Of course that every second neighborhood in a Romanian city houses Mexican restaurants, sparks Cuban revolutions, sports Puerto Rican flags and kicks it daily in […]

Omul su Sobolani (The Man with Rats) is the rags-to-riches story of the Romanian music scene. The underground idols of the early 2000s are now as mainstream as rock can go in Romania. I have been listening to OCS since 1999 and have become a dedicated fan when they released their first LP, “Ne punem […]

Bucharest. The same yet always changing. The irony is that so many of us wear Converse shoes these days. Almost nobody had them when I left in 2003. We read lousy pop culture magazines that are a study in name dropping and out of context music and movie criticism. We watch the latest movies with […]

The county building (Prefectura) in Targu Mures is about 100 years old and it’s built next to the Palace of Culture, one of the more important landmarks in the city. Prefectura has a beautiful clock tower which had been closed to visitors for years. It’s now finally open to the public–you climb more than 200 […]

A few days ago, Megan wondered about the Romanian theater scene: What are theatre-goers going to see? Are there many musicals? What can Western theatre artists offer to Romanian theatre artists, and would they even be interested in a collaboration? I thought Luiza might have some knowledge of this as she did some reporting on […]