Today’s is International Women’s Day, increasingly important in the United States but a long-time holiday of major standing here in Romania. And so you’d think that I’d be quite happy about the fact that the new Ponta 3 cabinet has a number of female members, including Ioana Maria Petrescu, the new Minister of Public Finance. After all, she’s relatively young (age 34) and thus not … Continue reading Aioli
I’ve had a number of people here in Romania as well as from the Republic of Moldova ask me if the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is going to spread and possibly affect them, especially as some of the local media has been drumming up the threat of an armed conflict. I’ll tell you right now what I told them: you have nothing to worry about. … Continue reading Game, Set and Match
Lately my eyes have been bleeding after spending countless hours reading through old Communist-era documents, chock full of interminable Marxist terms like “irredentist” and all of them written in the tiresome old Slavic orthography wherein ei sunt was written as ei sȃnt and the like. Therefore I thought it would be a bit of a palate cleanser to tell a fun and interesting story from … Continue reading A Vegetarian Wizard in Romania
Many years ago I was eating dinner in a restaurant in Bucharest when my companions began pointing and whispering excitedly. It turned out that Gheorghe Hagi was eating at a nearby table. I not only didn’t recognize him by sight but I had literally never heard of him despite the fact that he is widely considered to be this country’s greatest football (USA: soccer) player … Continue reading The Grandmaster
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun or fester like a sore, and then run? Does it stink like rotten meat or crust and sugar over, like a syrupy sweet? —Langston Hughes Five days ago, there was a surge of joy in Romania after the website EurActive reported that the European Union was going to pass … Continue reading Another Dream Deferred
All Things Romania 