Tag: romania

Word of the Day

The Hardest Word to Say in the Romanian Language (for English Speakers)

Unfortunately, this tongue-twister of a word is not some rarely used, technical word like jhgeaburi. Instead, it is literally a plague of a word to learn, and if you spend any time in Romania (or Moldova), you’ll definitely have cause to try to wrap your mouth around this particular bon mot. You can’t blame Romanians for creating this word out of thin air like they … Continue reading The Hardest Word to Say in the Romanian Language (for English Speakers)

Unknown's avatarSam Cel Roman6 Comments
Guns Are Fun, Marketing, Advertising and Propaganda

Monumental Stupidity

While it’s apparently perfectly acceptable to honor American soldiers who dropped bombs on innocent civilians with two separate monuments in the same city that they attacked, the deputy mayor of Bucharest is now agitating for a small park in the city to be renamed because it honors a Soviet general. Located in northeastern Bucharest, Tolbukhin Park (Ro: Parcul Tolbuhin) is named after Fyodor Tolbukhin, a … Continue reading Monumental Stupidity

Unknown's avatarSam Cel Roman3 Comments
Money, probability and predicting the future

World Bank Romanian Cities Report

I realize that there are few texts as boring to read as a white paper, but if you’re not afraid of charts and a mountain of statistics, you can read a very informative World Bank report on Romania in English here and in Romanian aici. Entitled “Magnetic Cities” in some versions (oops!), it is, nonetheless, quite a lot of data that backs up what I’ve … Continue reading World Bank Romanian Cities Report

Unknown's avatarSam Cel Roman1 Comment
Guns Are Fun, Marketing, Advertising and Propaganda

The Great Liberators

Every capital city has its secrets, but Bucharest has a couple of unusual ones. One of them is this monument, currently located in the downtown Cismigiu Park. To understand why it’s there, we have to go back to the dark days of World War 2. Operation Tidal Wave As I’ve written about before, one of the strangest bits of historical trivia is that Romania is … Continue reading The Great Liberators

Unknown's avatarSam Cel Roman16 Comments
Guns Are Fun, This is a true story

The Russian Queen of Romania That Almost Was

Have you ever seen this photograph before? It is, quite possibly, the single most important photograph ever taken in the 20th century. The woman on the far right, holding a baby, is Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna Romanova. The young man in the back is Crown Prince Carol. The photograph was taken on July 14, 1914, in Constanta, Romania. Although no one quite knew it at … Continue reading The Russian Queen of Romania That Almost Was

Unknown's avatarSam Cel Roman7 Comments