"Strawberry Harvesters" Are Coming Back For some Romanians, this Christmas will be very different: they are coming back for good, after a long absence, in some cases after years, to the bosom of their families. Although the winter holidays are a time when we want to be with our loved ones, their return for good or, at any rate, for a much longer period than that of a holiday is not a choice made under normal conditions, but one forced by circumstances. It is not due to the nostalgia for the country and family, nor to spectacular economic growth of the mother-country, but on the contrary, to the global economic crisis that also strongly affects those countries where they had found a better paid job than at home but now they have lost it or they are about to lose it, without much of a chance to find another. In Spain, for example, a country that, in recent years, had accepted a spectacular number of Romanian workers, this autumn the unemployment rate reached 11.73% due to the loss of 164 300 jobs. Read More >>
NEWS, EVENTS and ATTRACTIONS - DEC 2008 - JAN 2009
News, events and attractions - dec 2008 - jan 2009 December is the festive season par excellence. Our capital city wears festive garments, like most of us, who have already prepared our elegant suits and evening gowns. Thousands of coloured lights garnish the boulevards, as well as the Bucharest gardens. The main character of the season reigns in the city parks and in people’s homes: the Christmas tree. Beneath it, the attractive, various, mysterious gifts themselves. Everyone chooses, buys and gives presents everywhere. Irrespective of where you live in Romania, in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the large cities or in the villages so full of traditions, one thing is sure: both New Year's Eve and Christmas Eve will bring memorable moments. Read More >>
SPECIAL
Bucharest Through the Eyes of History From Project to Reality Few of us, Bucharest residents or visitors, would have thought that, during the inter-war period, Bucharest was developing to become “the cultural metropolis of the Balkan region”, that the name of the beautiful Tineretului Park was originally Valea Plangerii or that the plan for the Bucharest Metro system dates back to the 30s.
The Perfect Christmas Present Most people find Christmas as the most beautiful holiday of the year: snow, lights, decorated trees, the presence of the loved ones, the family reunited, all the tasty foods in the world on the table, the warmth and brightness of home, the carol singers but, besides all, the joy of the surprise present. Whether you offer or you receive it, the joy is the same.
Traditional Romanian Christmas Dishes Sarmale are by far everyone’s favourites. They can be cooked in cabbage leaves (pickled or raw), in vine leaves, dock leaves, beet leaves and in spring, in certain areas, they are cooked in tile leaves - which must be very tender. by Elena RADUCU Read More >>
ENTERTAINMENT
Theater, Classic and Rock Music While for a play you need to prepare to enter into a certain rhythm and a specific mood, when you go to a club you have to prepare physically rather than spiritually – you need to be pretty rested to survive a whole night of more decibels than normal.
At Paltinis, I was always impressed by the wilderness, that beauty that is not looking at itself, a beauty of the interior, a complete beauty without the vanity and the arrogance of self-consciousness.
I was in a melancholy mood, feeling nostalgic about the time when I was a student when I happily remembered the place where I used to go often with my friend, Ana-Maria: Paltinis. I evoked in my mind and soul our ambition to reach the peak, the desire to finish the climb, and the splendour of the landscape that opened before our eyes, always curious and eager for the joy of contemplating the beauty in its purest form.. Paltinis is one of the oldest tourist resort in Romania, it is at the highest altitude in the country, 1,442 meters. The Cindrelului Mountains, great and noble, gutsy and worthy, hide wonders to be found by everyone who will take the time to admire them and who takes the time to come or to return to these incredible lands in their splendour. Paltinis lies 32 kilometres south-west of Sibiu, from where the road rises sinuously to these augural heights. The resort was built in the nineteenth century by the Carpathian Transylvanian Society. Among the villas from those ...
I admired the forum, the Palace of the Augustans, the thermae, the amphitheatre, the public and private structures. Outside the city walls, there were remains of brick baking furnaces and the necropolis (Aureliae’s Mausoleum), a tumulus with a stone base, stele and a sanctuary for funeral sacrifices and a brick vault. The largest number of inscriptions in Dacia related to monuments, temples, city administration was found here. One bright autumn morning, I went in pursuit of history. I have always wanted to find and to admire old things, preserved and slowly, but permanently discovered, with all my emotion and understanding. I would have liked to feel the entire history running through my arteries and veins, I would have wanted to keep forever the wonderful image of the eternity in one moment and in one accumulation of ancestral images. I longed for the aesthetics of ancient times, for other people, other spirits, other features and other flaws that seem sometimes to be forgotten in places with an evergreen beauty.
Greenfield Solutions for Romanian Development Although not under the spotlight of the daily real estate news, Romanian industry has made steady and safe progress of late. Along with growing into maturity, this field is subject to general development trends while developers show their preference for certain areas that can guarantee the best conditions for carrying on their activity. Regatta real estate company remarks the general trends in the industrial field progress and presents the current solutions existing on the market for the optimum development of the industrial activity. Most of the companies currently reaching a significant production level in Romania show a continuously increasing trend to focus on location of the production facilities in the neighbourhood of the big cities throughout the country and less so in the neighbourhood of Bucharest. Read More >>
RELAXATION
Copenhagen, Geneva or Bucharest - An Expat's Point of View Flthough there are some important aspects that have not changed in the Romanian Capital in the last years (sidewalks are still not clean, there are no bicycle tracks, there isn't enough lighting on the streets, nor enough parking places), Bucharest occupies the 14th place among the top of European cities which are preferred by the citizens of other countries who live there, as Roxana Lupu tells in her article in “Evenimentul Zilei”, titled “The Capital, More and More Loved by Expats”.
THE LAST WORD - DEC 2008 As an American, for the past couple of months I have been overwhelmed by news of our “credit meltdown”, banks closing, being bought, going bankrupt and in general contributing to our economic crisis. Yet, everytime I come back to Bucharest, I see a new bank near my office, a new bank building somewhere along the road, and i wonder. Leaving aside the current situation in the USA, created to over leveraging, is banking in Romania really so profitable as to warrant several bank branches on every street corner? Our office is near Piata Munci, and within a 2 block radius of my office I now a choice of at least 8 different banks! There used to be a 24 hour supermarket on Decebal near my office. It is gone, having been replaced by a bank. Read More >>
Bucuresti What, Where, When
