Radio România Internațional

Tag: leisure

  • Entertainment and leisure in the old town of Ploiesti

    Entertainment and leisure in the old town of Ploiesti

    An oil-extraction town, the seat of a mountainous county, therefore a town with a remarkable tourist potential, Ploiesti, in the inter-war years, was a thriving town, with lots of entertaining opportunities. Some of these entertaining opportunities were even imported from Bucharest by the Ploiesti town dwellers, who were eager to compete with the Bucharest city dwellers on an equal footing. One such important entertaining habits was the big flower fight, which in Bucharest was staged at the Promenade, that is on the then northern outskirts of Romania’s capital city. In the Prahova town, the flower fight started before World War One and was resumed when the war ended. It was a spring entertainment that came to a close in late June, once the holidays began. When and how the flower fight was staged in Ploiesti, we will find out all about that from the author of a book entitled Once Upon a Time in Ploiesti. Flower Fights, football and beauty contests, Lucian Vasile.



    The flower fight was an imported habit, to Ploiesti from the Capital city, before World War One. The Promenade in Bucharest was replaced by the Ploiesti boulevard, on a smaller scale, by all means, yet with the same passion, the same verve and the same popular revolt. Perhaps in Ploiesti it was more intense since it was a smaller town, the green areas were a lot fewer, so cutting the boulevard off from the community circuit at the weekend caused the revolt of those who were unable to afford taking part in that kind of entertainment. That is why, in the 1920s or thereabouts, several newspaper articles were issued, writing that, anyway, the green spaces around town were scarce, which simply deprived the town’s downtrodden and ostracized people of one of their very few recreation areas. Everything came to a standstill on the Saint Peter and Paul’s Feast, when the school year also came to a close in the town’s most important high-school. It had Peter and Paul as patron saints. And it was the time when the town fell asleep. The scorcher back then was, if you will, quite similar with the scorcher we have these days, so the posh people left town, leaving for various resorts abroad, or retiring to their residences in the region, usually lying around Ploiesti.



    The flower fight was mostly affordable for the rank and fashion, yet the more modest town dwellers amused themselves in funfairs, which gained their momentum in early autumn, when the crops were harvested, especially when the grapes were harvested.



    Historian Lucian Vasile:



    If the flower fight was the sign that the life of the town in early summer came to an end, three months later, in early autumn, a funfair was mounted, At the Cannons, that’s how it was called, it opened the new school year as well as a new season of the highlife. Then the town’s posh people returned to their residences in Ploiesti. But, rather, that was how the rank and file amused themselves. The grape juice ignored the social status, so having fun like that was extremely affordable, since at that funfair all sorts of vendors arrived, offering very cheap and simple entertainment: from the Merry-go-round to target shooting, to the boxer punch machines where you could test your force. It was the entertainment for commoners, it lasted for about between 4 and 6 weeks and could have lasted longer had the cold weather not set in, forcing people to retire in beerhouses, restaurants and taverns.



    However, Ploiesti town dwellers were also into football. With details on that, here is historian Lucian Vasile again.



    This sports discipline saw a spectacular rise. Around 1907, 1908 it barely had any fans in Ploiesti and people thought it was a waste of time, they even thought it was a weird kind of sports discipline. Well, 20-30 years later, not only was Ploiesti a hub of national football, but also it had two teams that used to duel each other, yet also competing on the country’s central football stage. It was, on one hand, Prahova, which was the traditional team subsidized the Dutch industry tycoon Jacob Kopes and there was Tricolorul, the Tricolor, the team of the Ploiesti-Valeni Railway Society. It was a very profitable society which of course had tremendous sums of money at its fingertips, sums it splashed here and there, yet with a hardly encouraging outcome. They were unable to win the championship, nay, they even were relegated. Yet they were famous in the late 1930s, for the bonuses and the salaries they paid. But at that time as well, football ended up in brawls, in fights. There was a time, in the late 1920s or thereabouts, when the police prefect himself entered the pitch and started punching people and kicking them with his legs, because he was mad the local team had been defeated.



    A multi-ethnic town, Ploiesti also witnessed ways of spending leisure time through habits and customs imported by the foreigners who settled in the city. A telling example of that is the German community, which was quite numerous. Here is the historian Lucian Vasile, with more on that.



    They built a hall for their community, a hall on the foundation of which today’s Philharmonics Building in town was erected. As early as the late 19th century, the members of the German community convened there, they had a choir and organized all sorts of games: bowling and snooker. What was really new in the town’s life was the fact that here women rubbed shoulders with men, being allowed to play, they were not discriminated against. For the then patriarchal world, that came as a curiosity, how was it possible that, with the Germans, women played snooker alongside men, with no discrimination. Otherwise, the other communities were rather well integrated, and not that anxious to preserve their separate identity. They were trying to integrate.



    Unfortunately, once with the paucity and the restrictions the communist regime brought with it from 1947 onwards, many of these entertainment and leisure opportunities disappeared, just as people’s good humor disappeared.




  • Projects of the Ceausescu Era and their remnants in today’s Bucharest

    Projects of the Ceausescu Era and their remnants in today’s Bucharest


    The Crangasi district in the north-western area of Bucharest in the north-western area of Bucharest boasts Romanian capital city’s biggest artificial lake. The water surface area has a rather recent history. It appeared 36 years ago, in 1986. It is known as the Mill Lake. The lake is also known as the Ciurel or the Dambovita Lake. The area proper of the water surface is impressive; it used to be part of the large-scale watercourse arrangement project targeting the Dambovita river which cuts through Romania’s capital city, from north-west to the east.



    We’re about to explore the history of the Mill Lake, and our guide is historian Cezar Buiumaci with the Bucharest Municipal Museum. Here he is, taking us back to the beginnings of Bucharest’s newest and biggest lake.



    Cezar Buiumaci:



    The Mill Lake is part of Dambovita river’s watercourse arrangement project and, as an idea, it first occurred once with the inception of Bucharest’s town planning works in the 20th century’s early 1980s. It was part of Nicolae Ceausescu’s great makeover project for the city. The Bucharest leader was only taking up on an idea that had occurred previously, that of the construction of a waterway linking Bucharest to the Danube and involving the watercourse of Dambovita and Arges rivers. The condition of the Dambovita river flow was analyzed, only to reveal that the old river bed was not fit for inland waterway transportation. For the water flow to increase, two big river-barrier lakes were created: Ciurel, also known as the Mill Lake or the Dambovita Lake, and Vacaresti.



    The large-scale makeover project of the mid 1908s targeting Dambovita had a political component, but also a town planning significance. Here is historian Cezar Buiumaci once again, with the details.



    On July 5, 1985, the Romanian Communist Party’s Central Committee convened a meeting of the Executive Political Committee, highlighting the impending necessity of carrying watercourse arrangement works for Dambovita river as part and parcel of the new Civic Center project. The project included the construction of a big river-barrier lake in the western part of the city, with the purpose of storing an important volume of water required for the clean-water supply of Dambovita river. It had also been though out as a protection system in the event of the rivers’ bursting their banks, at once being a pleasure lake. Watercourse arrangement works also targeted the sanitizing of Dambovita river as it was flowing through Bucharest, the improvement of the climate, the creation of proper navigation facilities and the carrying of construction works for the Bucharest – River Danube waterway. Works took off as soon as the official consent was given, by dint of Decree no. 201 issued on July 12, 1985.



    However, in spite of all that, the idea of Dambovita river’s navigability would be given up on, as soon as specialists were consulted. On September 28, 1985, the construction site was opened festively, while almost a year later, in August 1986, the gates were be closed, of the Ciurel dam.



    Historian Cezar Buiumaci:



    On August 21, 1986, the large-scale work was completed for the Ciurel river-barrier lake, Bucharest’s biggest artificial lake, stretching along a surface area of 240 hectares, with a total capacity of 20 million cubic meters and meant to provide the supply of drinkable, irrigation and industrial water. The river-barrier water lake also had the purpose of collecting the water from floodwaters. The undertaking also included river bank protection works, upstream of the lake, until Dragomiresti-Deal, along 5 kilometres, or thereabouts. A surface area of more than 1,100 hectares of farmland was thus protected, as well as other categories of investments lying in the proximity of the river bed. For the water to be evacuated, a river dam was built, nearby the Ciurel bridge, it was made of ferro-concrete, with 3 dams having a 6-meter span each. The sea of Crangasi has a depth of 5 to 10 meters and is embanked with a dam made of thick clay, obtained from the excavation operations for the valley of the lake.



    However, the large-scale project meant the relocation of a cemetery and of several human communities that inhabited the area. According to the urban legends, sometimes human bodies could be seen floating on the water, so the lake was dubbed the Death Lake, a play upon words, in Romanian, with Lacul Morii becoming Lacul Mortii.



    Cezar Buiumaci:



    Here, apart from other objectives, there was a cemetery around Crangasi church and the decision was taken, for the cemetery to be dismantled and the human remains to be relocated to the Giulesti-Sarbi cemetery. In early 1985, disinterment works began. The timeframe for that kind of work was limited, the employees were unable to meet their deadlines and the gravediggers from other cemeteries refused to help with the dismantling, so sanitation workers were employed instead. The construction of the lake on the premises of the former cemetery, that still makes the topic of several urban legends.



    Another purpose for the construction of Lacul Morii, the Mill Lake was that of doing leisure and sports activities.



    Historian Cezar Buiumaci:



    Since it was built in a densely-populated area, the Dambovita lake also had to cater for a cultural and sports component. Being an area where the access from other districts could be made using the underground thoroughfare but also the surface public transport, arrangements were designed for ground and nautical sports: sports fishing wharfs and an island with a surface area of roughly 5 hectares. For its greater part, it was built by workers from other enterprises doing community work, they put in more than 70,000 hours in terms of workload until September 2, 1987.



    The Mill Lake in north-western Bucharest, for quite some time now, has been a noted landmark of the city. The development of the last three decades, the events that have been staged there as well as the natural climate that has been created in the meantime have made the lake increasingly attractive.


    (EN)