Category: Inside Romania

The museum was designed by a family who loves the Technical Museum in Vienna. The youngest member of the family, Matei, once asked his mother why there was no such museum in Bucharest too, with children allowed to touch the exhibits and even play with them. His mother was quick to answer: “If there isn’t any, we can set one up”. Three years later, the “Knowledge Town” opened its doors. The approximately 100,000 Euros worth of investment materialised in a bright, colourful place, where nobody can complain about getting bored. It stretches on 400 square meters, where children are encouraged to interact, to experiment and play with objects, while their parents are encouraged to be their guides.

Anamaria Roata-Palade, the initiator of the interactive museum, says all games have been designed particularly for the museum: “We have been designing and producing games for three years now. We started with blueprints, mere drawings on paper and ended up making real games, with bubbles, magnets and water. I think the most attractive one is, by far, the water game, because it includes many mills, an Archimedes’ screw, a vortex, for children to throw ping-pong balls and see how a vortex takes shape. There are also games which test and improve children’s skills, a mirror game, a 10-m long running track, where they have a chance to test their speed, a tsunami wave simulator, made of Perspex and a metallic framework. At the far end of the track, there is a press that children can use in order to see what happens to a beach house when a tsunami wave hits the coast. We have also created a replica of geological and rock strata. There are explanatory notes all over the place. Thus, children have the opportunity to find out what they should do with certain objects, they see what happens, the relation between reality and physics, and they are taught how those principles apply in real life, in terms of physics, maths or chemistry… We have another room with balance games: for instance, children are asked place 10 nails in balance on only one nail, to walk on a slack line, on tree trunks, to place a table leaf with only three holes on 6 legs… We’ve tried to find as amusing and entertaining games as possible, to prompt children to ask questions and find answers themselves, to discover the power of their mind and to see how a theory can be applied in real life.”

The museum addresses people aged 2 to 99. There are games for younger children, too, like bubble games on an inclined plane, bubbles that must be moved along pre-defined routes, objects of various shapes to be fitted into other objects, a huge memo and boxes containing surprising objects for younger generations: audio cassettes, discs and other objects from our recent past. There are explanatory signs and guides for each of the games, but Anamaria Roata-Palade says it is very important for parents to get involved, too.

Anamaria Roata-Palade: “We encourage parents to play along their kids, we would like them to do something together, instead of leaving their children there for 2-3 hours. We want parents to spend at least one hour together with their children. It is important for children to see that their parents are willing to learn new things or to explain to them things that they can’t always understand perfectly without help. We provide guidance and can explain everything to children, but, from my personal experience, it is more exciting for children to say ‘look, mom, what I can do’ or to hear their moms say ‘wait, I’ll show you how it works’. “

The organisers wanted to make sure that adults, too, can find something exciting to do, while their children are playing. So there are games intended for adults too: “We have a room with IQ games, big-size puzzles, games with balls, ropes and rings. There are also small-size games, but the big ones are more exiting. The chess-puzzle has not been solved yet, although we bought it 2 months ago. I love to play games. Sometimes, I surprise myself telling my kid ‘let me try’ or ‘I want to play, too’. Playing is important, it’s a way of learning new things.”

A tour of the “Knowledge Town” can last several hours. The children who attended the opening of the museum were very excited and said they would like to return there soon. The museum is a perfect destination on cold, rainy days. There is also a room where children can eat sandwiches and parents can sip a coffee. The kids, however, are so excited that sometimes they forget to eat and even refuse to go home. The price of a ticket is similar to that of a film ticket, but the benefits of a visit to the museum are huge. This is not the only initiative of this type in Romania. Many people intend to open similar museums in the cities of Cluj-Napoca and Brasov, in central Romania.

A couple of weeks ago, the National Education Ministry jointly with Samsung Electronics Romania inaugurated two digital classes as part of the “Smart Classroom” project, initiated in 2013. The first SMART class was opened at the “Nicolae Kretzulescu” Higher Commercial School in Bucharest, in September 2013. Smart Classroom offers a complete digital learning solution, which includes both hardware and software support and digital content, adapted to the curriculum recommended to high school students.

Each digital class in the three aforementioned high schools was equipped with 31 latest-generation tablets, an E-Board, a Smart TV and two laptops. Paul Balogh and Cristian Dinu represent the Readforward Company, which has produced the software, which makes possible digital-support teaching.

Paul Balogh has further details on the Learn Forward project: “Learn Forward is currently the most important project developed by our company. Actually, it is a platform for using digital textbooks in some classes. The idea is not to replace the teacher with a tablet, but to use tablets, computers and other equipment in a classroom, such as an E-board, in order to bring added value to the normal learning process in a classroom. We have a site that contains accounts for teachers, students and other special devices in the classroom. Several digital textbooks can be used by those holding the accounts. If you have any type of computer, tablet and telephone with Internet access and a browser, then you are ready, from a technical point of view, to use this platform. Another huge advantage is that the platform is user-friendly. What we know from international competitions is that such systems tend to become incredibly complicated, because they have been designed by IT experts who are crazy about buttons and hidden things. It is a sort of intelligence parade. This is great, but it is even greater if you can hide all this complexity behind some very simple buttons. We don’t believe that teachers should hold a PhD in IT to be able to use these online services. If teachers don’t have problems in using the Facebook, they will undoubtedly use our platform without any difficulty from the very beginning.”

Cristian Dinu has told us how the company he represents managed to create simple but also affordable software: “We managed to do what nobody else has been able to do so far, namely to create a platform that can be accessible on any device, from the smallest to the biggest screen. Users only need a browser and any type of software they use to navigate on the Internet. From a technical point of view, we managed to reach a very important point, that of total accessibility, in the sense that each child and teacher can access this platform without facing any technical barriers. The cheapest devices can be used to access the soft we have made.”

Paul Balogh says teachers have nothing to fear as far as digital schooling is concerned: “Most teachers are naturally afraid of this technological progress, they all think computers are going to replace them. Their second fear is that they will have to use computers, and all kids are better than they are at this, so the normal relationship within the classroom is no longer what they used to know. But we were happy to see in Timisoara a teacher who did not resort to fear in order to make herself heard, and who used the software in the most natural way after only one training session. The same happened in other classrooms, in Bucharest, or in Iasi, but in Timisoara the platform was adopted instantly.”

We also talked to Roxana Cojocaru, a teacher with the Carmen Sylva Pedagogical High School in Timisoara. She told us how the kids reacted to the new teaching methods: “They were thrilled, they waited that so eagerly, they knew they had won, but when they got in the classroom and saw it, they realised their dream had come true. It was a competition in which 9 high schools in Timisoara had taken part, each of them made a film answering the question ‘why your school is the smartest’, and apparently our school is the smartest in western Romania. This advanced technology allows us to accurately present our materials, in several different ways. The teacher — student interaction is considerably improved and a lot of time is being saved. For instance, we don’t have to draw sketches on the blackboard anymore. The software takes care of that. The teacher knows exactly what each student is doing at any moment, and can assist where needed in no time.”

There are five schools that already have smart classes. Two of them are from outside Romania’s borders and this is only the beginning, says Cristian Dinu: “There are two schools in Bulgaria that are already using this software. One is an economy school from Sofia and the other one is from Plovdiv. We are happy that we were able to export this software, from its first year of existence. We also have several pilot projects in countries like Brazil, Mexico and the United States via India.”

The future of schools is, undoubtedly, digital. Screens will soon replace the paper, pen and chalk. Students are, of course, the ones that enjoy this the most. With an inborn capacity to adapt themselves to anything new, they are the first to choose the digital version. So we have no choice but keep up with them.

Factual.ro is a website launched last summer by 8 young intellectuals who wanted to create what they termed as an Office for Consumer Protection against Politics. With the help of a small group of around 40 volunteers, factual.ro regularly comments on some of the public assertions made by politicians. We spoke to Alex Rosu, one of the founders of the site:

Alex Rosu: “Since December 2012 we have been looking for ways to contribute to the political scene in Romania by making people responsible and achieve a higher degree of truth in the public sphere. Our feeling is that the level of truth, the quality of discussions in public space is very low and that politicians, as well as the media and public institutions use various manipulation techniques such as distorting data and sophistic statements to achieve their goals. We wish to help reduce the level of ‘noise’ and vagueness in the public sphere.”

Fact-checking started in the United Sates, where two dedicated sites have even succeeded in changing public policies initiated by the US administration and in encouraging decision-makers to be more careful about the statements they make. Similar initiatives have appeared recently in European countries such as Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland, as well as at the level of the European Union, where factcheck.eu checks statements concerning European policies. We asked Alex Rosu about the target group of his team’s work:

Alex Rosu: “A large part of our public is naturally a specialised, informed public. What we wish to become is a sort of Office for Consumer Protection against Politics. I would like our articles to be used in public debates in Romania. This is in fact our goal: to supply fact-checked information to discussions which are often unclear and which often rely on manipulation instead of information.”

But how do you check facts?

Alex Rosu: “We have a team that monitors everything that happens in the public sphere in terms of statements and decisions. There are a lot of data we have to process and want to computerise this process. When a potential subject is found, it is sent to our experts who then look at data, official reports, statistics and other authorised sources to check if the figures used in certain assertions are correct or whether a certain institutional process has been respected. In effect, we check every authorised source available.”

Recently, factual.ro has invited 40 experts from different areas to a fact-checking marathon that lasted more than 7 hours and whose conclusions will be published in time. Ioana Avadani, the director of the Centre for Independent Journalism, says this is an excellent idea:

Ioana Avadani: “There is so much noise in Romanian society and the quality of public discourse has decreased so much that what factual.ro does, in my opinion, is to clean up. They do what each and every one of us should do, namely to look critically and filter the information we are presented with. factual.ro brings together a group of people who are good at researching, finding and verifying data, who are experts in their respective fields and who put their abilities in the service of the public.”

The project has been online since last summer. The experts involved have in the meantime checked many of the statements made by politicians from various parties, both in the government and in opposition. Alex Rosu says, however, that they do not target anyone in particular:

Alex Rosu: “We do not attack a particular party or candidate. As any visitor to our website can see, deception is a practice equally embraced by all parties and politicians across the spectrum. Ours is a citizen’s initiative with strong academic roots. The things we publish are objective and true. If anyone accuses us of doing something bad by bringing out the truth, we will accept the responsibility, but we don’t think anyone will accuse us of this. They would only harm themselves and put us in the spotlight, which may not be very convenient for them.”

Although it has been almost a year since the website was launched, the people whose statements have been fact-checked have not yet had a response. Ioana Avadani says there is an explanation for this, but that things have to change:

Ioana Avadani: “From what I’ve seen, politicians are more sensitive to messages coming from TV stations and less so from the online area. They will have to adjust, however, because the Internet is becoming more and more powerful.”

The public can also contribute to factual.ro by proposing a certain theme for discussion or disseminating the findings of the fact-checks performed by the experts.

In 2012, Razvan Voiculescu started searching all throughout Romania for what he calls lore keepers. By lore he means not the philosophical meaning of life, but rather the common sense and use of every gesture, the meaning of every object, as understood by real Romanian peasants, who learned from their elders why the world works this way and not another. The risk today is that this lore should disappear, alongside the traditions replaced by the modern world, and the roots and sense of belonging of each and every one of us. In order to find those who miraculously resisted the changes sweeping Romania in the last 70 years, Razvan Voiculescu resorted to people he knew and a Facebook community that came into existence almost effortlessly. This is how he identified no less than 58 craftsmen who, in spite of their age, could still tell stories of their crafts and their life. The first recalled by Razvan Voiculescu is an old school teacher:

Razvan Voiculescu: “I found a gentleman in Bukovina famous all over his village, he was the last of the church deacons. In his youth he taught children at church, and what he taught them was a sort of blend of general knowledge, within the limits of what passed for general knowledge in the 1930s and ‘40s, and biblical teachings. This is why he was called a deacon. He is the only one I found who was still coherent at 90 years of age, but the recordings and photos came out well.”

With the help of director Serban Georgescu and a small team of photographers, Razvan Voiculescu knocked on the doors of those who have no one to pass their crafts to. He remembers some of them in particular:

Razvan Voiculescu: ”Cuza Perta of Fagaras Country told me that in his 60 years as a traditional whittler he had countless generations of young people who seemed very passionate, very industrious and eager to learn, but most of them did not last more than 2 or 3 months, because they believed they had learned all there was to learn. There were a few young people who were truly interested, young people who visited him out of curiosity more than anything, rarely as an apprentice. This is the cruel reality. They are the last generation, those born 70 or 80 years ago. They have no legacy, they are the last of a generation that identified with a certain spirit that in the meantime has vanished. The few that, by some miracle still absorb the knowledge of these people, only learn their handiwork.”

In southern Banat they found Iosef, an ethnic Czech, the only one in a community of five villages who still had a workshop. All his life he’s been making a type of horse harness called komotu, a sort of spectacularly ornate large collar, allowing the horse to draw carts with his breast, its most powerful part.

Razvan Voiculescu: “The last order he got was in 1990, so 21 years later he still had the workshop, where he went every week to mend little things. He was still making the komotu, which took him a year to make because of his age. In the 1940s there were 60 or 70 people who knew how to make something like that, each with his own specialty, in order to put together this very special harness. Now he makes one a year, which he sells for a few hundred Euros, because they are impressing in terms of decorations and handiwork.”

Aristotel Erhan of Bukovina makes alpenhorns. He is one of the five characters you can see on the short films on the DVD accompanying the photo album made by Razvan Voiculescu:

Razvan Voiculescu: “He is a man who is well read, who insists on making alpenhorns the old way. No power tools, he doesn’t handle a single tool that his grandfather would not have had. This is what I liked a lot, the care he took of them, in order to make a few alpenhorns a year. He made me understand how hard it is to make an alpenhorn. First he told me how many weeks it takes him to use a tree that he first beats, looks at it, dents it to see the fiber which is going to be the raw material he uses. It is a matter of resonance, of fiber, of dryness, of how well it aged. The bark he uses to cover the two long halves of the alpenhorn has to be of a certain resonance, you can’t use any old bark. After finding the wood, he works for a few weeks with someone else, he can’t make the horn by himself. He used to have two apprentices who helped him, and also knew how to play it. Aristotel Erhan told me that for him the sound of the horn is the link between him and God.”

The album called Lore, the 11th in photographer Razvan Vasilescu’s career, also has a map of lore keepers. This map of Romania has 58 markings, the places where you can visit the people he photographed:

Razvan Voiculescu: “I drew an imaginary route for those who want to discover the profound side of Romania. I wrote the name of the village, of the person, and of their craft. At the launching event I told the people gathered there: can we agree that we, people from Bucharest, take a couple of long weekends in Bulgaria or Greece? We leave Thursday and come back on Sunday. Yes, they said. Well, I am extending an invitation to us good Romanians to set aside one of these long weekends. Let’s take the map of lore keepers, pick a three-day route that allows you to visit four or five of these people, and go knock on their door, see how happy they will be. The fact that they get visited by people eager to find out more about these lore keepers is a great joy. They’ll be gone in a few years. As good Romanians, it is worth getting to know these people”.

Right now, Razvan Voiculescu continues his search across Romania for more lore keepers for his next album, which will be called ‘Yearning for Lore’.

The city of Targu Jiu in south-western Romania plays host to the works of Romanian-born sculptor Constantin Brancusi: The Endless Column, the Gate of the Kiss, the Alley of the Chairs and the Table of Silence. Each work is carved in stone, the sole exception being the Endless Column, which is made up of bronze modules layered upwards, so that the monumental work reaches a height of nearly 30 meters. The initiators of a recently launched project, entitled Minitremu, have come up with the idea of bringing art closer to children and decided to create some miniature replicas of Brancusi’s works and turn them into appealing toys.

At first, the Gate of the Kiss was turned into a dental retainer. Then, the Endless Column was disbanded piece by piece, each bronze block being painted in a different colour and reinterpreted according to the imagination of the builder. Carved in lacquered wood, painted in catchy pastels, the miniature replicas of Constantin Brancusi’s works in Targu Jiu can now be seen as kids’ stuff. Gabriel Boldis, one of the initiators of the Minitremu project explains:

Gabriel Boldis: “Minitremu is an initiative by means of which art is brought closer to children. Back when I was a kid I only had access to art by means of guided tours, sprinkled with the usual ’don’t touch this’, ‘careful with that’ warnings. Otherwise, we only knew art through art albums, which you had to handle with great care. We’re trying to turn art into something tangible. Children feel the need to experiment, to touch and break things, to interact with the art objects. From that perspective, Minitremu is an attempt to take art out of the sacred realm and closer to child-like imagination. I came up with the idea while watching some kids play in the sandbox. Parents try to compensate their absence from their children’s lives through various objects such as expensive toys, which in theory delight the little ones. To this day there are children who play by themselves, without necessarily interacting with other children, although they are surrounded with all sorts of objects. At times like these we thought it would be OK for certain objects that don’t have any particular meaning for them to gain a more intense significance, somehow pushing parents into developing a relation with their children. And that’s where these toys step in”.

Minitremu is no premiere in the world of toys. Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier were raised with “gifts” from Froebel and other mind-stimulating toys. During her training at the legendary German school “Bauhaus”, Alma Siedhoff-Buschelh created a set of toys based on pedagogical principles, using primary colours, simple geometry and abstractions.

The bet of the artists involved in the Minitremu project with the Romanian parents was a winner. The sets of toys inspired by Brancusi’s works are expensive enough to draw the attention of those who decide to buy them. The toys are beautifully manufactured, have nice colors, rounded and polished edges and the lacquers used are not toxic. Each piece of wood is processed by hand and the toys are produced in small amounts following the placement of an order. Gabriel Boldis is back at the microphone:

Gabriel Boldis: “Brancusi’s work is monumental and through it we have access to metaphysical concepts: time, space, the axis mundi. What we did was to divide these concepts into segments and color them. Metaphorically speaking, it seems like children can touch time if they lay hands on the table of silence. At first sight, these toys do not mean anything, but put together, they acquire some meaning. The toys do not make children think of princesses and knights, actually they stir the kids’ imagination. We never suggested to children how to play with these toys. From what we have seen, they like touching the rounded, wooden forms and invariably build a column out of small chairs. I think children also find an aesthetic pleasure in combining colours. We have made everything out of an artistic perspective and now we are discovering the pedagogical value of these toys. And it’s obvious that children like to build and find a balance of things.”

In 2013 the artists of the Minitremu project started a fund-raising campaign that should have allowed them to produce 1,000 copies of each toy. The money would have led to a drop by half in the toys’ price, which would have helped the artists fulfill their goal: that of creating art for each and every child and not exclusivist toys. The campaign, run on the Indiegogo site, was aimed at raising donations worth 5 up to 250 dollars. Unfortunately, they did not raise the envisaged 17 thousand dollars but the campaign has brought them fame, says Gabriel Boldis.

Gabriel Boldis: “The campaign has been very successful because the people who accessed it shared the information they found, and this encouraged us to carry on, which is a success in itself. So, it’s no longer important if we manage to raise the intended money or not, the support we receive is much more important.”

The artists with the Minitremu project also intend to make toys inspired by other Romanian artists. In fact the first steps have already been taken in this respect, and a coloring book featuring the drawings of Romanian illustrator Dan Perjovschi has been published.

Built by a group of young people working with an NGO from Bucharest and called Incubator 107, this travelling yurt was one of the attractions of the season.

The yurt was used to host dance, pottery and cooking classes and many other activities. A second such structure was built somewhere in the mountains of Romania, near a mediaeval-themed camp for children aged between 5 and 14. The man who introduced the yurts to Romania is Bogdan Maltezeanu, an architecture student and one of the founders of Incubator 107.

Bogdan Maltezeanu said why he started building the yurts: “I started building the yurts in April last year as part of an international project ran by Labyrinth Theatre company in Estonia. I met two people from England there, who build yurts in the UK. So it was in Estonia that I built my first yurt. I didn’t build it from scratch, but I liked the idea. I returned to Romania and I decided to build one myself. It was a great challenge and I enjoyed it very much. It had never been done in Romania and I thought this was a niche worth pursuing. I kept in touch with my contacts in England and within two months I managed to build a yurt from scratch. I like structures made of wood. Of all the structures I have studied in school, the yurt is my favourite. It’s a spherical structure, with no pillars and everything is open space, which creates a certain atmosphere.”

One may think a yurt is just a tent on sticks. Quite the contrary, says Bogdan Maltezeanu. There is a genuine philosophy behind this structure, which is typical of nomad Asian peoples.

Bogdan Maltezeanu: “It’s complicated, because the wood must be steam-bent, then left to dry. Then you have to drill some holes into it and make knots. The crown must be drilled at a certain angle. There are some elements that are sacred to the Mongols. The dome is the sky, and the crown is the portal between this world and the spiritual world. Sometimes windows are built or the light can come in through the upper crown. A piece of spherical glass or transparent plastic can also be put on top. Anybody can have a yurt, which can be used as a holiday place, a conference room or anything else. There are certain steps that need to be taken, and it’s important for people to learn them. That is why I must assist them in the beginning and then it’s easy, three people can erect it in 45 minutes.”

45 minutes are enough to erect a yurt, if you have the design ready and the necessary ash wood, says Bogdan Maltezeanu. Otherwise, it takes around two weeks to build it. Bogdan Maltezeanu built the second yurt by himself, and it didn’t take him that long.

Bogdan Maltezeanu: “I was attending an event and a gentleman came and told me ‘I know you do this, I want you to build one for me, for children’s camps’. I said ‘ok’ and I managed to do the work in just one week, as I also worked during the night.”

We asked Bogdan Maltezeanu if yurts could be a solution for those who are interested in alternative housing: “For it to be permanent, it has to be very well insulated against water and cold, and also treated to prevent moulding. A yurt can be used for up to 30 years. Heating is provided by a stove and, if well insulated, with two or three layers of canvas is perfect to live in. With insulation, a yurt can cost up to 3 thousand Euros. “

Bogdan Maltezeanu’s yurts are for now mere exotic elements in Romania. But he intends to establish a firm specializing in wooden constructions.

Bogdan Maltezeanu even plans to focus on dome building: “I am fascinated with geodesic domes, pieces of sphere cut in the shape of a yurt, but the roof is not interrupted, it’s just a spherical cap laid on the ground. I like big, open homes, with no pillars. Pillars cut the space, break it up and make it smaller.”

Bogdan Maltezeanu is not the only admirer of this type of architecture. Light, mobile, coloured and luminous, yurts are a delight to all those that see them.

A classy semi-basement overlooking the street, inviting to gourmet experiences and a perfect venue for workshops, wine testing sessions and get-togethers of people eager to tell their stories is the place you must see while in Bucharest. It is a house erected in 1886, located in Spatarului Street, at the very heart of Romanias capital city, wich hosts this charming semi-basement, aimed to host some private and memorable meetings. This exclusivist place, called Espace Minoux, is nothing like other venues in Bucharest, because it was created for only one category of people: those who say ‘hello’, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. Our host, Razvan Voiculescu, a professional photographer, tells us more about Espace Minoux:

“Espace Minoux is a tiny cultural space created inside a heritage house which was in a pathetic state when I purchased it. It was home to negligent people and unattended children who destroyed everything inside. So I decided to fully restore it, I repeat, restore it, and not repair it. I succeeded in restoring even the most difficult elements, such as the glazed tile stoves and some brick vaults in the semi-basement on which I had found blotted cardboard plates. I’m surprised they were still intact. I succeeded in recovering the mosaic at the semi-basement, which is the original one. I want to host small cultural events there, to make it known as a special place for special people. I don’t mean to sound snobbish, but I want this place to become popular with people able to understand its beauty.”

It’s been only three years since Razvan Voiculescu opened the glass doors of the first floor of the house. Behind those doors one may have the surprise to discover a genuine art gallery, with a permanent exhibition of 20 of the best bronze works by sculptor Anca Sarbulescu. This mini-exhibition has been included in the circuit of Bucharest’s art galleries, thanks to Razvan Voiculescu and his friends. The semi-basement has been equipped with 35 chairs for the guests. It’s only 35 chairs because he didn’t want the place to be crowded.

One of the events hosted here was a concert by Nicu Alifantis, one of Romania’s popular singer songwriters, who is so special and original that you can hardly hope to have such an intimate meeting. On a March evening, on Spatarului Street, Alifantis sang some of his most beautiful songs for two hours and told the audience about his ongoing tour and about his beloved musical instruments. He performed without microphones, without flashlights, just as he would normally do for friends. And this is not the only event venued by Razvan Voiculescu’s house, as he himself confesses:

“There are small companies that come here and rent the space, on condition that I like their concept, what they plan to do here. Parenting courses, for instance, are being held here every month. As a host, I listen to the discussions and I find them pertinent. The psychologist who delivers the courses practically opens the parents’ minds, telling them what they generally do wrong. Usually it’s only parents who come, but sometimes children join them and they play together in order to harmonize their relationship.”

There are many other types of meetings, the evenings devoted to gourmands being greatly appreciated:

“We pick a chef who must not necessarily have any Michelin stars, but he must have vocation. The first one we invited is named Mircea Groza and he is from the town of Zalau, in northwestern Romania. When it comes to cooking, the dishes he prepares are absolutely divine. His ‘soup’, always made in a tin kettle, can by no means be made in less than two hours. He uses so many ingredients that it’s hard to tell what exactly you’re eating. The food, however, it’s so tasty because he never uses ingredients bought from the supermarket. He has his own suppliers, small producers who make cheese and even salami and sausages — a few kilograms a day. It’s all hand-made, no technology is used. They make everything themselves and deliver their products to restaurants who want quality food. Vegetables are also from a certain category of suppliers, who have vegetable gardens where you can see that the veggies are imperfect, because no artificial fertilizers are used. Mircea Groza is a gastronomy poet and also a cultivated man. It’s a real pleasure to listen to him talking about gastronomy and the history of his native Zalau area.”

Espace Minoux has its own Facebook page where it advertises all the events that it venues, on a first-come first-served basis. There are also exceptions made exclusively by Razvan Voiculescu:

“There are people who just write to me ‘I want two tickets’. Nothing else. I don’t even bother to answer, even if I know that the one who wrote this will take one of the 35 vacant seats. I never answer this type of messages. A simple ‘I want’, without ‘hello’ and without ‘thank you’ gives me an unpleasant feeling. It’s disrespectful. For this reason, they’re not welcome. Fortunately, most of the people who come here know how to say ‘good morning’, and ‘thank you’, and they begin their sentence with ‘Could I”, and not with “I want”. The more polite they are, the more pleasure it gives me to tell them they have the seats booked. Many of them are left without seats though, because there are only 35 chairs and more than 200 people who want them. So I go by the ‘first — come, first — served’ rule, and don’t accept the impolite ones.”

Espace Minoux is not a bar; it’s neither a restaurant, nor a club. With a bit of luck, you can visit the place yourselves. But don’t forget to use the magic words: Hello’ and ‘thank you’.

A classy semi-basement overlooking the street, inviting to gourmet experiences and a perfect venue for workshops, wine testing sessions and get-togethers of people eager to tell their stories is the place you must see while in Bucharest. It is a house erected in 1886, located in Spatarului Street, at the very heart of Romanias capital city, wich hosts this charming semi-basement, aimed to host some private and memorable meetings. This exclusivist place, called Espace Minoux, is nothing like other venues in Bucharest, because it was created for only one category of people: those who say ‘hello’, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. Our host, Razvan Voiculescu, a professional photographer, tells us more about Espace Minoux:

“Espace Minoux is a tiny cultural space created inside a heritage house which was in a pathetic state when I purchased it. It was home to negligent people and unattended children who destroyed everything inside. So I decided to fully restore it, I repeat, restore it, and not repair it. I succeeded in restoring even the most difficult elements, such as the glazed tile stoves and some brick vaults in the semi-basement on which I had found blotted cardboard plates. I’m surprised they were still intact. I succeeded in recovering the mosaic at the semi-basement, which is the original one. I want to host small cultural events there, to make it known as a special place for special people. I don’t mean to sound snobbish, but I want this place to become popular with people able to understand its beauty.”

It’s been only three years since Razvan Voiculescu opened the glass doors of the first floor of the house. Behind those doors one may have the surprise to discover a genuine art gallery, with a permanent exhibition of 20 of the best bronze works by sculptor Anca Sarbulescu. This mini-exhibition has been included in the circuit of Bucharest’s art galleries, thanks to Razvan Voiculescu and his friends. The semi-basement has been equipped with 35 chairs for the guests. It’s only 35 chairs because he didn’t want the place to be crowded.

One of the events hosted here was a concert by Nicu Alifantis, one of Romania’s popular singer songwriters, who is so special and original that you can hardly hope to have such an intimate meeting. On a March evening, on Spatarului Street, Alifantis sang some of his most beautiful songs for two hours and told the audience about his ongoing tour and about his beloved musical instruments. He performed without microphones, without flashlights, just as he would normally do for friends. And this is not the only event venued by Razvan Voiculescu’s house, as he himself confesses:

“There are small companies that come here and rent the space, on condition that I like their concept, what they plan to do here. Parenting courses, for instance, are being held here every month. As a host, I listen to the discussions and I find them pertinent. The psychologist who delivers the courses practically opens the parents’ minds, telling them what they generally do wrong. Usually it’s only parents who come, but sometimes children join them and they play together in order to harmonize their relationship.”

There are many other types of meetings, the evenings devoted to gourmands being greatly appreciated:

“We pick a chef who must not necessarily have any Michelin stars, but he must have vocation. The first one we invited is named Mircea Groza and he is from the town of Zalau, in northwestern Romania. When it comes to cooking, the dishes he prepares are absolutely divine. His ‘soup’, always made in a tin kettle, can by no means be made in less than two hours. He uses so many ingredients that it’s hard to tell what exactly you’re eating. The food, however, it’s so tasty because he never uses ingredients bought from the supermarket. He has his own suppliers, small producers who make cheese and even salami and sausages — a few kilograms a day. It’s all hand-made, no technology is used. They make everything themselves and deliver their products to restaurants who want quality food. Vegetables are also from a certain category of suppliers, who have vegetable gardens where you can see that the veggies are imperfect, because no artificial fertilizers are used. Mircea Groza is a gastronomy poet and also a cultivated man. It’s a real pleasure to listen to him talking about gastronomy and the history of his native Zalau area.”

Espace Minoux has its own Facebook page where it advertises all the events that it venues, on a first-come first-served basis. There are also exceptions made exclusively by Razvan Voiculescu:

“There are people who just write to me ‘I want two tickets’. Nothing else. I don’t even bother to answer, even if I know that the one who wrote this will take one of the 35 vacant seats. I never answer this type of messages. A simple ‘I want’, without ‘hello’ and without ‘thank you’ gives me an unpleasant feeling. It’s disrespectful. For this reason, they’re not welcome. Fortunately, most of the people who come here know how to say ‘good morning’, and ‘thank you’, and they begin their sentence with ‘Could I”, and not with “I want”. The more polite they are, the more pleasure it gives me to tell them they have the seats booked. Many of them are left without seats though, because there are only 35 chairs and more than 200 people who want them. So I go by the ‘first — come, first — served’ rule, and don’t accept the impolite ones.”

Espace Minoux is not a bar; it’s neither a restaurant, nor a club. With a bit of luck, you can visit the place yourselves. But don’t forget to use the magic words: Hello’ and ‘thank you’.

When was the last time you put pen to paper to write a letter? A letter which was not a Christmas card, or an invitation to a ceremony? A letter you wrote with your heart, beginning “ Dear….”and ending: ”Yours…”? A long time must have passed since you did that. As for the author of this text, it’s been more than 4 years and that letter was sent from an airport, between two flights. Of course, we live in the speed age, and besides, who’s got time to expect a letter via snail-mail, since these days we can INSTANTLY communicate with anyone, anywhere? Yet modern means of communication confine us to a finite and dwindling number of characters we can send. Then there’s our own handwriting, which we very rarely use and which is most likely hard to read by our prospective recipients.

Loredana Minteanu is a young woman who got her inspiration from a production that has recently received an Oscar nomination. She came up with the idea of offering a free-of-charge service, mainly consisting of transcribing messages on recycled paper, using ink. She says it is a project aimed at creating an alternative special means of communication, a much more personal one, laying emphasis on emotion, on a story, on those simple gestures that matter.

Loredana Minteanu: ”A special project with no special occasion, that’s how we called it. Practically it is a free-of-charge service of writing on recycled paper using a fountain pen, which also includes delivery by bike. It is also an eco-responsible concept. In fact, we become the sender’s extension. At our fingertips we have all state-of-the-art gadgets you can think of, that might lure us into writing an email, a text message or other virtual messages. For no one to find any excuse whatsoever, we thought it would be easier if someone used a fountain pen, to transcribe a personal message. We do not compose, we simply transcribe the message on paper. Maybe some of them have a bad handwriting.”

Loredana Munteanu and her colleague in the “Art doesn’t bite” team have already received more than 250 demands since early March, when they announced they intended to transcribe and deliver letters around Bucharest. The messages, Loredana says, are deeply touching. They are not just exchanges of love letters between a man and a woman. Recipients also include old friends, or parents and even grandparents of those who, for one reason or another, had not written for a long time. For Loredana, the most touching letter was sent by a young girl, in whose story she saw herself.

Loredana Minteanu:” There’s this girl who has been living in Brussels for three years and who feels terribly sorry she couldn’t see her mother, she’s asking for forgiveness. I think she was crying as she kept on writing, she also jotted down it was three a.m. and she was listening to a cut which reminded her of her mother, who was all alone in Bucharest, and she hoped she could return at least for Easter, after three years. I am also here and mom is not in the country, I sort of recognized myself in the girl’s story, it’s just that we swapped roles, this time it’s the daughter who lives in Bucharest and her mother lives in another country.”

How much does it cost to send such a letter, beautifully hand-written and sealed just like in the old days, in red wax, delivered at the recipient’s address? Well, it costs nothing. The service is completely free-of-charge. Loredana Munteanu tells us how that can be possible.

Loredana Minteanu: ” We’ve got partners who support us, and thanks to them this kind of service is free of charge. After filling in the form on our website, the sender can pick a surprise offered by our partners, also for free: a book or cosmetics. We hope people might show an increasing opening, we do hope they can get closer to one another, also with the help of such gestures. Of late, it’s people we’ve been using, and not objects. We should really use this service, and think more often of the people in our life.”

The service will be available as long as it is humanely possible…Loredana says they have already received messages form other cities, asking them if they could extend their delivery area.

Loredana Minteanu: ” We’re very happy that ever since we started promoting the service, progress has been made very fast, and there are people writing to us from other cities, from around the country; they ask if the service can reach other cities across Romania as well, such as Cluj, Deva, Timisoara and Iasi. They say they will see to it that things should be done the proper way. There are cycling organizations. It is really nice to see the idea caught on and there are lots of people who can have someone to write a letter to. We encourage everyone at least to think of someone in their life whom they hold most dear, someone to whom they can make such a surprise. They should think who can deserve such a letter. “

So how about writing with your heart and not just touching the knobs, how about writing a letter someone dear in your life should receive soon?

Let’s image that you enter a pastry shop to buy an éclair. With cream or chocolate?, the shop assistant would ask. Admit it: these would be the only 2 options to choose from. Unless you want éclairs from the French Revolution, a small lab opened in Bucharest early this year, which offers a wide variety of éclairs. It all started when George Pop and the Panaitescu brothers, George and Florin, decided to revolutionize the éclair together, turning this apparently banal cake into a masterpiece filled with cream. George Pop:

George Pop: “Actually our idea of business is very simple: to make the best éclair in Bucharest. Once we will have managed to do what we intended in the first place, that will be enough: we want everybody to know that the best éclair in Bucharest can be found at the French Revolution and that our cake sets the standard.”

Starting an éclair revolution is no piece of cake. The idea occurred to George Pop, a former image consultant passionate about culinary art, after he spent 2 months in the kitchen of a big hotel in Bucharest, where a French cook taught him how to make the perfect éclair. But before inventing or reinventing a cake, any pastry chef needs to observe a golden rule: never overlook quality. George Pop:

George Pop: “First and foremost, éclairs need to contain butter, the pâte à choux or the choux dough has to be made with butter. In Romania, however, given the lack of butter during the Communist regime, éclairs were made with oil, a recipe that remained unchanged up until now. And that is not OK, neither from the point of view of taste or health-wise. Our cake contains natural ingredients: milk, butter, eggs, flour and sugar. Actually we use a cream recipe that does not contain flour, which is quite fashionable in France, because it is dietetic.”

The éclairs made at the French Revolution in Bucharest contain natural Bourbon vanilla and mille-feuille style fondant icing, fine coffee cream, caramel cream, pure pistachio cream, lime cream or even coconut cream. Every day, 100 up to 500 éclairs are baked in the French Revolution ovens, all being sold upon order, for Bucharesters to relish fresh éclairs. The number of customers is on the rise, says George Panaitescu, who combined his expertise in sales with the éclair making art:

George Panaitescu: “We have many connections, through our customers. We also managed to sell our éclairs in most companies in Bucharest, and I believe that was of great help, because very many customers called or e-mailed us to congratulate us for making such delicious éclairs. This made us very visible, and we could overlook the online part, in the sense that we did not create a photo portfolio, flyers, booklets, magazines, and so on. We have many faithful customers, namely companies, that buy cakes at least once or two times a week”.

Made of natural ingredients, of the best quality, such as French butter or sweet cream, filled with flavor-infused creams to obtain a stronger and refined taste, the French-inspired éclair reinvented in Romania has the upper hand on the pastry market, despite its high price, which is two times bigger than that of a regular éclair. George Pop is back at the microphone:

George Pop: “We, Romanians, unlike the French, do not have the cult of quality cakes, the people are not educated to make the difference between good and bad cakes. We, at the French Revolution, have tested all the éclairs on the market, and we can tell the difference. And people will soon be bale to make the difference too, I’m sure”.

And for the revolution to be complete and the customers satisfied, the French Revolution opened, in early April, a small shop in downtown Bucharest.