Category: Inside Romania

One of the organizers is Marius Giura, and he told us that eighteen years ago, in a place called The Crossroads Inn, a few artists from Timisoara started a jam session, which lasted two days on end. They invited over their friends and family, and enough people gathered to start a festival.

Marius Giura: “It was a few jazz musicians from Timisoara who came up with the idea. They had left the country and came back after 1990. This inn, having the only restaurant in the area, and a large courtyard, was the perfect place for a concert. They called it a festival because they played for a couple of days straight, a bunch of other bands joined them, and then the famous Mircea Tiberian showed up, with some other musicians who were living in Germany. That is how the festival started.”

How do you turn a festival started in the courtyard of an inn into the largest outdoor festival in Eastern Europe? How do you put a village in Banat on the map of the best jazz events?

Marius Giura said that you need a lot of ambition and the wish to create something that fills a gap: “There was a real need for a parallel to the legendary festival of Sibiu, and Timisoara jazz had taken a lot of hits with so many famous musicians leaving the country, and it needed reviving. There was a real ambition to have each edition be better than the previous. This is how we got where we are today. It was enough to have the support of a woman from Timisoara, who brought in a headliner like Eberhard Weber, and then things picked up from one year to the next. Right now we have a European quality festival, on a par with the best of festivals. It was our goal to create a special event, which I believe is necessary for Romania.”

The festival grew in time, and moved from the inn courtyard to Poiana Lupului, a glade outside the village. In the meantime great names in jazz played in the festival: composer and pianist Hiromi Uehara, sax players Jan Garbarek and Charles Lloyd, among many others.

Marius Giura told us that the event in Garana is more than a string of jazz recitals: “Garana is a mountain village at 1000 m of altitude, where everything is unique, from the audience seats to the nature around. It is a place where in daytime you have 40 degrees Celsius, and during the night it plummets to 4 or 5 degrees. Jean-Luc Ponty, when he played here, said that in his 55-year long career he only saw a similar place in the Rocky Mountains, 20 or 25 years ago. The audience is unique too. I wish we could have everywhere people like that, who love culture, beauty, who don’t mind the difficult weather and sit outdoors to listen to jazz in Garana.”

It rains almost every time during the festival. The veterans told us that in 2010 they had a deluge, the rushing waters washed away the tents. Some in the audience fled back to their cities.

Ioana Taut has been photographing for years the stars who perform here: “Almost every year we had rain, cold and foggy weather. This is a small price to pay for enjoying the richness that the festival gives us. It has too much to offer, for us to not be able to overlook the adversities of the weather. I think a lot of people see Garana as of a home away from home, a second family.”

Marius Giura told us that one of his joys is to see the children who were playing around the stage in the beginning bringing over their own children. Garana is already a family event.

Vlad Eftenie told us of his first contact with the festival:

“I wanted to get here because it seemed to me as if it was at the end of the earth. You have to change trains and buses to get here. When I got here in 2010, I found a community. Tents, a copse of trees, a stage. It was rainy and foggy. I remember Florian Lungu navigating the mud to get to the stage. It is a special place, a different experience.”

This year, the 18th edition of the festival starts on July 10. Concerts will spread to the nearby villages of Brebu Nou and Valiug, which have pipe organs in their churches. Among the guests are Joe DeFrancesco, one of the best organists in the world, as well as the quartet put together by Ulf Wakenius, guitarist for Oscar Peterson. We hope you will get there, but do remember to pack some warm clothes.

The tale we’re today going to tell you revolves around a magical figure: 20. Twenty years that a group of young people roamed the world, dressed up in jeans and Romanian traditional shirts, singing songs like nobody else had the nerve to sing them: Romanian traditional music performed with a different attitude, but also spirituals or carols, sung under a different guise, world music performed in languages other than Romanian, between the walls of a cold war, isolating us from a “decadent West”. 20 years since the group’ s founder and conductor was brutally taken away from this world.

The SONG group was founded in 1974 by Ioan Luchian Mihalea jointly with students from Bucharest’s National University of Music, and later on with Students from the Faculty of Germanic Languages. SONG made its debut with Renaissance songs and old English music. The group carried on with tours, films, recorded shows, live concerts at the Palace Grand Hall as well as trips abroad.

That was a life hard to imagine for the rest of the world, which looked upon that unusual group with admiration, and maybe with an inkling of envy. Raluca Alina Hurduc was a member of the SONG group for three years, in the mid ‘80s, which was Romania’s bleakest period. Raluca told us it was not only her youth SONG had a strong bearing on, but also all her subsequent life.

Raluca Alina Hurduc: “At that time I believe I was not aware of its entire significance. I was doing something I enjoyed, with a group of young people who at that time represented an elite; there were only students in the SONG group. It was an escape from a reality that had become terrible in the mid-1980s, it just meant joy. It was like a golden bubble surrounding us. I am positive many of my colleagues in the choir would say the same. The style and the whole energy as well as that atmosphere were by all means induced by the conductor. Adding to that was definitely the fact that we were young, the choir would always get freshened up with students, and all that contributed to the atmosphere and the typical manner in which the songs were performed.”

SONG was like a large family, this is how all-former SONG members describe it. Carmen Sandulescu, now a senior producer with RRI, says she will never forget the times she rehearsed with SONG.

Carmen Sandulescu: ”Rehearsals were truly special moments that I will never forget, because we were all very serious. We used to make jokes for 10 minutes, it was a warm, family-like atmosphere, then we started working very seriously. We used to rehearse in groups, we repeated three musical notes one million times, just like the entries…and that turned out to be very useful in the evenings when we made recordings for the television. For three songs, which were broadcast on TV, we would perform, rehearse and sing all night on stage. Back then, we didn’t fully realize that we were in sharp contrast with everything around, because we were completely intent on studying, on the one hand, and on music, on the other… Somehow, we realized that we were different, because others told us so.”

Raluca Alina Hurduc tells us about the concerts given by the SONG choir across the country:

Raluca Alina Hurduc: “We performed not only Romanian folk songs, but also spirituals and even carols, whose lyrics had been modified. Conductor Ioan Luchian Mihalea wrote some lyrics, adjusted them to suit the tunes and we sang them on stage in the 1980’s. The audience was extremely enthusiastic about those carols in disguise. The spectators were singing and applauding. I think the most important lesson that we learned was that we could do things and share them in a community, and that made us happy. It is worth taking some time to do extraordinary things, to be happy.”

How was it possible for the SONG choir to function, at the peak of the Cultural Revolution, when artists and singers found it difficult to do something truly creative? The Song choir managed to do that, by walking a tight rope that few were aware of, says Carmen Sandulescu:

Carmen Sandulescu: “We came to understand the situation in the 1980’s, when they asked questions about the name of the group, and we came up with the following formula: ‘Song’ doesn’t come from the English word, but it is made up of acronyms, it stands for ‘Suntem Oamenii Noii Generatii’, which translates into English as ‘We Are People of the New Generation.’ It was something in-between what could be seen from outside and what truly happened inside. I don’t know to what extent the members of SONG were aware of this rope they were walking, so to say.”

The person who was the soul of the choir, the conductor that kept the group together, was brutally killed in his own house in November 1993. Several weeks later, SONG gave their last concert in memory of Ioan Luchian Mihalea. 20 years on, in early March 2014, the SONG group reunited in a show broadcast live by the Romanian public television. Raluca Alina Hurduc told us how their emotion reached the audience:

Raluca Alina Hurduc: “We mobilized in less than a month. The choir members came from all parts of Romania and also from Europe and we rehearsed about 10 times for this show. It went unexpectedly well. We sang like we used to in the good old, it was not perfect but it was OK and we enjoyed every minute of it. We were happy to do this and I believe our joy got through the screens into the hearts of the viewers, given the feedback and phone calls we received after the show.”

The SONG group reunited under the baton of a young but very talented conductor, Daniel Jinga:

Daniel Jinga: “I had heard of them, I grew up listening to SONG. I am glad I had the chance to conduct this choir. We sang together, we felt nostalgic and we enjoyed the whole moment. Over the past years I have been frequently asked to make a project similar to the SONG project. That showed me that the SONG project was highly popular, actually several generations enjoyed their music and I’m sure this kind of music will also be to the liking of the young generation.”

In early 2014, the Romanian media was writing about a new type of service provided by event organisers: humanist ceremonies. Lacking any religious component and held by specially trained people, these ceremonies are aimed at marking the most important events in our lives, such as marriages or the birth of a child. Monica Belitoiu is the spokeswoman for the Humanist Secular Association of Romania (in Romanian ASUR), which organises this type of ceremonies. She told us that the idea of setting up such a service came to her in 2012, when she got married:

Monica Belitoiu: “Neither me, nor my husband wanted to have a religious ceremony held in a church. We wanted something in the open air, a ceremony where we could say anything we wanted, exchange our own vows before family and friends. It was a very intimate ceremony, on the shore of a lake, where we also gave the party. The ceremony was held by a friend of ours, because there was no specialised service in Romania back then and we did not know who else to go to. It would have cost us too much to bring somebody from abroad and that person would not have been able to do it in Romanian. So we asked a friend, who we knew could speak very well in public and we told him what we wanted. He wrote his part of the speech in which he spoke about our love story, as he knew it from us, he said why he had accepted to do that for us and then my husband and I exchanged our vows. We exchanged the rings and then the MC congratulated us and invited everybody to do the same. We had got married at the city hall some time before, but you cannot call those 5 minutes a ceremony. Everybody liked the event, and our mothers shed a tear or two. Our grandparents, though, said we should have gone to a church, at least to make sure people wouldn’t gossip about it. Our friends were delighted and some of them, who intend to get married this year, will also have their own humanist ceremonies.”

Although it would be easy to think that humanism is just another type of religion, Monica Belitoiu explains that it’s more about of a certain attitude towards life:

Monica Belitoiu: “Humanist principles are about tolerance, understanding, cooperation, non-discrimination and equality. I believe that we only have one life to live and we are responsible for everything we do, and if we do something wrong, it’s our fault, we cannot blame fate. Also, if we succeed in something, it’s our merit and the merit of those people who have helped us. We don’t feel the need to follow a certain religion. However, we respect other people’s religious beliefs, we celebrate religious events with our parents and families, but that’s about it.”

As the guests at their wedding were extremely pleased with what they saw and started showing interest in the same time of ceremony for themselves, Monica and her colleagues from ASUR thought of establishing a specialised service to meet the demand. Helped by people who had already gained experience in organising humanist ceremonies, they developed a course for masters of ceremonies to hold services for non-conformist couples. Do you want a theme wedding, a wedding with characters from books or movies? Or, maybe you want to welcome your child into this world in an original manner. Well, all these are possible now, if you will just trust your imagination. Naturally, there are some limits to this, as our guest explains:

Monica Belitoiu: “We don’t do things that are religious in nature, we do not replicate religious masses, we do not read from holy books, we do not hold ceremonies of the Las Vegas type. We organise ceremonies for serious couples, who are sure they want to be together and want to have such a ceremony not just to add something extra to their party, but because they want to honour their love in a special way. Everybody needs to share their important moments with the loved ones, with friends and family, to tell them: ‘Look, this is the man or woman I love, whom I married and with whom I would like to spend the rest of my life. I promise we will love and respect each together.’ You feel the need to say: ‘This is my child, I’m proud of it, I will help and love it till the end of my life.’ Everybody needs to have these moments marked. I don’t believe that a ceremony can only be religious; it’s about feelings that everybody has, whether they believe in a God or not.”

Mixed couples who need a ceremony both in Romanian and in English seem to be very much attracted to ASUR’s offer. So far, eight such couples have chosen an MC for their ceremonial marriage. Another 10 are still thinking about this option. The first two weddings will be held on May 31st, in Bucharest. Before the ceremony proper, the couples will meet the MC, will talk about their story and what has brought them together and will provide enough information for the MC to write the speech. After the ceremony, the bride and groom will sign a certificate with a pen that they can keep. Ceremonies are purely symbolic, the certificate has no legal validity, it’s just a means of preserving the memory of their wedding. Apparently, the church was quick to react to this new type of ceremony as Monica Belitoiu said:

Monica Belitoiu: “Some time after we publicly announced that we provide such services, the priests reacted and said these ceremonies are not recognised by the church as they do not have grace from God. I don’t know if my definition of grace is that of the church. What we do is properly mark important moments in people’s lives, the way they want them to be.”

The colonisation of Banat in the 18th century was a wide-scale operation planned in the smallest detail by the Austrian administration. The symmetry dominating the design of entire villages, towns and streets reflect the controlled approach to architecture and town planning at the time.

Located 50 km away from the western Romanian city of Timisoara, Charlottenburg is the only round village in the country. It was founded around 1770 by 30 families of Swabians who came to the region as part of the second wave of settlers from Baden Wurttenberg from Lorraine and South Tyrol, in Germany during the time of Empress Maria Theresa. Historians say these families brought with them the plans to build their round village.

“In the middle of the village there is a covered well with very good water. Around the well there is a plantation of mulberry trees behind which there lie the houses, with the stables and the haystacks in the back and the vineyards farther away. Every house is just as tall as the next and they all lie at exactly the same distance from one another, while their style is perfectly symmetrical. The four entrances to the village are also symmetrical, being found at precisely the same distance from one another”. This is how the village of Charlottenburg was described on the 5th of March 1779 by Johann Kaspar Steube, the author of a book entitled “Letters from Banat.”

The history of the village does not differ much from that of the entire region. Depending on who ruled over the area, the village was alternately owned by Hungarians and Austrians until 1921, when villagers were given their own land under an agricultural reform. In early 20th century, a hunting area was created near Charlottenburg, with fallow deer from Serbia and red deer brought from Bohemia. The founder of the hunting grounds, count Sigfried von Wimpffen, and his guests would often hunt there, and later also the Romanian royal family, the Russians soldiers after the war, Romania’s communist dignitaries and today groups of amateur hunters from around Europe who come here to hunt wild boars, deer, foxes, wolves, hares, bustards and quails.

The community continued to be relatively closed, until after WW2, when part of the village men did not return home. Also in 1954, 43 of them were sentenced to forced labour and deported to the USSR. The village also went through collectivisation, when the locals’ land was nationalised and all peasants were forced to work in Agricultural Production Cooperatives.

On his website sarlota.de, one of the villagers, Erhard Berwanger, describes the atmosphere of Charlottenburg in the 1960s: “I remember the Day of Prayer, held at the end of October, as the most important holiday of the year. It was the day when the family gathered together to celebrate and enjoy a rich meal that always included chicken soup, horseradish sauce and steak. But this was by no means an idyllic type of life. People used to work hard and take a break only on Sundays and during religious holidays. The most beautiful time was when lime trees were in bloom, perfuming the whole village with their sweet scent. The smell of freshly cut grass was equally beautiful. Deer grunts could be heard at sunset. When fall came, the gardens used to be invaded by wild boars and crops had to be protected. Noisy carbide cannons were used to scary wild boars away. Another method to keep wild animals away was to sit by the fire, in front of the straw hut. I remember my uncle Phillipp on such occasions, telling stories about how things used to be in the past, about his deportation to Russia, about the two years he spent in Germany and about his trip home, to Charlottenburg.”

There is only one Swabian who continues to live in Charlottenburg today. Mircea Sarbu is an official with the Bogda village, which Charlottenburg is a part of. We asked him what happens with the Swabian community in the village:

“After 1990, the number of German families has dropped dramatically, and today there is just one German who lives in the village. He did not want to leave, as he is quite old. The houses sold by the Swabians have been bought by people from Timisoara, mostly intellectuals, artists. They refurbished the houses and are now living there during summer and at the weekends There are no guest houses in Charlottenburg, only in Altringen, the neighbouring village. But the roads are good, it’s not difficult to get there.”

Charlottenburg is the only village built in the shape of a circle on the territory of present-day Romania. That is why the Ministry of Culture and Religious Denominations has declared it a historical monument, Mircea Sarbu explained:

“The village enjoys special status and by law, all economic activities and building works may only be carried out with the approval of the Ministry of Culture.”

Today, the village looks very much like an apple. The church and the school stand in the middle, the symbolic core of a community living in houses that make an almost perfect circle. 199 permanent workers keep the village alive when city dwellers are not there to visit. There is a train stop some 2 km from the village and people have access to mobile telephony. This is not a tourist village, and they say one needs some 20,000 euros to build a house there, provided the municipality agrees.

Cosmin Mihaiu, Alina Călin, Andrei Cantea and Liviu-Andrei Dascălu jointly created a software which can make a crucial contribution to improving the life quality for those suffering from temporary disabilities and are currently in a recovery period. In 2011, when they were still medical students in Cluj, central Romania, the four enlisted in the Microsoft-organized competition, “ Imagine Cup”. The theme of the competition which was open to students worldwide was “Imagine a world where technology contributes to finding solutions to the most difficult problems”. Cosmin Mihaiu recalled a rather sad period in his life: he broke his arm when he was 7 and had to go through a long and painful recovery period. With the still vivid and painful memory of the kinetotherapy exercises he had do, Cosmin suggested to his colleagues that they get together and find a method to turn the medical recovery period into an easier and more efficient experience, for patients and MDs alike.

How can we do that? Helping patients to stop thinking about their pain, shifting the focus on something else, Cosmin Mihaiu told us.

“Medical recovery can be done on a daily basis. What we wanted to do was to offer patients a better experience, which is at once more pleasant and easier, when they have to do the recovery exercises. Video games looked like they were the best alternative to traditional exercises. As they are interactive, the patient does not necessarily focus on the recovery process as such, but on the purpose of the game, and thus he can forget the pain or other unpleasant things, thanks to the exercises he is doing. The biggest problem in kinetotherapy is that patients do not do their exercises at home because of the pain or the difficulties posed by those exercises. We wanted to offer an easier way of recovery which is at once easier and more interactive, so that they can do the series of exercises the doctor had prescribed, so that they could recover faster.”

The acronym for the software the four colleagues created is MIRA: Medical Recovery Interactive Assistant. The project was short-listed for the Imagine Cup final: the jury received it very favorably, which strengthened the four people’ s confidence it was well worth investing in the project. The four started to search for the prospective development of the project. How does MIRA work? There are a few computer games the patients play through the Kinect platform. Piano, Catch It, Airplanes, Touch It, Kick It…All of them are based on the occupational therapy principle, according to which the patient must receive constant feedback, so that his progress can be monitored and analyzed. Cosmin Mihaiu again:

“When the patient plays the game, the program records the data the kinetotherapist or the physician may need, so that he can monitor the patients’ progress during the recovery period. Data includes classical measurements, speed, acceleration, the distance a patient covers with a limb, or even the points he makes while playing his games. All data enables the kinetotherapist to get a very clear picture of the patient’s progress. For example, Touch it was used at the suggestion of an expert who came up with the idea of a game by means of which we can persuade the user to touch certain areas of his body, the head for instance, as in everyday life every man should be able to take his hand to his mouth so that he can feed himself, or for hygiene purposes. With the Kinect device, we can detect if the user can really take his hand that far. The game has a very simple format: a butterfly flies around the patient and lands on certain parts of the patient’s body and the patient must be able to touch that area.”

MIRA has two versions: the home version and the hospital version. The differences are strictly connected to the information registered while the soft is used.

“MIRA Clinic includes the games we created, as well as the additional tools we offer physicians and kinetotherapists, so that the patient’s treatment can be personalized. Specifically, it is an application by means of which the specialist can create his own series of exercises the patients will have to do. Furthermore, the application posts all patients’ results during the recovery period. The home version includes only the games. It does not have so much information which only specialists need; while patients are playing the game at home all stored and registered data is transmitted to the kinetotherapist or the physician, so that he can monitor the patent’s progress. At the moment we’re testing the program in hospital and institutions as we want to see what the specialists’ and the patients’ opinion. The feedback is very good. Obviously, the application is still in the making and we’ve received some very helpful advice as to how we can improve it and how the experiences we offer can be more pleasant; by and large everybody thinks highly about how the application looks like and works.”

.Just like any video game of a certain standing, the MIRA games have their own scores, rankings, rewards. But the best reward is that the patient’s mind gets carried away with the game, dictating the body to make those specific moves it badly needs to totally recover its functional capacity.

The idea of the MIRA software was also considered valuable by the organizers of a London-based medical project Incubator, HealthBox Europe, Cosmin Mihaiu tells us more.

“It is a three month intensive program, during which exercises and an introduction to the medical industry are being made. Given that the program is unfolding in London, we’ve decided to start a business there. My colleagues are now in Romania, having responsibilities relating to technical development and the relationships with Romania. My goal in Great Britain is to develop a business with our partners there. MIRA is already being used by one of the biggest hospitals in London, as well as outside the British capital, in Manchester. Our application will soon be finalized and we hope to have customers, to pay for both versions, in the first half of the year. We want to improve this software and bring it to an advanced stage, to benefit patients, users and specialists alike.”

The initiators of the software hope to include games focusing on logopedics in the near future. Further details on MIRA are available at the following address: www.mirarehab.com

Lucian Ionescu is 49, and until recently he was the manager of a small furniture company in Bucharest. Three years ago he started building his own kayak. As a former pro athlete, he rediscovered rowing in 2005, and started racing on various lakes and rivers in Romania. Unfortunately, as he was very tall, he couldn’t find a kayak fitting his build, so he decided to make his own kayak. He says it’s not as hard as it looks:

Lucian Ionescu: “It is not complicated to build a kayak, but you do need a lot of attention to detail and patience. It is built of thin wooden strips, very narrow, and each one of them has to be adjusted. It is thorough work. In a kayak, everything is curved, there are no straight lines, and it takes a certain amount of perfection, as with any boat; it has three sections that really must be watertight. It also raises some issues of flexibility, because the dividing walls have to cope with the small scale bending caused by waves or shocks when the boat hits the bottom. It has fiberglass on the outside and the inside, and until I built this boat I hadn’t worked with it. It took about three years to build it, but I worked only when I had time, and when I had money to do it. You can actually build a kayak in about 6 months.”

His intention was to be able to travel long distances, he wanted to make a cruise from Giurgiu to Venice. He made a Facebook page where he posted his plans, hoping to find sponsors. Here is what he wrote there:

“I will go to Sf. Gheorghe on the Danube. Then I will go south on the Black Sea, through the Bosporus, on the Marmara Sea, through the Dardanelles to the Aegean Sea. I will sail off the Turkish coast to Marmaris. Then I will cross to Rhodos, in Greece, then on to Karpathos, in the south of Crete, then on to continental Greece following the shore of the Ionian Sea to the border with Albania. If the weather is fine over the following few days, I will attempt a crossing to Italy, then, following the coast, I will go on to Vieste. Also, weather permitting, I will cross the Adriatic to Lastovo, Croatia. If not, I will follow Italy’s shore to Venice.”

Last May, the kayak was ready. He loaded it up and went out into the world, his only link being a tablet and a mobile phone. He returned in December, a little before the winter celebrations, covering the approximately 1,500 km from Giurgiu to Venice in seven months. 270 km of them he did on foot, dragging behind the kayak in a harness. He had no problems crossing borders, but had all sorts of adventures, since boats under seven meters in length don’t need registration plates. Hence the confusion among border police officers, who could not register his kayak:

Lucian Ionescu: “They don’t have a solution to that, because usually boats don’t cross borders. Yachts and commercial ships do, but not boats. They were very open, though, and supported me a lot. They told me to write a paper and then they stamped it. They told me everywhere that I was a European citizen, so I had the right of entry, and that the problem lay with them. I was quite nervous in Turkey, however, since it is not a European country. The first port of entry is 170 km away from Tsarevo, in Bulgaria. I could not pull to the shore before reaching a port of entry. I got in touch with the Turkish Coast Guard, and they told me not to stop on beaches, not to sleep in towns before reaching Istanbul, and there to go straight to the border police to have papers drawn up. When I got to Istanbul, I went to the border police, I told them who I was and what I was doing, and the officer had only one word for me: ‘Go!’”

Back in Bucharest, his wife was following his progress, keeping in touch with the authorities, enjoying the fact that he was all right. Everywhere he went, Lucian Ionescu met people eager to help him. In Salonica, a group of Romanians welcomed him warmly:

Lucian Ionescu: “Our consul in Salonica invited me to the consulate, we took photos together, then he organized a small farewell festivity. He congratulated me. The Romanian authorities were delighted with what I was doing and supported me all throughout, which, to be quite honest, was unexpected.”

Lucian Ionescu made loads of friends, visited places off the tourist trail, and has around 2,000 friends on the Facebook page where he posts his photos. He only spent one day in Venice. His wife was waiting for him there, and they both returned home, driven by a friend he had made on the Internet.

Lucian Ionescu: “I asked on Facebook if there was anyone who could come and pick me up in Venice. I could have just taken a train or go by car, but I would have been left without my boat. Two or three people offered. The kayak was light, it hardly weighs 30 kilos empty. The equipment went in the trunk of the car, the kayak on top, it was actually very easy.”

We asked Lucian Ionescu what he had discovered while on his fantastic journey:

Lucian Ionescu: “I discovered people, that was by far the most important discovery. I had sort of lost my confidence in the people around me. I had to leave the country and use Facebook to discover that there were kind-hearted people around me even here, in Bucharest. Secondly, I discovered myself, I got to know my limits, and I found out how far I could push myself. I was on the edge, in difficult situations, but I made it.”

Lucian Ionescu has no funding yet for his next journey. However, he says that if he made it once, he will make it again. For the time being, he is writing a book about his first kayak journey, from Giurgiu to Venice.

Together with a team of image and sound engineers, Catalina Biholar records theatre plays for those who cannot go to a theatre hall. Romanians living abroad are the biggest fans of this project. Catalina Biholar explains the e-theatrum concept:

“I was driving one day with my partner, Cezar Paun, when I had this idea. We were going from Botosani to Suceava. The latter is a town with no theatre hall. So we were talking about ways to bring culture closer to people in towns with no theatre halls. The only thing that Suceava has is a cultural center. So it was then that we came up with the idea of using the Internet to make theatre available to Romanians living abroad, who are an important part of our audience. We mostly record shows performed in national theatres across Romania, as well as shows performed by beginner actors and independent groups. We record performances with live audience, by using 5 full-HD cameras. We even go behind the scenes, make interviews with actors and directors and then we edit the show and have the trailers done, to make it easier for theatre lovers to pick the show they want to watch.”

Shows can be watched on a computer or smart phone. The team’s suggestion is that, when watching the recording on a laptop, this should be connected to the TV set by HDMI, so that the image is larger. In case you wonder how expensive a ticket to e-theatre is and if subscriptions are available, Catalina has the answer:

“There is no subscription system in place yet, but we are working on it. If anyone wants to watch a theatre performance on e-theatrum.com, it can pay for it through the pay per view system. The price of a ticket for one e-theatre play is 3 dollars and 99 cents, the equivalent of 14 Romanian lei. Theatres receive part of the money, according to the contract we signed.”

There are currently 4 shows on the e-theatrum website and several others will be soon uploaded, at a pace of one per week:

“A Marriage Proposal by Anton Chekhov enjoys great success with the audience. It is a comedy staged at the theater in Botosani and is the first show we ever recorded. There is another play by Chekhov, The Bear, and an interesting adaptation after Schiller, Mary Stuart, with a small number of characters. It’s a very good play and is also very long, it takes about two hours. There is also the show of some beginner actors from Suceava, a comedy entitled On a Spring Day. We filmed it because we want to show other young actors that e-theatrum.com can be a launching pad for them as well. We asked Catalina about the way theatre directors welcomed the idea:

“There were people who did not understand the fact that this is an opportunity and that this formula offers a great deal of exposure. Many years ago, a Broadway show was broadcast on TV and then people went to the theater hall to see it up close. People from the town of Bacau can go and see Mary Stuart on stage, but those in Cluj, Boston or Larnaca can only watch it on the Internet, and that’s an opportunity for them.”

The project initially started outside Bucharest and will soon expand to the capital city and other cities that are famous for the quality of the performances they stage.

“Little by little we’ll start including performances staged in Bucharest. We will soon be recording two performances by Matei Visniec, with whom we collaborate on this project. So we’ll start the year 2014 with two shows by Matei Visniec staged in a very original manner. And because we also think about children and parents, we’ll soon upload a children’s play staged in the city of Brasov a puppet show that will keep children busy. We hope that each of the shows performed today in important theatres throughout Romania will be uploaded on e-theatrum. We are open to suggestions from the audience, so if there are any particular performances they would like to see, they should let us know.”

If you miss theatre in Romanian or if you want to know more about Romanian drama, e-theatrum.com is the solution.

The project enjoyed support from the National Contemporary Art Museum, the Romanian Cultural Institute, the European Union of National Cultural Institutes, the Belgian Comic Book Center, and the Comic Book Association of Romania. The museum initially opened on the fourth floor of the National Contemporary Art Museum in Bucharest. It had two exhibition spaces, a library and projection room, and a workshop and debate area. They organized a number of conferences on images parallel to comic books (caricature, animation, book illustrations), debates, by writers and editors, creation workshop, live drawing sessions, book launches, film screenings, and concerts.

Alexandru Ciubotaru explains his passion for comic books and a permanent museum dedicated to this form of art: “I graduated from an art high school, where I was discouraged all the time to read or draw comic books, it was considered infantile, something aimed exclusively at children, but I realized that wasn’t the case. Comic books have topics for all ages and tastes, and it is easily accessible for everyone. It is a form of art in itself, which is worth discovering. I am trying to set up exhibitions, create albums, set up meetings with authors and workshops around comic books, and I hope at some point, 15 to 20 years from now, to have a dedicated museum. Now we go through a period of assimilation, because there are a lot of things to discover, a lot of things to be gathered, which at some point may take over the wing of a museum.”

Four months after being hosted by the Contemporary Art Museum, the Comic Book Museum turned into an itinerant museum. It continued through events, presentations, collaborations and exhibitions proper, by album publishing, or by simply promoting comic book events on a dedicated website. Right now before May 2014, you can visit the Art of Comic Books exhibition at the Bucharest National Library, whose purpose is to explain how comic books evolved over more than a century in Romania, using examples of creation by over 70 authors.

Alexandru Ciubotaru wrote on the website: “Our project is now in a place that is best suited for spatial metamorphosis: the Bucharest National Library. The exhibition we propose tries to present to the public, for specialists and amateurs, the various sides of this so-called 9th art, comic books”.

Alexandru Ciubotaru: “I tried to bring something more to the exhibition, in the sense that it shows us what the so-called kitchen of a comic book artist looks like, showing that it is not infantile art, as they told me in high school, it is extremely laborious work, based on a screenplay, or the adaptation of a story. You have to know teleplay, you have to know anatomy, you have to know visual narration. You also have to have minimal knowledge of printing, and all these influence the art of illustration. You can discover all these things there, and this laboratory can be a surprise for both expert and amateur public, designed by a single person in order to give birth to a comic book.”

Along the years, Romanian comics books and strips went from simple humor to militant education and culture to ideological and doctrinal militancy during the communist years. It then reverted to freedom of expression, after the 1990s. in Romania there is a single professional magazine dedicated to comic books called “Harap Alb continues…”, referring to one of the best known Romanian fairy tales, about a legendary hero. In the magazine introduction, the creators write: “We want to show how our superhero evolved in the imagination of our artists, in over a century of history. Harap Alb is nothing short of American superheroes. It is just that he has been slumbering for too long. It is time he woke up. Harap Alb continues! He reinvents himself, he lives in the present, illustrated in Marvel/ DC Comics style, in an attempt to provide young people nowadays with the sense of adventure offered by the stories written by Romanian authors.”

The magazine appears every other month in 18×26 cm, in 40 color pages. It is in its 8th issue, and has over 70,000 fans. Moreover, one of the main local designers of online applications developed for them the iPad Superhero application, which is also available for Android. Romanian comic book readers can download it for free on Apple store and on Google Play, allowing them to follow the adventures of their favorite superhero. The first issue of the magazine can be downloaded for free on the same sites. Their future plans include opening their own publishing house, and creating more magazines, including some targeted at the foreign market.

This is not a Romanian invention. Presents started to pour in immediately after 1989. But Operation Shoebox is organized locally so to say, in more than 40 cities and towns of Romania and in 5 countries with large Romanian communities.

Valentin Vesa, the initiator of this project will tell us how it all started: “We wanted to give our child a lesson. He was 3 years and a half and he had many things that could have also been used by poorer kids, who didn’t have that much. We told him: let’s go and give away some of your toys and clothes. We wrapped two shoeboxes in colored paper, filled them with toys and clothes and gave them to several poor children. We wanted to be discreet about it, it was the second week of December in 2006. When we went to attend the end-of-year party at our son’s kindergarten all the other parents started asking us about our project, about the organization we belonged to, and so on. Our son had revealed our action to them all because he had enjoyed it very much”.

Valentin Vesa and his wife talked to the other parents and decided to extend their action. In a messenger status they posted the announcement that they were gathering presents for poor kids. In only a few days they gathered more than 500 boxes.

Next Valentin Vesa will explain the success of his action: “There are very many volunteers who come with their children, who give the presents themselves and talk to the children receiving the gifts. Besides offering a poor child a Christmas present, you also help your kid understand that not everybody can afford 4 different meal courses, two types of desserts, many jackets and so on. They learn that many people do not have carpets on their floors, do not have electricity and consequently no computers and games. In one of the boxes a child found a flashlight and he enjoyed it more than a chocolate cake.”

But what is there to fit in a shoebox?: “If we put small things, we can include many diverse items such as sweets, school supplies, personal hygiene items, tooth brushes, tooth paste, foulards, caps, sweaters, woolen stockings and socks. In one year we received 80 uniforms from a military unit and the teenagers from a placement center were very happy to receive them.”

Each of those who organize collection points looks for their own recipients, said Valentin Vesa: “Each of the organizers tries to contact the local town halls; the social assistance divisions have full lists of poor families, of broken families or families in which the parents are working abroad. We are careful not to make mistakes in the sense of, let’s say, 4 foundations helping one and the same family. We also cooperate with social assistance divisions specializing in children’s problems. We don’t like publicity; we don’t accept the presence of television cameras when we give the boxes. We believe this is an intimate moment experienced by the child and the donor; they engage in conversations and lot of them keep in touch for many years”.

Last year 19 cities and towns were involved in the action. They gathered 7 thousand boxes that reached 7 thousand children. Valentin Vesa says that after each action he sends photos to those who brought the presents, because donors should also enjoy this project.

Valentin Vesa : “The Shoebox campaigns involve the effort of many Romanians who put many hours of their time into filling and wrapping the shoeboxes and spending time with these children. We don’t accept the idea of a virtual Santa Claus. These children need to know that the boxes come from their fellow Romanians even if it’s from Romanians in the Diaspora, and not from foreigners. We have already been called by Romanians from the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, England and Australia.”

Valentin Vesa says that once you made a box, you will also make a second one. Why is that? The answer will be given by two volunteers in the project, Cristian China Birta and Diana Borca. Cristian is from Bucharest: “We didn’t know what to expect; last year we had almost 500 boxes which we centralized at our office. We were very happy with the success scored, and this year we are more prepared, more organized and ready to break all records. You always get an extraordinary feeling at the end of such a project. When you see the photos with these children you cannot fail to feel a powerful emotion.”

Diana Borca is from Constanta and this year she has mobilized all her friends: “This is my favorite project, I like it so much that I start thinking about it three months before and I’m sad it happens only once a year. I always liked to make presents but at this time of the year I really feel like Santa Claus. I imagine the kid opening the present from me and finding inside colored crayons, books, toys and sweets and I rejoice at these kids’ joy. Operation Shoebox is about my happiness which I wish to share with these kids at least once a year”.

If the topic of this feature was of interest to you, please go to their site www.shoebox.ro.

Aged 23, Ariel Constantinof is one of the most dynamic figures campaigning for the rights of bikers, an increasingly strong and visible community in Romania’s urban landscape today. First known as a blogger and then as an organiser of biking events and rallies, two years ago, Ariel Constantinof set up a bike courier company called “Tribul”, “the tribe”.

Ariel Constantinof: “As opposed to other courier companies using bikes, we only do one type of delivery. As soon as we get the call, we have 2 or 3 hours to pick up the package and deliver it. We charge a single fee, irrespective of the distance, weather conditions and the weight of the package, as long as it fits easily on the bike. We charge 18 lei, which is about half the fee charged by other companies.”

However, it’s not only the low fees that make this company attractive, but also the fact that it automatically redirects 10% of its profits to social projects, thus fostering cycling in Romania, as part of an environmental organisation entitled MaiMultVerde. The company’s main clients are, in fact, cycling enthusiasts themselves. Ariel Constantinof explains:

Ariel Constantinof: “I think most of our clients apply to us because of who we are and less for our services. Cycling is still seen in Romania as a fashionable thing. Our clients know about the 10% of the company’s profits and use us as something they can be proud of. So, I don’t know how much of our success is due to our services and how much it has to do with the cycling aspect.”

While the company’s cycling couriers are known for their humour and optimistic attitude, the success of the firm is also related to the fact that it’s so much easier to use the bike in Bucharest’s busy traffic. In 2012, Romanians bought 380,000 bikes and only 72,000 cars, which is probably why The Daily Mail wrote last October that Romanians are “the biggest bike lovers in Europe”. This is all the more surprising as 20 years ago, cyclists were looked down on. Alex Dinu, one of the couriers working for the company, is, in his 40s, one of the oldest members of the team.

Alex Dinu: “I remember times when, as a cyclist, you were marginalised. People would think you were cycling because you didn’t have money to buy a car. I’m glad things have changed.”

Today cycling is no longer associated with poverty. Moreover, it is a means of making a living while at the same indulging your passion for cycling. 40% of the cost of a delivery goes to the courier, who can do as many deliveries a day as he or she can. You don’t earn a lot of money, but at least you are in control of your own free time.

Alex Dinu: “For me this is the dream job because I do exactly what I like. I like it as a job and I like the fact that you are surrounded by your friends. It’s one thing to go to work out of obligation, to make money and earn a living, and an entirely different thing to go to work as if going for a walk or on holiday.”

But who are the people doing this job?

Ariel Constantinof: “We are one of the friendliest couriers because we are passionate about what we do, passionate about cycling, even when it rains. We always deliver with a smile on our faces, in any kind of weather. We haven’t done any special training for that, it’s just how we are. This is the type of people I like to have in my team.”

This is the kind of attitude that draws clients like a magnet. We asked Alex Dinu to tell us about the most unusual deliveries he had ever made:

Alex Dinu: “I’ve even delivered bricks, sledges, flowers. Someone once forgot the sandwich he wanted to have for lunch and asked me to deliver it for him.”

The more the Tribe couriers cycle, the more Ariel Constantinof’s company fights against pollution. Each day, the company’s website counts the quantity of carbon dioxide they saved through cycling. So far, we’re talking about more than 6,000 tons.

You can find lots of foreigners in Romania, mostly business people, but also teachers and students, as well as a lot of people working for NGOs. Some of the corporation managers and students choose to settle in Romania at the end of their stint here. Recently, in recognition of this phenomenon, Sandra Pralong, a sociologist and civic activist has published a book entitled “More Romanian than Romanians. Why Foreigners Fall in Love with Romania”. She talked to 45 foreigners, some famous, some not, who chose to live in Romania. Among them are Raed Arafat, the founder of emergency services in Romania, Peter Hurley, an Irishman who fell in love with the Romanian countryside, and Leslie Hawke, an American Peace Corps volunteer, who founded an NGO locally.

Sandra Pralong told us this book was intended as a sequel to her other book, “Why I Returned to Romania”, in which 40 well-known Romanians in exile, who either left during communism or had careers abroad, tell everyone why they came back to their country. The author told us that these people reveal what is best about Romania and its people:

“Some people chose Romania, which means that they love it with its good and bad parts. I liked the idea of raising a mirror to our faces, allowing us to see ourselves in a truer and nicer way than we see ourselves and each other every day in our public sphere.”

Most of the people who tell their tale come from Europe, but there are also people who come from North America, Asia, Africa and Australia. Every one of them has a different tale to tell, and a different reason for which they chose to live in Romania. The selection was purely subjective, according to the author:

“I started with the people I knew personally, and I asked everyone to recommend 2 or 3 other people. The stories are built in a very interesting way. At some point, I wanted to see if there was some balance between nationalities, but in a very natural way they happened to be very different, people of 18 nationalities from five continents, both men and women.”

She asked them what they appreciate about Romanians. They mentioned generosity, hospitality, the special world of the village, and the traditions here. They also meted out criticism, which is often constructive. One of them is the fear of taking responsibility on the job, at all levels. One of the 45 people interviewed for the book is Roberto Musneci, vice-president of the Romanian-Italian Chamber of Commerce and co-founder of the Aspen Institute in Bucharest. In 2002, he was sent from London to Bucharest to run the branch of a multi-national corporation. After a few years in Romania, he was invited to run another company in another country. He turned down the offer, choosing to stay in Romania and found his own company. Asked why he chose to stay, he said that he has a hard time answering:

“I believe that this decision was made based on several elements, not all of them rational. A basic element was that between 2006 and 2008, things in Romania were moving very fast, in social life and in business. This fast pace acted as a magnet for me. Also, the professional opportunities were of great interest. An Italian like me had a great affinity with the way that Romanians think, which also played an important role.”

Sandra Pralong has a lot in common with the protagonists of her volume. She is a success story, a Romanian who worked abroad and who decided to return home and do her part to help Romanian society recover from the deep wounds left by half a century of communist rule. She has put her name to a lot of initiatives in civic life and in education:

“One the one hand, I am 110% Romanian, on the other, having lived so long abroad, I had the opportunity of forming a very different set of reflexes. What I found that I had most in common with the people in my book was the need to respect one’s country. I believe that this is what hurts the most. When I hear my country badmouthed, I feel badmouthed myself.”

Since a lot of foreigners brought an important contribution to modernizing Romania under the reign of King Carol I, the book also contains short biographies of Europeans who helped the first king of Romania transform the country. These vignettes are written by the head of protocol of the Romanian Royal House, Sandra Gatejeanu-Gheorghe.

The first Street Art Museum in Romania is the work of Claudio Scorretti, a cultural attaché of the Italian embassy in Bucharest and an enthusiastic admirer of Romanian art.

We asked Claudio Scorretti why he felt the need to open a museum for artists who prefer to exhibit their art on walls in the city, and not in art galleries: “I’ve been following the street art phenomenon for over 30 years, I saw it in New York, because that is where I was living at the time, then in Rome, my native city, then in Paris, Brussels and London. I’ve been in Bucharest for four years now, and I deal with art as well. It seemed to me that these colors on the walls could change the way the city looks, because architecturally Bucharest still bears the print of the communist period.”

10 of the best-known graffiti and street art artists are exhibiting in the museum on Selari Street.

Alexandru Ciubotaru, best known under his stage name Square Cat, told us that this is the dream space of many of his peers: “This is a highly coveted space for graffiti artists, the Selari street area, a huge space, bordered by walls which we want full of color, not gray and rough. Because weather was not on our side, and drawing right on the walls involved some scaffolding and a lot of money spent on paint and other materials, we used some panels where a lot of artists contributed to a mosaic of works that were the fruit of their own imagination, little pieces of organized street art.”

According to Alex Ciubotaru, artists who choose graffiti as their medium take on risks you would not even imagine. If during the communist period no one would have dared draw on the walls of the capital of the Socialist Republic of Romania, after 1990 things were not much easier. It took 16 years for a wall in Romania, that of the French Cultural Institute, to be used as a support for graffiti, as part of the institution’s 70th anniversary.

Of course, not everyone likes graffiti, therefore it was quickly covered over, says Alex Ciubotaru: “Reactions were not good, but the stir it created has helped us. There have been some more attempts to legalize us and promote artists who are in the shadows, as their form of art is considered little more than doodling on walls. Bucharest needs these artists. Now the discussion is around the question of whether street art will continue in its most sincere and correct form. In the end it is an illegal form of intervention. You need to be quite motivated to decide to go, two o’clock at night, and do this in a public space, accepting all criticism and praise. The sincere form of this art is the decision of an artist to relinquish earnings, because many times you hide behind a pseudonym, and you give up fame and all other benefits. Interventions of this kind are needed. What I did with Square Cat was simply to intervene in specific locations across Bucharest where I felt there was potential. A little color and a bit of form in some dilapidated areas are good, I believe.”

Back on Selari Street 4, Claudio Scorretti is happy with the way people react to the exhibits populating the old center: “People love to take photos of themselves with these panels in the Street Art Museum, and maybe that will attract a wider audience. This is a way to get in touch with art in a fun way.”

We asked Alex Ciubotaru which is the nicest piece of graffiti in Bucharest in his opinion. He told me it’s at North Station, the main train station in Bucharest. “This is a wall on Platform 14, painted as part of the Train Delivery festival, which has a great impact, it is quite visible, and beautiful. The location of this wall delights me, but also the work in itself.”

If you get to Bucharest, especially if you come by train, you should not miss Platform 14 and Selari Street, with its Street Art Museum. You can even buy works by the exhibiting artists from the containers turned into a makeshift shopping center.

Paul Bere is a university researcher and the man who earned the commission. A specialist in composite materials, Paul Bere became involved with the motor sports world in 2000. He started with Formula 3, moved on to Formula 2, the Le Mans races and finally Formula 1. After a post-doc scholarship in Germany, he now works for the Technical University in Cluj Napoca. For a while, he repaired small parts and built simple components needed to build Formula 1 cars before he convinced a German company to commission the University in Cluj with building a car. This 650-horsepower car made up of composite materials is worth almost 5 million euros.

We asked Paul Bere what it’s like to work for a Formula 1 company: “For me, this just means a lot of work and a lot of passion to solve the technical problems involved. It’s something I’m used to. When I first started working for Formula 1 companies I was very excited and used to take pictures of everything, but now I’m used to it. You work hard and you can’t make any mistakes, because you won’t get a second chance.”

14 monoposts have been built by the Technical University of Cluj. The last one was sent to Germany in mid April, to be equipped with an engine, electrical installations and breaks.

The reason why these monoposts have not been talked about much is that the team in Cluj works in conditions of maximum confidentiality as Paul Bere told us: “ Ideas have already been taken up by other teams from just one Formula 1 car we made in Cluj. It’s enough to see a photo or have an idea and somebody gets one step ahead of you.”

The Germans decided to make the monoposts here because the University has the necessary, high-tech equipment capable of making complicated parts in a short period of time, Paul Bere explained: “ All those who order parts made up of composite materials want them to be made quickly. Usually, people who order these parts are rich people, who are not used to waiting. It’s not possible to give them everything they want, when they want it, but our research helps us use modern technologies, which cuts the manufacturing period shorter. The equipment gets a CAD design or a solid part design, or a design made using the Katia program, and based on these designs the machines can built the solid parts in a very short period of time. They actually make the physical outlay in layers of plastic or metal, just like with a 3D printer. There are several technologies that can be applied here. Then they are verified and matrixes are built to make up the polymeric composite parts and materials enforced with special fibers, made of Kevlar carbon or other newer types of fibers.”

The building of monoposts was an excellent occasion for the Romanian researchers and students to study how composite materials are used and even to patent some inventions.

Paul Bere says composite materials have diverse applications: “You can use them almost everywhere. In constructions, for sanitary objects, in fields such as aerospace, formula 1 and medicine. I could see for myself how they are used in formula 1, it’s a lot of work, I must tell you. I think contributions should be made in the field of medicine as well, and I can tell you that we’re going to have some important achievements in this field, not as spectacular as a formula 1 car …but when you make prosthesis for a child, it’s something different from offering real toys to moneyed people”.

Lately more and more Romanian researchers have come into the spotlight. Their discourse, of revolt against the harsh conditions in which they had to work, has started to change. Paul Bere says there are reasons why Romanians are very appreciated abroad, and when they return to the Universities that formed them, they bring research projects and important funding.

Radu Silaghi Dumitrescu, the head of the team of researchers who have been working on this project since 2007, has explained to us how artificial blood works:

Radu Silaghi Dumitrescu: “It is a liquid that can be used when people suddenly lose a big quantity of blood. When this happens doctors usually use either blood from donors, which is never enough, or other liquids, whose role is to give the heart something to pump. However, the risk in this latter case is that the body may suffocate. The solution we have created also allows the body to oxygenate. It is an artificial product that can be used instead of blood for several hours and even one or two days to prevent the body from suffocating from sudden loss of blood.”

Other teams, too, have been trying to solve the problem using animal blood as raw material. The team from Cluj, however, has discovered a formula based on a component that can be found in just a few organisms, namely in just one species of sea worms and in several bacteria, which is why it was less known.

Radu Silaghi Dumitrescu says he was lucky to know about the properties of this protein: “This protein is known to specialists as something that sea worms and some bacteria have, but it’s the first time that somebody takes it into consideration as a blood substitute. We think it’s a good substitute because it is very resistant to chemical stress agents, which usually destroy hemoglobin in our blood.”

The fact that this artificial blood can be produced in a lab is a major advantage, Radu Silaghi Dumitrescu says: “It’s a substance just like any other, like, say, aspirin or any other medicine. This is why it can be produced in unlimited quantities and, unlike human blood, can be dried and stored as powder. It can be deposited at room temperature, not in special refrigerators, and, if need be, it can be mixed with sterile water and thus turned into a substitute for blood, whenever necessary and in any condition.”

The idea of finding a substitute for blood has been on the scientific market for years. Many of the conclusions of the Romanian scientists have been published in specialist bio-medical journals, which confirms their validity. Romanian scientists, however, are still reserved in their optimism because, they say, it will take a few more years before they obtain approval to use their invention in humans:

Radu Silaghi Dumitrescu: “All the other teams who have managed to test their inventions on humans failed in those tests. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in this field and it’s becoming more and more obvious that the solution is very close. It’s a privilege to be able to work with four powerful universities from Cluj, not to mention my younger collaborators, doctors in chemistry, doctoral students, and even master and bachelor students. We also collaborate with other teams of biologists, physicists, oncologists and we are lucky that they all work in Cluj. This is one of this city’s strengths, this wide range of specialties and very good equipment and facilities that we have benefited from in the past years. The labs that we work in are very competitive and can be compared with the most advanced labs from more technologically developed countries. Significant investment has been made in Romania since 2007 and we now have all the necessary tools and human resources at out disposal.”

We asked Radu Silaghi Dumitriescu how their substitute for human blood has been received by the medical community: “The international medical community is definitely prepared for this solution. Several rounds of tests on humans have already been accepted, so we cannot talk about reluctance, but we need to see positive results in clinical tests. Seeing how multi-million dollar companies have failed in this respect, doctors will not easily put their patients in the hands of the first scientist who says he made a huge breakthrough. We must be careful about people’s lives. We believe we need another year or two to complete the tests on animals and on cultures of human cells and only then, if the results are good, we can get to the stage where we can test human subjects.”

Finding a surrogate for blood may earn the people who discovered it a Nobel Prize. However, it’s not awards that motivate the researchers in Cluj, but the desire to see their project come to a successful end.

Every year on the 14th of October, on St Paraskevi Feast Day, hundreds of thousands of people take part in a pilgrimage to Iasi, in north-eastern Romania. Another important pilgrimage takes place on the 26th of October, this time to Bucharest, on St Demetrius Feast Day. There are other pilgrimages throughout the year, for example to Nicula, in the central county of Cluj, on the Assumption of Virgin Mary, to Prislop, in Hunedoara, also in the west, at the end of November, and to the monasteries in northern Moldova, at any time of the year.

Television channels never miss an opportunity to cover these pilgrimages in their programmes, even though all reports sound very much the same: long queues, hopes, small miracles, people coming from all parts of the country. But what drives all these people? Why are they so eager to stand in line for hours and even days to touch the chests containing the relics of the saints? Researcher Mirel Banica draws a portrait of a contemporary Romanian pilgrim:

“Most of these pilgrims are women in their 60s, many of them retired, not well-off, living alone, either because their children have left home or because their husbands died, who decided to go on a pilgrimage with a group of friends or neighbours. They usually travel by bus, instead of walking, as traditional pilgrims used to do. That kind of pilgrim no longer exists today in Romania. Villages are facing problems such as an aging population and migration. The pilgrims of the old times who used to travel by horse and cart together with their entire family are rarely seen today. A new type of pilgrim has emerged, mostly originating from former small industrial towns.”

People wait for hours in line to touch the relics of the saints. The queue, says Mirel Banica, is an important component of the Orthodox pilgrimage, which unlike the Catholic pilgrimage, stretches in time rather than space. People spend a lot of time in a crowded place, speak, laugh, pray together and share each other’s food. For a detached observer, the serpent-like queue formed by people may seem comical:

“From a distance, this long line may look strange, but if you join it you get to find out about people’s personal tragedies and life stories. In fact, you find out more about the stories and tragedies of today’s Romania. People are looking for a meaning to their existence. These are people in their 60s who have lived for most of their lives in communism and don’t know what to put in its place in terms of values, ideas, prospects. Standing in line we see a country torn by migration, poverty and sickness, but we also see a corporate Romania with young people who earn well and who go on these pilgrimages as if taking a personal development course or to overcome their fear of fatigue. People come here on pilgrimage for the most diverse of reasons. They come here to get healed, and don’t think that they haven’t undergone treatment before, most of them apply to classical medicine. Then there are people who come here just to pray for their peers, for their children and grandchildren, even for themselves. This is a form of socialising, they sing and have fun together, there is no shame in that. The church tends to emphasise exclusively the spiritual dimension of pilgrimage. Well, pilgrims are just regular people, they are not bearded fundamentalists, or saints spreading wings. No, they are just people who travel together, pray, read, eat, all these are forms of socialisation that actually raise the quality of their lives. There are others who come here out of pure curiosity the first time, then they start liking it, and start coming time and again, because pilgrimage is addictive.”

We asked Mirel Banica what could create this addiction. He explained it was simply emotion, but, as opposed to the feeling you get on an arena at a concert, this is sacred emotion:

“This is the feeling of therapeutic wellness that comes from the sacred, you can’t put it in words, it has to be experienced. People feel free, unhindered and voice their feelings as they come. You have no idea what it is like to be among 80,000 people who start singing together Saint Nicholas’ hymn at midnight with lit candles in their hands. It is a sacred emotion, which you cannot feel in any other big gathering of people.”

It is not easy to stand for hours on end, so close to so many people. Once pilgrims reach the holy relics, however, their emotions just wipe out anything outside that experience:

“The people standing in line know that this short lived suffering is a sort of symbolic payment they give to a deity one cannot see, cannot touch, but in which they believe. If you speak to them, you see they don’t remember much about those moments when they pass close to the reliquary; they are usually very tired, and generally vent strong emotions when they reach it, they cry, some with sadness, some with joy, some out of sheer exhaustion, it takes a long time for them to get back their bearings.”

Nevertheless, each year they come back. I asked Mirel Banica to express in a few words the phenomenon of pilgrimage, which he says is very important in understanding society at large:

“This is Romanian society’s response to the awfully fast changes that have occurred after 1989 in Romanian society. It shows that a lot of our fellow citizens are trying to give meaning to their lives. Pilgrimage provides meaning in a world they cannot come to grips with, where they often can no longer integrate, and one they are not content in. We don’t know how this form of spirituality will evolve, it could go up and down.”