Traffic Jams in Romania

This picture shows a common traffic hazard in Romania. Herds of sheep, goats, even cows and pigs sometimes decide to cross roads that are part of European Logistic Corridors (E 460). Sometimes, but not always accompanied by shepherd/ cowboy/ goatkeeper.....

Szigetköz, Hungary

The Szigetköz is an area of approximately 45 km long, starting at the Hungarian-Austrian border (Mosonmagyaróvár).
It is an environmental protection area, rich in flora and fauna which was put into danger by the Böcs dam project.
The area is ideal for turism: folk traditions, thermal water, hundreds of km of bike paths.
This picture was taken in October in the evening during a fishing trip with the father of a dear friend.

Romanian traffic

This is one of the many customized vehicles you will see during the permanent adventure and circus that is traffic in Romanian (see also previous blogs about special transport and the gypsy question...)

Bucharest - some beauty, a lot of beastliness

Bucharest has a rich architectural heritage. Buildings like the Palace Athenée are of neo-classical beauty. The own architecture of the beginning of the 20th century is rustic and appealing, used in villas of the 1920s and public buildings of the 30s.

Ceaucescu's regime introduced megalomanic planning and reinforced concrete.

The last two decades have seen a wildgrowth of eglectic styles without coordination, planning and often without taste.

To this picture is added a general disregard, even disrespect for public places. This combination leads to a city that leaves a dirty, ununderstandable impression.

alternative transport method...

The owner of this Dacia car decided that the roof of his car should be saved from scratches, so he hung the pipes UNDER the car. Knowing the state of Romanian roads, would like to see the result at the first bump / pothole. Not even mentioning abrupt manoeuvres in Romanian traffic...

Sighisoara

This city is traditionally German (Saxon, actually with a lot of Luxemburg and Flemish influence).
The city retains its beauty , even during the extensive renovation works which left most of the streets broken up during peak tourist season. I am not sure how much influence the German language and ethnicity still has nowadays, but a visit to the evangelical cementary at the highest top of the city shows row upon row of German and Hungarian names.
I hope the future of Sighisoara is as culturally diverse and rich as its history...

the gypsy question

 
As long as we have citizens of the EU living in circumstances like in the pictures (yes, this lady and her falily live in this cart), I think the gypsy question will remain very accute.
Gypsies (fashionably/ politically correct nowadays: Roma) in Central Europe have the same status and the same problems as the North African minorities in Belgium: not integrated, not schooled, not accepted, source of problems...

Sunday morning brunch on Szabadság ter

Szabadság tér is home to the Hungarian national bank, the national tv, the American embassy and Farger, one of the best places in Budapest for peaceful brunch. Picture with dear friends

Language rows between Slovakia and Hungary: Hovorte po slovensky!* | The Economist

Language rows between Slovakia and Hungary: Hovorte po slovensky!* | The Economist

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Coffee in Central European Life

Have you ever stopped and thought how a seemingly everyday consumable like coffee shows a lot about who you are and where you are from?
Coffee has a long and important tradition, also in Central Europe. Turks introduced it during their centuries long dominance, it was introduced via a back door into popular and highbrow culture. In Central European cities like Wien and Budapest, coffee houses played an important role in meeting, creation and (in Budapest, 1848) in revolutionary processes.
Coffee became an inseparable part of daily life, daily work, of protocol and shared feelings.
In Hungary, as in Italy, coffee is often prepared in a percolator. I have not encountered this method anywhere else, unless we count the “espresso machine” system (the ones the latter day baristas use and abuse).
As of Transylvania, the “ibrik” serves us Turkish coffee: the kind that we have to sweeten while brewing, as it is served with the grinds in a tiny cup.
Since the fall of the Wall and the change of the system, filter coffee has made headways into the more labor-intensive but much tastier domain of the percolator and the ibrik. I remember introducing Hungarians to what they called “American” or “German” coffee in the beginning of the 90s and watching them pull faces and calling the liquid I served out of the freshly brewed filter coffee pot “weak tea”.
Central Europeans used to drink maximum 2 cups of coffee per day: in the morning to wake up, after lunch with a cigarette to digest. In Belgium, I grew up in a working culture that served coffee in massive quantities all day long. Liters and liters of the intoxicant were ingested in the course of a working day.
Real coffee had to brewed at home, preferably by some one taking their time and lovingly handling the percolator. Coffee was meant to sooth the spirit, to help in awakening, to break the ice in conversations.
Hotel coffee was the exact and horrible opposite: nescafé left to burn and cook for hours, leaving it tasting like asphalt.
The culture of coffee still thrives in Central Europe, next to the “Seattle” wave of coffee shops, the real kávéház, cukrázda, cofetarie, kavarna or Konditorei still has its place in local communities, folklore and in tourist’s hearts.

the Black Sea at Costinesti, Romania

one of the nicer restaurants, not too far from Costinesti, near a village called "August 23"

an average day in July-August at the Black Sea coast...

Hotels in Costinesti range between 30-70 EUR/person/night

This is Costinesti's landmark: a greek merchant ship stranded here in the 70s

bird's eye view of Revolution Square, Bucuresti

this picture shows the Piata Revolutiei, where the December 1989 "revolution" is commemorated. The temperature approached 40° when this picture was taken (mid July). Note the many abandoned construction sites on the horizon, waiting for further bank financing to materialize

a view from Constanta

This is a view from the restaurant in the marina in Constanta, Romania.
The building you see is a mosque built for the muslim minority by the royal family of Romania (Hohenzollern of German Kaiser fame) in the beginning of the 20th century.
The Muezzin calls out for prayers and the best place to listen is in the slightly touristic restaurant in the port.

De Standaard - 'Kijk naar de hele kameel'

De Standaard - 'Kijk naar de hele kameel'

An excellent interview in the Flemish De Standaard with Prof Wim Moesen about the regained role of government in regulating both the financial ecomony as the real economy. The key words of Prof Moesen's ideas are TRUST and EFFICIENCY.
To function correctly and to ensure transactions, the economy needs trust between the different players. Government can, through correct regulation, ensure this trust.
Efficiency means that the regulation provided by the government is accountable, measureable and stimulates initiative.

Both factors are very essential in any steps that governments in Central Europe will have to take in the comings period.

Ceaucescu's Megalomania

The palace that Ceaucescu built, now known as Casa Popului (people's house), photographed from the 15th floor of the BCR building on Calea Victoriei

Liszt Ferenc tér on a Summer Morning

One of the nicest places in Budapest to have a quiet brunch and good coffee is Liszt Ferenc tér. In good weather, terrasses welcome the tourists

Mures (Maros) Valley Sunset

The main road between Arad and Deva follows the Mures (Maros, Mieresch), a river running from the Carpathians (Gyergyó range in Székely country) to the Tisa in Szeged.

The scenery along this road is some of the nicest in Central Europe: nature as it was. The road is busy, trucks going from the Romanian heartland direction Western Europe. It runs through some nice villages such as Savarsin, where the royal family had a castle.

The area the Mures runs through is typical of Central Europe and specifically Transylvania: multi-ethnic, multi-cultured. The Mures springs in Székelyföld, runs through Hungarian and Saxon areas with a lot of Romanian villages on its banks.

Hard Work in the CFR in Pitesti

Men eating pumpkin seeds - the joys of work in Central Europe

King Albert II of the Belgians: visit to Romania

The King and Queen of the Belgians honoured us, Belgians, with a large reception in the "Cercul Militar": the place to be for a royal reception on a sweltering July day in Bucharest

Coming down the stairs of the Cercul Militar

marketplace in Chitila on Saturday morning

in a suburb of Bucharest, farmers come to sell their products. Closest to a souk you will get without leaving Europe. Fresh products, good prices!

diversified shop in Sibiu

This shop on one of the main streets in Sibiu (Hermannstadt/Nagyszeben) bets on several horses: Lenjeri (women's underwear) and Xerox (copies). Way out of the crisis?

Museul Satului in Bucharest

This is a traditional house from the region of Buzau. Note the beautiful terras where the family slept during the summer months.
Seperate tuica (brandy) production in the yard.
Picture made in March 2009

Beautiful building in Budapest

One of the most beautiful buildings in Central Europe: the Hungarian Parliament (Tisztelt Ház or Országház) Picture by Ioana Florescu. Built at the end of th e 19th century, in a style known as "eclectic"

A Village Named Sandra

Near Timisoara / Temesvár / Temesvar: A village named after my Daughter Alexandra. Still looking for a "Laura" or "Lulu"

Cultural Crossing Point

one of the crossing point of cultures in Central Europe: mosque in Babadag, East Romania, in the area of the Danube delta. Turkish people have been living since centuries in this area.

One of my favorites: Timisoara, 40°: funeral services non-stop

Some pictures from the Romanian-Ukrainian broder at the river Tisa

visiting Romania besides Bucharest

- Muntenia: Pitesti, Campulung, Curtea de Arges
- Brasov, Bran, Moeciu
- Cluj/ Kolozsvár
- Bucegi mountains,
- Baia Mare/Nagybánya, Cavnic, Sapanta
- Lugoj, Timisoara
- Tulcea

visiting Hungary besides Budapest

- Györ and Szigetköz (the Danube as it used to be)
- between the Hungarian rivers on Slovak territory: Ipoly and Garam, from Sahy to Esztergom
- Sopron, Szombathély and the Örség: history, nature and thermal baths
- Pécs, Villany, Szekszárd: wine and Sváb culture
- Tihany, Balatonf¨red, Balatonkenese: peace and forgiveness beside the water
- Mohács, Kalocsa: paprika and winter cleansing
- Miskolctapolca, Eger: mountains and water after the plains

some websites for visitors

http://www.romaniatourism.com/bucharest.html


http://www.budapestinfo.hu/en/

Perhaps the people in these countries are impatient and jealous to achieve the same high living standards as in Western Europe.
At the same time, people in Western Europe do not appreciate the level they have achieved and take social services and expensive spending patterns for granted.

A recent article from The Economist, covering the EU parliament elections, gives more content to the direction that Central (or maybe South-Central) Europe has taken:


Time to start fretting
Jun 11th 2009 From The Economist print edition
Boring centre-right parties did well—but so did quite a few nasties

INTERPRETERS in the European Parliament trying to translate the remarks of George “Gigi” Becali may struggle. Even in his native Romanian, his puzzling syntax and coarse slang make him a butt of satirists. The interpreters may also blench at what he says, especially about Jews, gays, Roma (Gypsies) and women. But they may be spared this for the time being because a court has banned the newly elected Mr Becali from leaving Romania pending a criminal trial for kidnapping.
Getty Images
Nutters? Us?
Xenophobes and populists have been elected in old European Union members such as the Netherlands too. But their east European counterparts make the westerners seem tame. Mr Becali’s fellow victor on the Greater Romania list is Corneliu Vadim Tudor, a vituperative nationalist who was once court poet to Nicolae Ceausescu, the former Communist dictator.
Yet international co-operation among politicians who hate foreigners is inherently tricky. Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party, which won three seats, may join its Balkan counterparts (including two members of Bulgaria’s explicitly racist Ataka party) in Roma-bashing. But they will have little in common when it comes to minority rights for Hungarians in neighbouring countries such as Slovakia and Romania, where Magyar irredentism is a convenient bogeyman for local chauvinists.
There were shocks at the far-left end of the spectrum too. One winner in Latvia was Alfreds Rubiks, a hardline former Communist who was jailed for backing a Kremlin-inspired coup against Latvian independence in 1991. Most Latvians see him as a pariah. His victory highlights the ominous rise of Soviet nostalgia among the country’s increasingly alienated Russians. In Estonia, by contrast, ethnic Russian parties flopped. The soft-left Centre Party got their votes, and more besides. The most striking Estonian result was the election of Indrek Tarand, a popular ex-diplomat who ran as an independent to protest against rules stopping voters from choosing among candidates on party lists.
As in western Europe, the main stories in the east were thumping wins by centre-right parties. Poland’s ruling Civic Platform did strikingly well, with 25 seats to 15 for the main opposition, the more populist Law and Justice party. In the Czech Republic the centre-right Civic Democrats won nine of the 22 seats, against seven for the Social Democrats and four for the Communists. In Hungary the ruling Socialists (ex-communists) did very badly, with only four seats to 14 for the conservative Fidesz party. That augurs well for the right in next year’s general election.
The exception was Slovakia, where the ruling centre-left Smer (Direction) party led by the prime minister, Robert Fico, did well on a paltry 19.6 % turnout, the lowest in the EU. His party won five out of 13 seats, with the fragmented conservative opposition polling poorly, as did two nationalist fringe parties in the coalition government. Both had featured in a string of recent corruption scandals.
The real significance of the elections may lie less in the composition of the new European Parliament than in pointers to the future course of national politics. Mr Fico, for example, will need to find new allies after next year’s general election if his present coalition partners continue to flop. Poland’s Civic Platform is on track to win the presidency next year.
Scandal-strewn Bulgaria is holding a parliamentary election on July 5th. If the European contest is any guide, the vote should be lively but nasty. Mafia-linked parties did alarmingly well in the European poll, though they did not win any seats. Vote-buying was common, as were other lurches towards rule-bending and ballot-rigging. In what looks like a blatant attempt to penalise minor parties, the authorities tried (but failed) to raise the election threshold to 8%, the highest in Europe. Legal chicanery meant that an opposition coalition had great difficulty even registering. Sadly, EU officials monitoring Bulgaria’s shaky progress towards clean government will have plenty to put in their next report. It is bad enough when dodgy characters win votes, but even worse when they count them.
Copyright © 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

moving to Bucharest

In the weekend of 30-31rst May, I moved to Bucuresti after living since 1991 in Hungary, mostly in and around Budapest.
The step was not easy: the 2 countries and lifestyles are different.
Work brought me to Romania, and a feeling that Hungary is developing in a way which I can not recognize.