Old cultures, especially agrarian ones, love their seasonal festivals, and the best time is after the hard work of planting, tending, and harvesting is done. Late summer, as the hot afternoons stretch and… Continue reading
The orientation meeting went extremely well, dinner was positively delicious, and my introductory walk around Bucharest was going splendidly. The after-heat evening air was hot with both the indolence of summer and the… Continue reading
Guitar cradled in front of his chest, the young man was living the dream. His heartthrob crooning filled the summer street where the evening passeggiata stroll around Bucharest was well underway. Behind him… Continue reading
The Luxembourgians may have seen it as a free vacation. They needed one in the heady days of 2007, when the surging European Union was adding two more countries, expanding the cooperation that… Continue reading
Romania is a place of endless human stories, kings and autocrats and invaders and defenders and the people caught up in all of it. But the day after walking on a church’s rampart… Continue reading
Grand clashing tides of history shaped our world, but it’s hard to feel the normal humans within them. How do you get a feeling for Napoleon when he first woke up in the… Continue reading
On that late September day in Timisoara, summer had dumped the last of its heavy heat into the afternoon hours, like the hardest teacher who surprises you with a brutal final exam. But… Continue reading
Romanians curse a lot. My favorite of their more playful profanities is when they tell someone to go away. We might use two simple words to form an expression that makes very little… Continue reading
The obvious highlight on Day 3 of our Tour of Romania is the opulent yet intimate royal palace of Peles. I’ve written about it before and there is much more to say, but… Continue reading
Initially, Bucharest’s Athenaeum looks like just another nice neoclassical building of columns in front and a dome on top. Very European. So European that it’s familiar everywhere they sailed, ubiquitous in statehouses around… Continue reading
