English DoR #1

Cristi Puiu and the New Wave Every Woman is a Story About Breasts Barbarian Punk Diana Dondoe on Nobuyoshi Araki Letters from Romania A journal of Romanian nonfiction spring 2011 ● issue one ● www.decatorevista.ro

English language edition of Decât o Revistă

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I

intro A journal of Romanian nonfiction.

editor Cristian Lupşa

Experiments*

art director Carmen Gociu

elcome to DoR, the English language edition of Decât o Revistă, a magazine of groundbreaking Romanian nonfiction.

There is a peculiar truth to how Google translates Decât o Revistă. It calls it Rather than a Magazine, which is not quite right, but not quite wrong either. Decât o Revistă is more aptly translated Just a Magazine, but even that doesn’t carry the grammatical error intentionally embeded in the Romanian spelling. (Please don’t make us explain Romanian grammar; it’s harder than explaining why so many local teenagers are hackers).

This intentional error says a lot about what DoR is and what it does: - It’s an experiment in a publishing world where experiments have become scarce. Romanians have given up on old fashioned print media, and the internet is hardly the only culprit.

Reporting is sloppy, writing is flat, and design is careless. There is little to indicate that an independent magazine can change that, but there’s even less to indicate that it’s bound to fail.

- It’s a challenge we’ve given to ourselves to strike an editorial balance between high and low culture, between pretentious discourse and corner talk, between mastery and naiveté, between the printed page and the raging pace of the web.

- It’s a magazine of stories. The misuse of “decât” is an important story of contemporary Romania. It speaks to the rapid spread of information, to our love of grammar policing, to a resistance to tamper with language.

Stories are the tools we use to understand who we are at this moment

english dor reading squad Gabriel Dobre, Lavinia Gliga, Peter Frank, Luiza Ilie

w

in time, and where we wish to go.

Through stories, we make sense not only of our country, but of ourselves.

We want to be better, we want to create things that matter, we want to make the right decisions.

This is why Google might be right: you should read DoR, rather than a magazine.

The collection assembled in this English language edition – made possible with help from Gentica Foundation – carries everything from personal essays to photo stories to narrative. Some of these pieces have already been published in the Romanian language edition, others are original. All of them aim for explanation, emotion, and empathy.

Choosing the cover story was easy. Cristi Puiu put Romania on the international movie map when he released Stuff and Dough in 2001, and The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu in 2005.

He made thousands around the world curious not only about what became the “Romanian New Wave”, but also about a country often associated with a trinity of pop clichés: communism, Dracula, gymnastics.

There’s something else about Puiu.

Whether or not you agree with him that his latest feature, Aurora, should have been the three hour mental workout that it is, you can’t argue with his desire to experiment. To challenge. To try to tell a story his own way – even if, in Aurora’s case, the story is the absence of story.

Experiment, challenge, and tell stories about it. This is what we do.

english dor editors Georgiana Ilie, Ani Sandu

with help from these ninjas Alex Gâlmeanu, Mara Ploscaru, Andrei Pungovschi, Gabriela Piţurlea, Veronica Solomon, Radu Manelici, Adrian Lungu, Sebastian Ispas, Sorana Stănescu, Smaranda Şchiopu, Simina Mistreanu, Andreea Lupu, Agnes Nicolaescu, Cristian Garcia rough translations by Lexigo Translations (lexigo.ro) founding editors Cristian Lupșa, Gabriel Dobre, Lavinia Gliga, Sebastian Ispas founding art director Raymond Bobar typefaces and such The DoR logo is based on Irma. Body text is written in Ingeborg and National. printed at Master Print Super Offset tell us we’re awesome www.decatorevista.ro Email: dor@decatorevista.ro Facebook: Facebook.com/decatorevista Twitter: @decatorevista issn 2068 – 018x English DoR wouldn’t have been possible without help from our good friend, Alexandre Almăjeanu at Gentica Foundation (gentica.com), who said he’d love to see more of Romania abroad.

* This issue is a pilot. Let us know what you think. Send your feedback to dor@decatorevista.ro.

dor • spring 2011 • 1

Portfolio DoR publishes the work of many young photographers and illustrators. Below are the projects of two recent art-school graduates we’re lucky to have met.

↘

A act

Diana Gândilă Graduated Cinematography, Photography and Media in Cluj. This autobiographical series showcases the two warring sides of her femininity: the ingenue and the femme fatale. Diana’s photographs can be seen at www.behance.net/charisma.

↘

Mara ploscaru Graduated from the National University of Arts in Bucharest. Her project is an attempt to translate feelings, thoughts and desires into images.

Her interpretations of joy, pleasure or sorrow are a starting point for the viewers’ subjective experience. Look for her photos on Flickr.

dor • spring 2011 • 3

Cover lines The stories behind the cover images of the first issues of the Romanian edition of Decât o Revistă.

Decât o Revistă

#1

Decât o Revistă

#2

November 2009 DOBROVOLSCHI

April 2010 A NEW GENERATION

Mihai Dobrovolschi has been a staple of Romanian radio for more than a decade. He’s the gregarious morning host – these days on Radio Guerrilla –, always on, always witty, always charming, always playful. When photographer Alex Gâlmeanu shot him in 2004 for Bolero magazine, he ended up with a shot of Dobrovolschi fearfully holding a plug away from the socket in his mouth. What we wanted was the follow-up shot – what happened next? This is what Gâlmeanu and Dobro came up with. He’s plugged, he’s ready, he’s yours for consumption.

The mood in Romania as the recession plowed through was gloomy. The November 2009 presidential elections didn’t seem to make a difference. The men, those thousands of suits pondering politics and the economy, had failed to deliver. Power was powerless. But a new generation of women didn’t even flinch. They took the apathy as a green light.

It was their time to start small business, make art, build NGOs, and show that change isn’t something that trickles down from the President’s office, but is built slowly, from the ground up.

4 • dor • spring 2011

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Decât o Revistă

#3

Decât o Revistă

#4

July 2010 WHEN I WAS 16

October 2010 ARTAN AND THE CHINESE SHOVEL

Putting a 16-year-old punk rocker on the cover was an easy decision, despite the odds. Otto, nicknamed The Barbarian, wasn’t a celebrity. His band had barely played a few gigs. He wasn’t going to sit for a portrait. But he had something special – unique to him, but accesible to us all. He was 16, the age of rebellion and absolute truths, the age at which you’re never wrong and everything is possible. Sixteen is the most punk any of us will ever be, and Otto was the perfect guy to remind us of that. The cover image was shot by Ioana Cîrlig.

Adrian “Artan” Pleşca is sometimes called “The Everest of Romanian music”. A former frontman for the band Timpuri Noi, a subversive outfit that was just as smart during communism as they were after, he was and is an inspiration to a horde of young rockers. His awkwardness and quirks made him an ideal choice for our idea: showcase the wonders of the Chinese army shovel, a multi-purpose tool that does everything you can imagine: from digging to chopping to opening beer. If Romania was to dig itself out of a funk, this was the tool to use. And Artan was the perfect candidate to use it. dor • spring 2011 • 5

A

Get out of the kitchen The “Romanian New Wave” movies have been flirting with the kitchen for a while now. It’s time to get a room.

Granted, Romanians love their kitchens. It’s where mother cooks, where father slurps his soup, where smokers congregate at family events. But that’s no excuse to keep the camera crew in there this long. Almost every film in the Romanian New Wave has passed through it, and lingered for

6 • dor • spring 2011

what seems to be an eternity – from The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu to Police, Adjective to Medal of Honor. Police took local cinema’s love of realism to new heights, making actor Dragoş Bucur into a poster boy for the souploving Romanian man whose kitchen is a rest stop on the road from com-

munism to IKEA-friendly capitalism.

We get it. Things take time to change.

Kitchens are part of our DNA. Now please, go shoot somewhere else. And skip the dining room – if you’ve seen Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days you know we’ve been there, too.

Illustration by Carmen Gociu

The Maestro is here!

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How to survive a party with important Romanian directors.

↘

How to recognize him

What to call him

Icebreaker

What he drinks

His most famous movie

His best movie

Closer

Glasses, slightly bald, slightly drunk; probably in the middle of an elaborate joke.

Nae

Is your dad a film critic?

Wine spritzer

Philanthropy

Sundays on Leave

The rest is silence.

Imposing, with ample gestures. He asks everybody what sign they are.

Cristi

Have I seen you in Aurora?

Red wine

The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu

The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu

Good luck with Aurora!

Short, slightly chubby and with a touch of Moldavian accent.

Cristian, never Cristi

How does Jane Fonda look up close?

Red wine

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Say hello to Mr. Bebe when you see him.

Short, slightly chubby and with a strong Moldavian accent.

Corneliu

Do you plan to become a soccer coach?

Cuba Libre

12:08 East of Bucharest

12:08 East of Bucharest

Go Vaslui Football Club!

Shaved head, resembles an American football player, blushes after his first glass of alcohol.

Radu

Why don’t you make another movie like Furia?

Beer

Summer Holiday

Tuesday, After See you Christmas Wednesday, after Easter.

Short, gray hair, gray beard, glasses.

Maestro

Will you ever make movies again?

Red wine

The Oak

The Oak

Tall, gray hair, no glasses.

Uncle Sergiu

How about a sequel to Uncle Marin, the Billionaire?

Rakia

Mihai Viteazul Ciuleandra

How did you like Puiu’s new movie?

He probably won’t be there.

You don’t, he’s not there.

Hello?

Irrelevant, he’s not there.

Glissando

Jacob

Hello?

Imposing, most probably sitting.

Mister Gabrea

I have a script about the Holocaust.

Interested?

Red wine

Noro

A Man Called Eva

Can I call you about the script?

From the top: Nae Caranfil, Cristi Puiu, Cristian Mungiu, Corneliu Porumboiu, Radu Muntean, Lucian Pintilie, Sergiu Nicolaescu, Mircea Daneliuc, Radu Gabrea.

Au revoir, Maestro.

dor • spring 2011 • 7

ana Makes Faces

Ana Ularu, 25, has been making films for over 15 years. Over time, she has developed an ambivalent relationship with her face.

Ana likes it, but some find

it upsetting. She’s even lost parts because of it.

She was told she was too contemporary, androgynous, weird. When she cut her hair short, an actor

told her she’s as beautiful as a Suzuki bike. She may not be tiny, blonde and suave, but she’s ready to teach everyone a lesson.

Just meet her gaze.

1 Housewife scolded for burning the stew 2 Housewife proud of her stew 3 Chuck Norris 4 Suspicious yuppie

1 Downtown diva 2 Interwar damsel 3 Edie Falco, The Sopranos 4 Matilda

1 Geek 2 Spoiled brat 3 Hipster

↓ Matilda is her role in Periferic, a movie directed by rookie Bogdan George Apetri. The film opens this spring.

1 The Godfather 2 James Blunt 3 Runway model 4 Aunt scolding her overweight nephew

1 Big Momma making a point 2 Any character in any Guy Ritchie movie 3 Hot secretary 4 Girl being serenaded

8 • dor • spring 2011

Photographs by Alexandra Sandu (alexunu.ro)

Four visions of Romania’s bleak years

A

The fine line between fiction and reality weaves through many aspects of life, from childhood to everyday life and communist propaganda. / By Smaranda Șchiopu Auntie Varvara’s Clients Stelian Tănase University of Plymouth Press, 2010 Communism is known to have forged both its own history as well as the history of the place where it landed.

It is the case with Romanian communism, but Stelian Tănase, writer and historian, took up the job to trace its origins, somewhere between the great wars, when the right was dominant and the left was illegal.

The incipient Communist Party was known by its underground name, Auntie Varvara. The members were the clients. The book is also a series of portraits of Romanian political figures of the time.

Journal 1935 – 1944 Mihail Sebastian

The Băiuț Alley Lads Filip & Matei Florian

The Cinematography Caravan Ioan Groșan

University of Plymouth Press, 2010 Brothers Filip and Matei Florian remember their childhood spent in a newly built communist neighborhood in Bucharest; however harsh the living conditions, childhood remains miraculous to the very last detail.

And details were so many. The brothers try to out-Proust each other and each episode is narrated from two perspectives: the older brother’s and the younger’s.

University of Plymouth Press, 2009 What happens when propaganda reaches a remote village in Transylvania. trying to educate the people with a movie? Despite the activist’s efforts, what should have been serious business turns into a series of black humor scenes. The villagers resist propaganda because they have stronger beliefs in their tradition, in their religion and not so much in outsiders from Bucharest.

Ivan R. Dee, Inc, 2000 It is never an easy task to keep a journal; you have to get in the habit of recording your own thoughts, which sometimes feels futile, as Sebastian himself writes. Even more so when you are a Jew and try to friend figures who turn out to be anti-Semites or close to that. Mihail Sebastian kept to this task for almost ten years and recorded thoughts, feelings, frustrations and pieces of Romanian history as it developed. His voice is clear yet ambiguous about his true feelings concerning those he believed to be friends and who turned out to be enemies. Trying to understand Romanian history requires a close reading of this journal.

Smaranda Șchiopu is a book lover and an Account Executive at OgilvyOne Romania.

dor • spring 2011 • 9

The book cover matters A Most Romanian book covers lack creativity. To change this, we’ve asked a few designer friends for help.

Suppose you walk into a bookstore looking for Romanian writing. The names on the cover don’t say much.

You could check out the back cover, read some phrases in the beginning of the volume, some in the middle, get an idea and maybe buy the book. But, most likely, you’ll choose depending on the cover.

Modern readers value quality content, but that’s not enough. We also want our books to look good, to draw attention. However, book cover design is not a marketing instrument Romanian publishing houses seem keen and ready to use. So we thought of giving the industry a boost.

We invited four designers who often challenge one another to visual duels to imagine new covers for a classic book. Every Romanian high schooler is assigned Camil Petrescu’s The Last Night of Love, The First Night of War. It’s been translated into French, Spanish and German, so these are the titles the designers played with. If you want to see more of their battles, check out their site, flickr.com/photos/ designchallenge.

Iancu Barbărasă graduated from the Department of Decorative Arts and Design in Cluj. He likes skiing, is a great anime fan and writes about design on iancul.com. He now works and lives in London.

10 • dor • spring 2011

Bogdan Dumitrache is a freelancer and lives in Slovenia. He was involved in the rebranding of many Romanian companies.

Readers – either passionate or casual – want beautiful books.

← Arpad “Arpi” Rezi is an art director at an agency in Bucharest. He blogs at artpi.ro.

↓ Ciprian Bădălan is a graphic designer. He graduated from the Art School in Iaşi. You can check out his works at artz93.blogspot.com.

dor • spring 2011 • 11

10 years of AB4

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After a decade of making music, AB4 is still alive and kicking as Doru Trăscău teaches a lesson of survival and reinvention. / By Mădălina Sicoi Early last December, AB4 walked onto the stage of a Bucharest club and dived into rocking out like they hadn’t skipped a beat. After too long an absence they were returning to the place where it all started to mark ten years since their first riffs.

“There’s no music today like they used to make,” someone in the audience said as the crowd started buzzing with excitement. It was going to be a night to remember.

Theirs is a story to follow. Having emerged in 2000, AB4’s music became quite literally an alternative to the local scene of old-school rock and sugary dance-pop. They were angry, self-deprecating and appealing to the youngsters who were just coming out of the troublesome ’90s more or less unharmed. It was music for misfits and the broken-hearted, a special homemade brew of Nirvana and Green Day that got under your skin.

As hundreds of concerts came and went and quakes shook the original core of the band, front man Doru Trăscău remained the only steadfast member. He was the moving force of the group, holding on with a stubbornness equally endearing and inspiring. “Music is like a drug,” he says. “To feel you can be in front of people, to express yourself and get their admiration is something quite tremendous. Why stop?”

It surely must have been a struggle for a band that used to rock angrily in skirts and make-up. After their first album they began slowly cleaning up as they tried a more mature 12 • dor • spring 2011

Photographs by Cosmin Bumbuț (bumbutz.ro)

approach. They put out a recond in English album, Broken Trust, and they started performing at international festivals such as Budapest’s Sziget. In 2003, they were chosen Best Romanian Act at the European Music Awards making Doru’s dream of holding an MTV trophy a reality.

But cracks began to appear as the pressure increased. Several attempts to patch up the group with the help of musicians from Italy have, as most long-distance relationships have shown, failed.

Today, with two band members hundreds of kilometers away, their future continues to be a matter of uncertainty which they themselves tackle with reservation.

But their fans are already getting more than they dared to hope for.

Seeing AB4 on stage again is eerily unexpected, like revisiting a lost lover. There’s a familiarity in discovering the old through new eyes. The reactions they stir reveal an interesting thing: their music continues to be relevant today, even to young people

who were probably tuned to Cartoon Network at the time Toxic, their first album, was released. Since then, everything has shape-shifted: music is different, audiences are different, the entire industry has come a long way from TV music channels and CD releases. The Internet transformed the way people experience music and the manner artists reach their fan base. To make rock today the way musicians used to 10 years ago would mean being either neatly folded into mom’s record collection or bluntly forgotten. AB4, while successfully preserving the raw emotion of their albums and continuing to build on people’s nostalgia, are still here because they seem to have gotten a gist of the new music order.

It’s not that big of a surprise. If there’s something one can assume about Trăscău is that during his musical career he became extremely acquainted with the idea of change; be it change of band mates or country, change coming from the outside, change triggered in order to survive

artistically. “Nothing could stop me from making music,” he says. “Even if I had to start from scratch the third time around.”

Recent AB4 radio appearances and live sets (acoustic or full-blown, alternating their tunes with nifty crafted covers of The Pixies or Johnny Cash) have sent out the comforting vibe of a band aware of the present: tuned to Facebook and Twitter, with songs uploaded on Soundcloud or Myspace, they’re clearly open for dialogue. (Listen to them at soundcloud.com/AB4).

Even the side-project Doru has put together in recent months, The Mono Jacks (a band of a more mature alkaline indie-rock posture), is a sign of his being there. He wants to be around and he wants to be relevant.

This is the spirit that has kept AB4 alive 10 years after its first riffs. A trick every other band should master in order to continue making headlines and conquering hearts.

Mădălina Sicoi writes about music for wetpaper.ro.

Cosmin Bumbuț is the editor of Punctum magazine.

dor • spring 2011 • 13

Romanian Cultural Resolution Romanian contemporary art still struggles with the communist legacy. A couple of curators decided to share these struggles with the world.

The catalogue: Artists: Ioana Bătrânu, Matei Bejenaru, Pavel Brăila, Corneliu Brudaşcu, Mircea Cantor, Sorin Câmpan, Ştefan Constantinescu, Alexandra Croitoru & Ştefan Tiron in collaboration with Vasile Pop Negreșteanu, Constantin Flondor, Adrian Ghenie, Ion Grigorescu, Gheorghe Ilea, Daniel Knorr, Victor Man, Julian Mereuţă, Aurelia Mihai, Gili Mocanu, Anca Munteanu Rîmnic, Ciprian Mureşan, Ioana Nemeş, Alexandru Niculescu, Miklos Onucsan, Dan Perjovschi, Cristian Rusu, Şerban Savu, Serge Spitzer.

Text authors: Marius Babias, Adrian Bojenoiu, Magda Cârneci, Sebastian Cichocki, Livius Ciocârlie, Apsara DiQuinzio, Bogdan Ghiu, Mihnea Mircan, Anca Mihuleț, Vlad Morariu, Cristian Nae, Amelia Pavel, Mihai Pop, Matt Price, Magda Radu, Alexandru Vlad, Raluca Voinea, Maxa Zoller.

A 14 • dor • spring 2011

“Romanian Cultural Resolution”, a project that documents cultural activity in Romania in the last two decades, is one of the two art projects that will represent the country this year at The Venice Biennale. It’s a selection of the most important books and art catalogues published in this period, but also video interviews of artists and curators. Moreover, a catalogue with works of almost 30 artists who speak about cultural life in post-communist Romania will be launched at the Biennale, bringing international visibility to Romanian artists.

The project came to life in the center for contemporary culture Club Electro Putere from Craiova. Meant as a review of contemporary Romanian art, the project was first presented in a show in the spring of 2010 at the Werkschau Spinnerei gallery in Leipzig.

The Cultural Resolution Project proposes an analysis of the post-communist artistic discourse as well as a reckoning, says Adrian Bojenoiu, one of the

representatives of Club Electro Putere.

“After 20 years of cultural discourse we wanted to look at what happened to Romanian visual arts with some kind of detachment and draw a conclusion,” says Bojenoiu, who is also one of the four curators that selected the works in the project.

The conclusion he reached is that the post-communist experience, characterized by constant references to the tensions of the past and the projection of a desired democratic future, is a phenomenon that can only be seen in culture, not economics or politics.

“It cannot be political,” says Bojenoiu, “because it implies giving up a political doctrine, the communist one.”

He views the cultural discourse of these past years as a combination between denial and admission – “denial of our past communist experience and admission that this experience had traumatic effects on us. Look at all the Ceauşescu movies done recently, for instance. I wonder why, 20 years after the fall of Ceauşescu, there comes a film like The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu, while in real life we dig out his grave to make sure he is still there. It must mean there is a traumatic basis, that we are not healed yet and feel the need to talk about the communist experience, this time with a little bit of detachment.”

The works in the Romanian Cultural Resolution project include Daniel Knorr’s cellulose wraps forged with documents destroyed by the STASI, Adrian Ghenie’s paintings of Ceauşescu and Dan Perjovschi’s performance of tattooing “Romania” on his arm and removing the tattoo after 10 years.

All these works will appear in a 240 page catalogue named after the project that will be launched during the 54th edition of the Venice Biennale.

Club Electro Putere is a cultural center established in 2009

by Adrian Bojenoiu and Alexandru Niculescu.

Romania’s Space Explorers A A Romanian astronautics NGO aims for the Moon despite a lack of funds. / By Adriana Todoran

Who’s going to claim the first private landing on the Moon?

Romania will certainly have a word to say in the Google Lunar X Prize competition launched in September 2007. And it will do so through a 10-year-old Râmnicu-Vâlcea based NGO called ARCA (an acronym for the Romanian Association for Astronautics and Aeronautics, and the Romanian word for “ark”).

40,000 meters high is not yet space proper, but it’s half-way to it. It’s in the stratosphere and it’s the highest ARCA got so far. It happened on October 1, 2010, when the team launched the Helen 2 rocket from a Navy ship in the Black Sea. They employed a helium balloon, which took the rocket to the height of 14 Illustration by ARCA

kilometers, to save fuel and decrease air resistance. It was just a test flight for what is yet to come: the launching of a rocket to the Moon – planned by ARCA for 2014.

But ARCA’s plans don’t stop at winning the X Prize. They also want to launch the first Romanian rocket able to carry an astronaut into space and thus contribute to the development of commercial space f lights.

These two dreams take a lot of research, tests, occasional failures, a lot of courage, plenty of positivethinking, and round the clock fundraising efforts. Thankfully, there are plenty of firsts among ARCA’s endeavors, which help keep the public interested and sponsors contributing.

They include: • The world’s first composite material reusable rocket engine (2004); • The world’s largest solar balloons tested in stratosphere (Mission 1 – 14,400 m, Mission 2 – 12,500 m); • The first successfully launched Romanian private rocket (2004); • The highest altitude reached by a Romanian space rocket (40 km, in 2010) The latest ARCA project, meant to support the rocket launch to the Moon, is building Romania’s first super-sonic airplane, called E 111.

The airplane is built to replace ARCA’s traditional balloon, and it should carry the rocket as high up as possible before the rocket’s own engine starts. ARCA considered the airplane a more reliable solution, since experience – a few aborted tries to be more specific – has taught them that balloons depend on uncontrollable factors, such as wind speed and outdoor temperature.

E 111 will carry a team of two – a pilot and a navigator – and will be propelled by a rocket engine fueled by oxygenated water and kerosene.

ARCA’s agenda is full until 2013: they plan to finish building the E 111 supersonic airplane by mid-2012, take off at the end of 2012, and break the sound barrier in the first half of 2013. The moon landing date is not yet certain, but one thing is sure: for ARCA, the sky is not the limit.

Adriana Todoran is a brand & communication strategist at Grapefruit (Grapefruit.ro). Grapefruit designed ARCA’s visual identity and is a pro bono supporter of the team, helping with brand strategy, communication and public relations.

dor • spring 2011 • 15

Why Bucharest?

No foreigner, whether a tourist in town for a few days, or a long-standing expatriate, cannot dodge this omnipresent question: Why Bucharest?

Let me try to answer that. / By Craig Turp Romanians call their country “țara tuturor posibilităților” (the land where anything can happen), yet do so mostly in a pejorative sense. To us, that’s a little pesimistic. As eternal “the glass is half full” type of people we see Romania – its capital at least – as a place where anyone can become anything (and anything can become anyone). It’s the new home of the American Dream.

Having said that, the night I arrived in Bucharest, in 1998, it was more nightmare than dream: it was the night a Dan Petrescu goal beat England in the 1998 World Cup. I was alone, then, an outsider drawn to Bucharest for what I saw as a year of adventure before I settled down.

I was drawn to Bucharest because I had studied Romanian in Britain, in college, and I wanted to put it into practice, to see how far it would take me. I had no intention of sticking around Bucharest though. But almost immediately off the plane I saw a chance to shine here. There were opportunities everywhere. Bucharest got under my skin, as it does, and I stuck around. More than 11 years, a wedding to a girl from Făgăraș and two children later, I am glad I did.

For of all Europe’s capitals none keeps its charms as hidden as Bucharest. Few cities in Europe have the go-ahead, can-do attitude of Bucharest at the moment; but you barely notice that at first glance. Imagine, if you will, a city where old women sell parsnips on street corners, and regularly get drenched by expensive-car driving tyros for their troubles.

It is a city of extremes, but one which can at times appear to go out of its way to highlight those extremes.

16 • dor • spring 2011

A

Cities around Europe have a habit of showing off what they do best.

Bucharest eschews such nonsense. It’s as though the city revels in its reputation as the kind of place you wouldn’t even send your mother-in-law to.

And it is exactly this devil-may-care attitude that makes it so vital, so real.

And it’s why Bucharest is a city worth persevering with.

The nepotism, the cronyism and the corruption get the headlines, but they are not unique to Romania; they are not unique to Bucharest.

Everybody gets a fair shake in this city, you just have to have your wits about you. It is not a city for the faint hearted: you need nerves of steel simply to tackle Bucharest’s streets, either at the wheel of a car or as a pedestrian crossing the road. But such a place breeds winners. We have a son at school in Bucharest (and not, I might add, an expensive expatriate school). No, our boy is at a standard Romanian state school. What will he learn there? To read, write, add up and take-away. And hopefully, how to compete. How to win.

Bucharest remains a magnet for Romanians who get drawn here from the provinces every year. People who want to get on, and get on fast. There might well be better universities than the University of Bucharest (we are well aware of the academic credentials of both Cluj’s Babeș-Bolyai and Iași’s A.I. Cuza), but which Romanian university tops the admission applications chart every year? Bucharest.

There might well be great jobs in other cities, but where does everyone want to work? Bucharest. It might be overcrowded, bursting at the seems with new arrivals.

But what does that mean? To us, it means success. Cities that are empty die. Any successful city needs a constant renewal of people bringing new hunger to succeed, new ideas, creating new opportunities.

Bucharest might appear to be a human swamp at times, but swamps are brilliant breeding grounds for all sorts of new and strange things. Not all will thrive. But some will blossom.

If you want a sound bite, try this: Bucharest is a Darwinian city in a God-fearing country. It’s where people have faith in the survival of the fittest. It’s a never-ending incubator of paradoxes. Work out quite why that is so and you might just have an answer to your question.

Craig Turp is the editor-in-chief of In Your Pocket City Guides (inyourpocket.com). He lives in Bucharest with his wife and two kids.

dor • spring 2011 • 17

TheWorldIsMine.CO.UK

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Can your zip code decide your business fortune? / By Sabrina Răileanu

Ever since he was 18, Emi Gal has tried it all. Legal music streaming, real estate, online TV. Determined to make it, one way or another, the “terrible kid” of the Romanian tech industry dipped his toes into any kind of water he could find.

He went everywhere and met everyone, marketing his biggest assets: his age and the enthusiasm that came with it. By the time he was 21, every local geek had heard of him.

Faced with his boyish charm and uncanny optimism, the online 18 • dor • spring 2011

community had split in two. Some admired his impetus and courage, others decided to wait it out. With so many balls in the air, and so little experience juggling them, the “terrible kid” was bound to fail sooner or later.

And he did fail, but not for long.

It was just after he had closed two of his businesses and left the third one, two years ago, when he heard about Seedcamp Week, an international start-up competition.

He signed up with a project called Veevid, a platform for video hosting

and management already used in Romania by one of the biggest media companies. Talking with the investors and entrepreneurs at Seedcamp he realized the internet didn’t need another video management platform, but something to help people make money from them.

So he envisioned a new future for online advertising, one in which commercials weren’t annoying anymore, but helpful and natural. The idea was that instead of interrupting the videos, advertising had to be interwoven in them, just like a link in a text. But Gal soon realized he couldn’t do something like that in Romania: the market was too small and investors less likely to pour money into the project. So he did what he now tells all the friends he left behind to do: packed his bags and bought a plane ticket to London.

A year and a half later, being planted, Gal’s Brainient has a track record that would make anyone proud: 800,000 dollars from some of the most reputable venture capitalists and business angels in UK and US, an office in London, one in Bucharest, clients in New York, and prizes from TechCrunch and Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn. Looking back, Gal believes the plane ticket he bought is probably the best investment he’s ever made.

With one foot in London and another in New York, he still doesn’t know if Brainient will turn out to be the next best thing or not. What he knows for sure is that he’s willing to go to the end of the world to find out. Because, no matter how leveled the global playing field is, the chances that Google will come knocking at your door in Bucharest, are just way too slim.

Not even Gal is that optimistic.

Sabrina Răileanu covers business and technology for www.money.ro.

Photograph fom Emi Gal’s archive

Running after Inna A visual guide to one of the most insidious and nerve-racking songs* to ever come out of Romania: Inna’s Hot.**

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Go!

What can I do?

When you’re far away Fly Feeling that so high

I’m in love with

2

a woman

1

you

belong to

like do it ’re high

me

I burning just for try

Fire from my heart * You can stream Inna’s songs at inna.ro, at your own risk. ** It may cause humming and temporary impairement of your English. dor • spring 2011 • 19

The flag was included in the construction project of The People’s House from the start. It was placed exactly at half the distance between the lateral flanks, projected on an imaginary axis that starts from Alba Iulia Square and stops at the building of the Defense Ministry, right behind the People’s House.

The flag flew for approximately one year, between 1988, when the last floor of the building was built, and 1989. The mast was 16 meters high, placed on a concrete octogonal platform 4 meters high and 6 meters wide.

After the revolution, the flag was taken down together with the metallic construction that supported it. (Petre Roman, the first prime minister of the post-communist government, says the reason for takingit down may have been its emblem of the Socialist Republic of Romania. From 1990 to 2002, nobody thought about putting the flag back up. In 1994, the Chamber of Deputies moved into The People’s House. At the same time, Law 75 regarding the carrying of the Romanian flag, the playing of the national anthem and the usage of the seals with the country’s emblem came into effect. The law made placing the flag back on The People’s House compulsory: “The flag should permanently be displayed outside and inside public institutions”.

Six things about the Flag Among the many legends surrounding the gigantic People’s House, some refer to the flag flying on the highest flank. The flag is not a hologram, it’s not made of metal or from the sail used on boats. No, there isn’t a granite deposit underneath the building that generates currents so strong that the placing of the flag on the roof would be impossible. And no, the flag wasn’t put there because Gheorghe Funar, Romania’s most nationalistic politician, said so. / By Sorana Stănescu

20 • dor • spring 2011

It was only in 2002, when the platform of the C4 flank was repaired, that the Chamber of Deputies decided to raise the flag again. One of the projects was designed by the chief architect of the building, Anca Petrescu, and included a transparent mast, made of plastic and metal, with an interior elevator illuminated at night. The mast would have been 20 meters high, and the pennant was meant to be either 6x4, either 4x2 meters. It wouldn’t have been “so complicated” to be put into practice, says Petrescu today. But the deputies rejected the idea and chose a simplified project: the 4 meter high octagonal base was cut to 2.5 meters, and the mast was reduced to a steel pole, 21 cm in diameter and 14 meters high.

Putting the flag on top of the building and replacing it whenever it’s torn is indeed an endurance test. The person who goes up with the flag has to have good balance, because there is no ladder there.

He has to reach the 84 meters high platform and then climb the steel pole using metal props. He puts one prop forward, and then lifts his leg.

He keeps moving the props to get to the top, explains Ovidiu Leşcu, former chief of the General Directorate for Development in the Chamber of Deputies. He climbs, takes down the old flag and replaces it with the new one. Many times there is ice on the pole and the wind is very strong, which makes the climbing difficult. Today, there are only three employees fit to complete this task.

The base: 2.5 meters. The mast: 14 meters. The flag: 3.20 by 4.80 meters.

Finding the proper fabric for the flag was the second stepping stone, since it had to resist the wind’s whipping effect. The rain and the wind (which at that altitude sometimes reaches 100 km/hour) tear apart the red part of the flag, the one at the exterior. The solution came from a military unit, which indicated the necessary technical conditions of the fabric. There were 11 total: the thinness of the stitches, the weight of the fabric and its resistance to hydrostatic pressure.

After testing several materials, on the drizzly day of December 27, 2002, the first post-revolutionary flag was placed on the top of the building. Today the pennant is 4.80 meters long and 3.20 meters wide.

The colors are established by law: cobalt blue, chrome yellow and red vermilion. In Pantone, the color codes are: 280c, 116c and 186c (these are approximations taken from a French reference book, since the Romanian law doesn’t specify them). From 2002 to 2008, the monthly replacement rate was three flags. Since 2008, the building’s administrators changed the fabric to 100% polyester, which is more resistant because it lets the air pass through. Now the flag is replaced every month and a half, maybe two. It costs between 100 and 300 Lei, or 20 to 70 Euro.

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dor • spring 2011 • 21

R react

Letters from Romania The Draft What is the draft? Why do people fear its power? Is it a valid phobia or a mere Romanian make-believe?

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he medical conditions caused by draft are easily diagnosed. Aware of its destructive powers, Romanians find it comfortable to blame it for any sporadic ache.

Mariana Suciu blames her headaches on the draft. She gets them especially when driving with the windows down or when cooking with the window open. She can tell the difference between a headache caused by draft and one caused by the gallbladder, for example.

Foreigners do not consider draft to be harmful. Debbie Stowe, a British journalist living in Bucharest and author of two travel guides on Romania, says headaches are not caused by the draft, but by concern for it. She recalls a summer spent in the newsroom of an English daily in Bucharest, when her colleagues stubbornly refused to open the window, even though their shirts were sticking to their backs. She encountered it once again when she asked

her Romanian boyfriend, Vasile, to buy a fan for stuffy Bucharest nights.

His mother, a medical nurse, was none too pleased. The draft, she said, could cause headaches, paralysis and even meningitis. The draft was also at fault for Vasile’s toothache.

Before untangling the mystery of the draft, a definition: the draft is the movement of a mass of air from one place to another, caused by a difference in temperature. If it’s warm outside, opening a window will make the air flow inside the room.

So where does this fear come from?

Although there are no clear studies, Macedonian folklore links the fear of “promaja” (a phenomenon causing headaches, toothaches and stiff shoulders) with the plague pandemic that killed almost half of Europe’s population in the 14th Century. Little was known at the time about viruses or ways of contamination, so the wind and air flows became at least partially responsible for the spread of the disease.

Although most Europeans were affected by the plague, not all believe in draft. Apart from Romanians, the only ones to share the phobia are the Bulgarians, the Serbs, the Montenegrins and the Macedonians.

The Balkan localisation of the phenomenon cannot be explained through the region’s climate or it’s air

properties. Viorica Dima, a meteorologist with the National Weather and Hydrology Administration, said that Western Europe has a predominantly oceanic climate, with heavy precipitation, while Romania is influenced by the Russian steppes, causing hot, low-moisture summers and very cold winters. Neither these climate differences, nor the properties of the Romanian air can be held responsible for back pains.

Doctors have tried to put an end to the ongoing debate: the problem is not the movement of air, but the difference in temperature between the body and the air it comes in contact with. Moreover, the real reason for the symptoms ascribed to sitting in the draft stem from a pre-existing condition of which we may or may not be aware.

The human body is built to maintain a constant temperature of about 37 degrees Celsius and cannot handle sudden temperature changes higher than 6-10 degrees. This self-regulatory process becomes much more difficult in windy, cold or extremely humid conditions, when the rate of heat loss increases, causing certain body functions to slow down or even.

Silviu Mănescu, neurologist with the Emergency University Hospital in Bucharest, explained one of the most common problems potentially caused by draft: numbness or even paralysis dor • spring 2011 • 23

of half the face. Basically, in some people, the bone canal crossed by the facial nerve is narrower than normal.

Due to exposure to cold air flow, it compresses, and the nerve swells. It is a predisposition of the body, and the draft – irrespective of its source – is not the main factor.

Toothaches cannot be exclusively attributed to sitting in the draft either. Şerban Beloiu, dentist, says that, in some people’s jaws, teeth are more closely connected with the sinus lining. If they suffer from chronic sinusitis or periodontitis, worsened by an exposure to low temperatures, diffuse pains may occur.

Therefore, draft is neither typically Romanian, nor responsible for the medical crimes it is accused of. And even though no explanations can account for its origin, the phobia persists.

– By Sorana Stănescu

She-wolf Romania displays the largest number of she-wolf statues in the world, with at least 24 replicas of the Capitoline She-wolf.

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ast year, the mayor of Bucharest decided to move the landmark She-wolf statue from Romană Square to the Old Center of the city, claiming that the tiny piazzetta would be a better fit. It was the fifth time the statue was moved since Italy sent it over as a gift in 1906. In its 100 years, the She-wolf has gone through a lot: during communism it was moved from Patriarchy Hill because it was believed the statue drew people to the church; later, it was moved from its secluded spot in a park because people kept stealing the bronze babies; more recently, during the statue’s 13 years in Romană Square, several drivers crashed into its pedestal.

The Capitoline Wolf celebrates the myth of the founding of Rome – it is believed Romulus and Remus, the founders of the city, were abandonded 24 • dor • spring 2011

as babies and a she-wolf saved and fed them. Italy began sending copies of the statue 100 years ago not only to Romania, but also to other countries sharing Latin origins, or to states close to Fascist Italy. Besides the one in Bucharest, Romania received five copies of the She-wolf between the two wars.

Today, there are at least 24 copies in cities accross the country. The Culture Ministry couldn’t confirm the number because, they say, they never tried to count them.

Their ubiquity in Romania has more to do with a nationalistic urge. In Transylvania especially, it’s meant to show ethnic Hungarians who was here first. Of course, many of these statues have also moved around.

The She-wolf in Cluj was transferred to Sibiu during the WW2, when Northern Transylvania was under Hungarian occupation. After she was brought back to Cluj, the Shewolf travelled from the University to the Town Hall and then Heroes Avenue, where it stands today. The Târgu Mureş statue was also moved to another town during the war and it’s uncertain whether the city got the original back, or merely a copy.

In fact, that’s how several towns and villages got statues – the mayor demanded that a copy be made. The most prolific builder is a dentist from Bistriţa Năsăud, Traian Dascălu, who paid a local artist to make five shewolves. They are not made of bronze, but marble, since bronze would have been too expensive (15,000 euros a piece), said Dascălu. “I wanted to draw attention to our Roman origin, in order to defend the cultural and historical values,” he explained, stressing that he believes Romanian heritage is under threat in Transylvania.

Historians say that in the past there might have been reasons to draw attention to our Roman origins, but today, that’s not the case. We build the statues nonetheless. And if a town already has one, they can give them away. Alba Iulia, for example, received its She-wolf statue from the Italian town Alessandria in 1933. Last year, the mayor of Alba Iulia sent a replica of the statue back to Alessandria as a gift.

– By Ani Sandu

Romania in 2050 The failed demographic policies of a careless state.

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ecause of populist policies and the inability to adapt to population decline, Romania is moving towards socio-economic collapse. Last year, in response to the economic recession, authorities cut down on social expenses and increased the retirement age. The measures are, however, only the beginning if the country is to avoid disaster.

In theory, Romania is in an ideal situation. As the population pyramid shows, it has many adults (a large workforce), few children (lower spending on education and health), and a low life expectancy (low pension expenses). In practice, only half of the adults pay taxes. Six million Romanian are retired and seven million are on some kind of welfare. Public sector wages and pensions make up roughly 60 percent of the state budget, leaving too little for health, education, infrastructure and investment. And where there is no investment, there is no room for improvement.

Romania’s population has decreased steadily since 1992, from 23.2 million then, to a little over 21.5 million at the end of 2009. In the past 20 years, there were 40 percent fewer newborns than in ’70s – ’80s. Emigration is estimated at 20 percent of the workforce.

Actual retirement age is 54-56 years, as opposed to the legal one of 60-62, leading to a wide fiscal deficit.

Quality of life is just as relevant.

Romanians top EU’s charts in premature deaths, disabilities caused by cardiovascular diseases, the incidence of cancer, TB and other chronic diseases.

These are signs of a poor education and an inadequate health system.

No post-communist government wanted to see the data because it calls for the kinds of drastic measures that decrease popularity. All of this has been known since 2004, when experts Illustration by Mircea Drăgoi (mirceadragoi.com)

made public the first demographic projections showing how the population profile will change. The projections say that in 2050 there will be 16 million Romanians, and the age dependency ratio will be 1 to 9.

That means that a person’s taxes will pay for the pensions, health and education expenses of nine children and elders. This imbalance already exists. Now, at a ratio of 1 to 3, there is no money for education, and most pensions are under the poverty line.

There’s more to these numbers, though. Western demographers say that population and age structure don’t matter if the country has a GDP that allows it to cover all social costs. But this requires investment in education and health and an environment conducive to economic growth.

So what is Romania doing?

26 • dor • spring 2011

The government cut public sector pay, a measure that hit both those with high salaries, as well as medical personnel and teachers, who make less than the average wage. So, it does not invest in education and health. Then it increased the value added tax, raising inflation sharply and suffocating consumption.

So, it does not create an enabling environment for economic growth.

It’s a typical attitude of a political class lacking vision, which missed the window of opportunity offered by a perfect population profile. It remains to be seen whether, with less people entering the workforce and more people reaching retirement age, the government will have enough will power to implement the reforms that can put Romania on track.

– By Georgiana Ilie

No Small Change If we valued coins a little more, maybe we’d be able to give change.

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f you walk into a Romanian store and try to buy something, chances are cashiers will ask you to give them exact change. If you don’t, they often shrug and you end up paying more because they probably don’t have coins in their register. It’s a deeply engrained mentality, one that even laws don’t seem to change. Since 2008, sellers are forced by law to offer change in coins and bills, not chewing gum or sweets as they sometimes do. Otherwise they face a fine between 2,000 and 4,000 lei (1 Euro is aproximately 4.2 lei).

As far as we know, nobody has been fined – some people complained to the National Authority for Consumer Protection, but the inspectors didn’t find anything wrong on site.

Small shop owners complain there aren’t enough coins on the market, and they sometimes have to go as far as get change from churches or beggars. Some say they need to know somebody in a bank in order to exchange their bills.

However, a bank employee who preferred to remain anonymous said that’s not true, adding that it’s usually sellers who mismanage cash flow. Supermarkets on the other hand claim to be always prepared with coins. Each cashier starts the day with a fixed amount (up to 150 lei), then the cash manager supplies funds through the day. When the store is out of a certain coin, it asks for supplies from banks. Experts say supermarkets hold most of the coins on the market.

The National Bank of Romania is the one who decides how much cash is needed on the market and in which combination. This need is well calculated and takes into account things like the outlook of retail trade, the Bank’s spokesperson said. Official data shows that in 2009 there were 320 million coins on the market, 25 percent more Installation by Andreea Săndulescu

than the year before. That means 64 coins for each Romanian.

So how come we still don’t have enough? It may be because we don’t value them. Studies show that anybody who earns more that 1,500 lei a month leaves change up to 0.2 lei on the counter. We don’t like change lugging in our pockets, so we’d rather get rid of it.

Take what happened last year with the toll on the Bucharest – Constanţa highway. After the government decided to raise the VAT from 19 to 24 percent, the toll was raised from 10 to 11 lei.

When the drivers protested the increase was more than 24 percent, officials said they chose to up the tax by 1 leu, because it was a bill. Anything under was a coin, something neither drivers nor toll collectors would be likely to hold.

– By Ani Sandu

Magiun de Topoloveni Encouraged by Romanians’ recent obsession with healthy eating, a mother-daughter plum butter business takes off.

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t’s been 10 years since Bibiana Stanciulov, 58, bought a part of a food factory in the small town of Topoloveni, 90 km away from Bucharest. When she got home, she told her daughter, Diana, that she had made a great acquisition. Little did Diana know that Bibiana had been crying all the way to Bucharest after seeing what she paid roughly $100,000 for: a pile of dust and rust.

That didn’t deter her. She rehired people who used to work there (Bibiana now has 25 employees) and, with the help of technical director Cecilia Găgeanu, she started making plum butter (magiun in Romanian). Butter is not marmalade, nor jelly, nor jam.

It’s a consistent fruit paste with no added sugar or pectin.

Topoloveni is the perfect place for this. Plum butter has been made there

Photograph by Tudor Vintiloiu (tudorvintiloiu.com)

for a century, because the town is in a hilly district, with the perfect weather and soil for plum trees. (The plum tree is the most grown fruit tree in Romania, EU’s main plum producer.)

Unfortunately, these local fruits are not of great quality, so most of them are used to make the traditional Romanian brandy, țuică.

Through the years, Găgeanu has developed a special recipe for the Topoloveni factory plum butter, a combination of different types of fully ripe Romanian plums that would give it a great taste even without sweeteners. She is the only one who knows how to make it from scratch.

The plums (around 10,000 tons a year) are boiled for 12 to 14 hours in order to obtain it.

At first, Bibiana sold her paste to a foreign client who bought it all in barrels (160 to 200 tons per year). But in 2008 she decided it was time to enter the Romanian market. She invested

500,000 euros in modernizing her factory (half EU funds, half a bank loan).

Plum butter, food scientists told her, is extremely rich in fibers and antioxidants, information Bibiana used as a selling point.

“Magiun de Topoloveni” was launched in May 2009. Diana, who is 33 and a jurist, began handling communication and marketing. They toured farmers’ markets in Bucharest and other cities across the country; Bibiana went on TV to tout the health benefits; Diana visited everyone from small shops to big chains to convince managers to sell it. In less than a year, they went from newcomers to established producers.

They are now in the process of acquiring protected geographical indication from the EU – which would make their plum butter the only Romanian product to have it (Prosciutto Amatriciano, Beaufort and Darjeeling are such products). The designation dor • spring 2011 • 27

certifies that this kind of plum paste can only be made in Topoloveni, at the Stanciulov family factory, according to their recipe.

– By Sorana Stănescu and Gabriela Pițurlea

The Ordinary Pufuleți Under communism, in the absence of capitalist candy, people loved them. Then, chips and chocolate took over. Now, the nostalgic snack is back.

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uring the badly stocked communist times, when bananas and oranges were a Christmas delight obtained with great sacrifice, pufuleți (which closely resemble cheese puffs) were one of the few available snacks. Not too sweet, not too savory, not too pretentious – made only from corn meal, water and salt – they were the guiltless pleasure of children and adults alike.

After the fall of communism in 1989, pufuleți became widely available as local producers recognized the economic potential of this simple snack, and began experimenting with recipes.

Powdered milk and cheese were added into the mix, and each large city built its own factory — which also meant, its own brand.

But, by the mid-‘90s, the ordinary pufuleți had to make room for western snacks: chocolate, gum drops and chips. Everything Romanians longed for during communism was at hand and it ten times better. Local factories disappeared, brands died, leaving only a whiff of nostalgia behind.

The same nostalgia is what brought them back recently, along with other communist-style snacks, such as cookie sandwiches and rum chocolate. One of the companies leading the charge against chips and other Americanstyle, corn-based snacks used a basic recipe, simple packaging, and a name 28 • dor • spring 2011

that’s easy to remember: Gusto. The company now sells one million bags a day in Romania and another million a day in eight other countries, generating 15 million Euros revenue per year.

While their nutritional value is questionable, pufuleți thrive on the recent revival of young Romanians’ nostalgia for their childhood. They are the reason the cheesy snacks are everywhere now – in offices, on blogs, on forums, fueling an already heated debate about communist-era brands. There are even YouTube videos with people stuffing their mouths with as many pufuleți as possible and paparazzi photos of local divas filling their car trunks with huge bags of the modest snack. It looks like pufuleți are back to stay.

– By Andreea Lupu

Let’s Do It, Romania!

How the country’s largest ecocleanup came together.

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t all started in the summer of 2009.

Liana Buzea, the founder of a small environmental NGO, saw a video of a project in Estonia, where 50,000 volunteers picked up 10,000 tons of garbage in a single day, an action later called Let’s Do It, Estonia! She loved it, so she forwarded it to her friends, and wrote to the Estonian organizers to ask them how they did it.

Four months later, Buzea announced that there would be a Let’s Do It, Romania! on September 25, 2010. Romania was the biggest country to organize a clean up (after Estonia, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania and Portugal) but Romanians didn’t seem exactly ready for it. Garbage sorting and recycling aren’t common; hardly anyone does it. When it comes to picking up trash, the common reaction is “Why should I clean after somebody else?”.

It seemed bold to hope that at least one percent of the country’s population

– 200,000 people – would get out and help clean the country in one day. It was even wilder to imagine that authorities would collaborate efficiently with the organizers.

Moreover, most of the LDIR organizers didn’t know how to put such an event together. They ran it from Bucharest, through a national coordination team with six departments: management, logistics, finance, IT, volunteer coordination, and communication. Their leaders’ ages were around 30, but the rest of the people involved were mostly students or recent graduates, joining and leaving the project all the time.

They split the country into eight regions, each one, at least on paper, with three coordinators. Slowly, a garbage map was created, with information from volunteers all over the country, who, using their own cars, scouted the areas around their cities and towns and sent in coordinates. There were places with no proper infrastructure to handle all the garbage that was to be picked up. In others, authorities couldn’t put political bickering aside to work on a common cause. Some local organizers made up their own rules and adapted the project to their region, while others took no action until the last month or so.

Financial help from companies came late, while support from the Environment Ministry was scarce (mostly because, they said, the organizers blew deadlines and didn’t prove able to handle the event). Many NGOs refused to get involved, either because they thought Romania needed education and prevention, not cleaning, or because they didn’t consider this team was the right one to run the project.

In the end, September 25 resembled the circumstances in which it came about – lack of coordination, tons of enthusiasm. There were problems – including places where there was nobody to pick up the garbage –, but in the end, 200,000 Romanians went outside that day and picked up 500,000 bags of trash; a success by all standards.

Some of the founding members are still at it, currently preparing for the World Cleanup in 2012.

– By Gabriela Pițurlea

R A Camera Has Come Between Us

Nobuyoshi Araki is anything but comfortable. On the surface he might seem like a pervert who objectifies women, but I suspect there’s more to him than that.

– Words by Diana Dondoe Photographs from the author’s personal archive

dor • spring 2011 • 29

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flew for 12 hours for him, not knowing whether this was going to be an exciting or a humiliating experience. V Magazine had sent me all the way to Tokyo, to his universe, for a photo shoot. We all knew that clothes were going to be incidental and that the outcome was not going to be “nice” or “commercial.” Not with Nobuyoshi Araki.

I got to the studio before him. For the very first time in my career, I felt the need to have a drink before the shoot. I should have asked for vodka, but I didn’t dare, nor did I wish to seem insecure, so I settled for red wine. I drank and smoked my way through make-up and hairstyling, constantly thinking about his reputation and feeling like I was an offering to a three-eyed ogre.

I had discovered him six months earlier in Arakimentary, a documentary about his work and obsessions. In one scene, the clownish-looking photographer giggles at a woman hanging naked from the ceiling, wrapped in rope. In another, a young woman poses in front of him, her kimono half open above her pelvis, revealing a thick, black bush. Araki jokes, smiles appeasingly, then stops, looking disgruntled.

He walks calmly towards her, bends over and starts styling her pubic hair with his own fingers, like a smitten hairstylist. He takes his time; his motions are calm and confident, straightforward and incredibly erotic. Happy with the new “hairdo,” he returns behind the tripod and starts shooting again.

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hat’s how my fascination with Araki started, at the time still mixed with fear and a large dose of Icantfuckingbelievehedidthat. I discovered a resourceful artist, author of hundreds of books published throughout a career that began in the ’60s: images of a Tokyo whose backstreets vibrate with the everyday gestures of people living at a pace that is unfamiliar to us, close-ups of genitalia – explicit or concealed by paint smudges or scratches – portraits, stills of naked women looking straight into the lens. I was intrigued by his apparent misogyny and by the power he seemed to have over these women who allowed themselves to be tied up, subdued, exposed; by his superstar status, worshiped by a seemingly traditional Japan; by his naughty boyish appearance, the self -proclaimed

↘

He caresses the tripod, takes my hand and looks deep into my eyes: “You woman. Me man.

No photographer.

This… just paradise.”

30 • dor • spring 2011

“genius” who doesn’t have the patience to wait until others call him that.

When V Magazine came up with the idea of my being photographed by him, I accepted in the blink of an eye.

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raki comes to the studio holding his most recently published book. He gives it to me, after signing it, like a proud cat that had just caught a mouse for me. I’m trying to look unimpressed, but I’m shaking and sweating in disbelief. Araki is short, with tufts of ruffled hair on both sides of his half-bald head. He looks as if he had that moustache since birth, setting him apart, as it did for Hitler or Dali. He is wearing John Lennon glasses, just a little smaller and odder, jeans with red suspenders, a white T-shirt, golden pointy shoes and girly socks, white with red cuffs.

He doesn’t speak English and gestures excessively, often to his own fly. His eyes are at times reassuring, at times demonic. He behaves like a child and laughs loudly at his own jokes.

I get in front of the camera and we face each other, somewhat embarrassed. Except for a few colored spotlights, the studio is empty. My first outfit is black lace underwear and a man’s jacket. Both of us have performed this ritual dozens, if not hundreds of times before, yet we are still uneasy. He’s more in control than I am; the cat who had just given me a mouse is now grinning under his moustache, ready for a new challenge. I’m trying to hold his gaze and I’m grinning back. He caresses the tripod, takes my hand and looks deep into my eyes: “You woman. Me man. No photographer. This… just paradise.”

I think he’s trying to tell me that everything is going to be all right. He introduces me to some guy, a “bondage expert.” I wonder how someone becomes a specialist in rope binding, what does his résumé say, where did he study? To begin with, the guy ties my wrists and ankles together. I’m immobilized on the floor, and the only thing I can think of is my panty line, and whether everything is decent. I blow at the falling hair strands that tickle my face. The expert circles me like a concerned artist admiring his work. I tell him that my name is Diana and I give him a “nice to meet you, now that you tied me up so securely” smile. He smiles back respectfully, but without much interest, concerned only by his piece of rope, as if it too should be a character in this scene. My ego is hurt: “I think you should tighten the ropes,” I tell him bitterly. “It would be better if I felt I couldn’t move at all.” I don’t know if he understands.

He tightens the last knot and leaves me. Master Araki approves, the expert bows before me, and then walks away without a word.

Araki works super-fast. From time to time, he approaches and tells me a joke in Jenglish, gesturing excessively. He measures the light on my buttocks, he musses my hair. He yells at the hairdresser who tries

to rearrange my hair in a clean, fashionable style. He tightens the ropes around my arms and breasts. I feel his piercing gaze pulling at my underwear, silently asking me if I want to take them off. I shake my head.

He shrugs, smiles, kisses my hand, and returns to his camera. I ask for another glass of wine.

After the first shot and another glass of wine, I start feeling at ease, and we find our rhythm, like two lovers after the awkwardness of the first kiss.

Suddenly, I understand what he’s telling me. He becomes more affectionate and keeps his eyes on me the whole time. He’s playing, he pretends to press the shutter button, and then stops, dances wildly around the tripod only to start all over again, yells, gets excited. I give in, only to pull back; he encourages me whenever he senses I’m insecure, he invites me to trust him. He seems pleased when I’m furiously pulling at the ropes, and even more pleased when I give up. I don’t know who’s the seducer and who the seduced. It’s a game we both play, a game about acceptance and trust which makes me forget the obsession with perfection, fashion, my body, and the clothes covering it.

We shoot four pictures. We finish sooner then I had hoped, only a few hours later. Overwhelmed, I get dressed. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been in a studio, nor in a man’s bed.

with the words lust and color – they are both represented by the same Japanese kanji.” I’m fascinated by how beautifully Araki speaks of his art. He does it tenderly and impudently and I think he loves in the same way.

I wish I had taken my panties off.

Diana Dondoe lives in Paris, smokes and owns a cat. She also has about 55 pairs of shoes – sneakers and boots notwithstanding – and a habit of cutting her T-shirts’ collar to make them more comfortable.

F

or a long time, I thought that his photographs gave the impression that he slept with all those thousands of women he photographed; in interviews he claims he did. I don’t know how much of it is true and how much just cockiness. However, in a way, he is right: our relationship was that of a woman and a man, not that of a model and a photographer. That “you woman, me man” was our safe word that I didn’t need to use. We had, as he likes to call it, a “ménageà-trois” – me, him, and his camera. Those photos sealed our intimacy, now sentenced to a lifetime on paper. I became one of his many women subjects; he, the most unusual imaginary lover I have ever had.

I know that he loved Yoko, his wife whom he photographed during their honeymoon, in the middle of an orgasm, lying absent-minded in bed, naked or dressed, holding the cat, an orchid between her legs, love in her eyes, lost in her thoughts away from him, or sleeping like a baby after making love. He photographed her in the hospital before she died. He took her funeral picture; he photographed her absence from the places they visited together and her bones after the incineration.

I was, and still am, jealous.

The book he gave me back then shows photographs of tied-up, naked women, a world in black and white that he later colored softly. “I have sex to take good pictures,” Araki said during an interview. “My photographs of nudes and landscapes turn me on. I play dor • spring 2011 • 31

R Found in Translation Up to a certain age, you don’t even notice that you belong to an ethnic minority. Then comes confusion, followed by indecision and conflicts with the majority.

I

– Words by Magor Csibi was born on October 13, 1980, in Miercurea Ciuc, right in the heart of the Szekler region. I’m not saying that it was a good or a bad thing. It just happened. I was given a double identity – Hungarian and Szekler, one language, Hungarian, and very few explanations about who I was. Anyway, when you have a happy childhood, it doesn’t really matter who you are.

I was aware of the fact that I spoke Hungarian, and I couldn’t even imagine there were other languages in the world. At home, at church, at my grandparents’, at my cousins who lived in a neighbouring county, almost everyone spoke Hungarian.

I remember I once heard someone speak another language, and I asked him if he was a foreigner. I had recently found out there were other places where people spoke other languages, and I was curious about where he came from. My mother felt ashamed, as she knew that the comrade worked for the County Council and he was speaking Romanian. Fortunately, he didn’t speak Hungarian and we ended up having a parallel conversation.

At school, things got complicated. In the beginning, all my colleagues spoke Hungarian, and the teacher was also one of us. There was nothing to predict the changes that would occur in our lives. After I learned how to read, write and sing a few songs, all in Hungarian, there came a day when I had to learn a new language, which I was told was called Romanian. But my learning style was quite odd.

I remember being at home and struggling to memorize the poem “Mama lui Ştefan cel Mare” (Stephen the Great’s Mother). My mother, who taught Hungarian and was also my private tutor of Romanian, was not home yet, and I wanted to go out and play. This was our daily routine: she came home, I would learn

32 • dor • spring 2011

the new words, then the poem, and then I could go play. As I was in a hurry, it occurred to me that I could speed up the process. When she got home, she discovered I had already learned the poem by heart, but I did not understand its content. All I knew was that Ştefan had been locked outside the castle, and that his mother was really upset. I also knew that he had lost a battle, but I was not sure if this was the reason for their argument. But I could not recite or understand where it was said in the poem that they were upset and that Ştefan was knocking at the gate.

(The same happened with English, a lot later, when foreign music became available on casettes.)

Otherwise, I was a typical child. I liked playing outside and I absolutely loved reading. I think I read all the books in the City Library. I got good grades; I was a little model citizen. I believed all I was being told in school. I believed in the party, in comrade Ceauşescu, I was a proud communist pioneer. Things were going so well for me, that the comrades chose me to hug the mighty leader and hand him a bunch of flowers on his visit in Miercurea Ciuc.

I got medically examined every day for fear that I would give some common disease to the most beloved man in the country. The comrades in the county council liked me, the test results were good, and I was anxiously waiting for the big day. But my world fell apart when a high-ranked comrade from Bucharest discovered something that was not unusual in Harghita County: I didn’t speak Romanian. The risk of me saying something stupid was too great, so they brought a diligent pupil from somewhere else, depriving me of the chance to have an enlightened day.

Though I was only nine years old at the time, I remember the Revolution clearly. At the beginning, I couldn’t understand why someone would want to

Illustration by Arpi Rezi (artpi.ro)

dor • spring 2011 • 33

boo or replace Ceauşescu. I had just taken my oath as a “pioneer,” and I had been given a leader’s lace. So I felt that the Revolution could jeopardize my bourgeoning career. My parents told me that Ceaușescu was in fact a bad man who had killed innocent people. The thought that all the rules and teachings so far were false left me a bit confused.

On Christmas day in 1989, we had a full house, since many relatives had taken refuge at our place.

We were a bunch of kids running up and down chanting “Ole, ole Ceauşescu is no more,” though we didn’t really know what it meant. I also remember that on Christmas evening, the greetings were displayed in three languages, which was a moment of euphoria for us. Even I, as a little boy, caught the importance of such a moment. It was that moment in the history of Romania when we rose again as a people. It’s not that we didn’t exist until then or that we didn’t know we were Hungarian. But after dozens of years of being ostracized, we were finally acknowledged, even respected. That Christmas had a simple message: we live in a Romania that belongs to its citizens, and it doesn’t matter who you are.

We could finally have a country where people respected one another, but we squandered that opportunity shortly after.

At the time, I did not understand the infamy of the conflicts between Hungarians and Romanians that took place in Târgu Mureş in March 1990. For me, it was more like an adventure film. I watched what was happening on TV. I saw people driving a truck into a crowd. I saw people beating and killing one another, and I was unable to grasp the shock, the sadness, and the anger of those around the house. I was staying with my cousins in Sângeorgiu de Pădure, 36 kilometres away from Târgu Mureş. My cousin, who was 11 at the time, told me with youthful enthusiasm that all the people in the village had gathered at the train station, armed with whatever they had, waiting for the train coming from Târgu Mureş. No one knew exactly what was happening, but there were rumors that the bullies were also heading towards other villages inhabited by Hungarians. In the end, either no one came, or no one got off the train. One thing is for sure though: they waited at the train station for nothing.

As children, we understood only part of this story.

That these were ethnic confrontations and that at any

↘

The best method to test your first language is while in bed next to a girl, half-asleep. Even today, every time I feel like saying something nice, I say it in Hungarian.

34 • dor • spring 2011

time Romanians could come and beat us too. I only knew one side of the story, but I knew it well. Even today, when I think about that particular event, I feel a helpless anger. I hate neither the attackers, nor those who defended themselves. I only hate those who orchestrated the whole event.

Just about that time, the “Petőfi Sándor” Middle School merged with School no. 9 to avoid segregation.

I think I even had Romanian teachers who spoke no Hungarian. I wouldn’t have had anything against this decision if I could say more than “Ana are mere” (Ana has apples) and “Cosmin se joacă cu mingea” (Cosmin is playing with a ball) in Romanian. And though I had no problem in deciphering the spelling book, when it came to speaking, I had serious trouble understanding even most basic expressions. It wasn’t out of rancor or because I didn’t want to, but if my parents, my relatives, my friends and acquaintances only spoke Hungarian; how could I have learned Romanian?

Sure enough, the impossibility to communicate did generate segregation within the school. We separated into small groups and we spent most of the time fighting. We probably didn’t have any reason to do that since when we ran into an “enemy” in the street together with his parents, we always greeted politely.

When time came for me to go to high school, I chose a Hungarian one. I probably would have done well at a Romanian one as well, but it would have required some extra hours of work. And no child wants that. I wanted to play, compete in sports, and watch TV. Puberty made things even more complicated and I was more confused than ever. As if it wasn’t enough that I discovered the fundamental differences between men and women, I also had to cope with an identity-defining process. It’s not easy to define oneself as belonging to a minority. Especially if you’re used to being the majority. Growing up makes you realize that there is life even beyond the city borders, that there are other cultures, other languages, that there are sides, and you have to take one of them. I never liked this.

I was a gamer and whenever I played, I always had a hard time choosing a side. I wasn’t fascinated by the bad guys, so I usually picked the good guys. But if faced with several choices and several truths, it was difficult. When it comes to identity, it’s impossible to identify the good guys and the bad guys. And the community you live in does not make things easier. I remember this man who lived in the same village as my cousin, a prominent member of Vatra Românească, a nationalist group; he told everyone, everywhere that he was being persecuted. He had lived there for years, and I don’t think anything ever happened to him. Actually, I think that this is what he was after: something to validate his complaints. But nothing ever happened to him, and his movement faded away. I’ve toyed with the idea of being hostile towards such people many times. Luckily, I was taught differently: to identify myself with what I am, not with what others are not.

In the meantime, I understood that whenever you can’t understand the language of a community, you stress out. I got annoyed whenever someone would refuse to speak Romanian to me in the Republic of Moldova. And it was not my national pride that was hurt, but the stupidity of the situation. I, who was a minority in Romania, was suddenly nothing but a Romanian from Romania and I was given the same treatment as everyone else: I was spoken to in Russian. When something like this happens, it becomes obvious how childish these divisions can be.

In high school, I began questioning things, but I didn’t become aware of all this. I played on the basketball team, and our great rivals were those at Goga, a Romanian high school. I only had Hungarian friends, and even if I didn’t resent the others, I didn’t really mix with them. Afterwards, we became friends. As we started playing at school every weekend and going out for beer, my perspective shifted. I discovered there were no fundamental differences between us. They liked Hungarian girls, the same way I was attracted to Romanian girls. We played the same computer games.

We got drunk in the same way. We loved basketball just as much. We knew that there were nationalists among them, but we had our share of nationalists as well.

It was then that I started hating idiotic generalizations, such as: “I have nothing against you, you’re OK. But I can’t stand the rest of the Hungarians.” There is no such thing. There are only people you respect, and people you do not. In high school, I learned that a minimum level of common sense made all the difference. Fortunately, my new friends possessed that minimum level of common sense.

If boys didn’t laugh every time I opened my mouth to say something in Romanian, girls weren’t as nice.

They were constantly teasing and mocking me. It was then when I learned that rivalries shape our lives.

And in this case, the male-female rivalry was above the Romanian-Hungarian one.

R

eality struck when I went to college in Cluj. In a city where nationalist mayor Funar was able to get elected three times in a row, the atmosphere was not always friendly. I had no problems among students and in most academic environments, but in the city I came across all sorts of people: some ruder, others more refined. In my first week there, a taxi driver told us that if we spoke Hungarian in his car, we had to get out – he wasn’t going to take us anywhere. On several occasions, we were rebuked on the street. Not to mention Funar’s billboards, displaying the quote from the Constitution about Romanian being the official language.

Every day, I felt like an outsider. Especially when I went out and asked for “două coli” (two sheets of paper) instead of “două cola” (two cokes) (In Romanian, nouns have a singular and a plural form.

The word “cola” - coke is an exception and has the same form in singular and plural). The more I tried to pay attention and avoid mistakes, the more I made them. So, once again I chose to isolate myself and get closer to my Hungarian friends. I made new friends, also Hungarian. My classes taught in Hungarian and I went to Hungarian parties. I tried to create my own micro universe, following the example I had from back home.

In my third year, my parents were having a hard time paying my rent, so I moved to the dorm. There, I met students from Buzău – who were nationalists at the time – and I began to abandon my state of selfimposed isolation (we’ve stayed good friends). I was already involved in the Hungarian Students’ Organization, which I joined when I realized, after one year of non-stop partying, that I should do something useful with my life. Then I decided to move to the next level, OSUBB (the Students’ Organization of the Babeș-Bolyai University), and most of its members were Romanian. Within a few months, I became executive manager. We created a strong movement, got involved in all decisions concerning the students.

In the end, I became the first Hungarian honorary member of the organization.

It was then that the romances began. The dorm revealed a whole new world to me, an exotic one. I had my first relationships with Romanian girls. What’s funny is that some of my former girlfriends were quite nationalistic at first. I don’t know if they behaved like that to defy me, or if they actually believed the stereotypes. One thing’s for sure: they all became more “user friendly” in the end. Some of them were surprised to find out that I did not own a horse, that I did not perform pagan rituals, or that I did not store meat under my saddle.

No doubt though that my first language was Hungarian.

The best method to test your first language is while in bed next to a girl, half-asleep. Even today, every time I feel like saying something nice, I say it in Hungarian. It is an unconscious, sincere and profound gesture. Some say that what matters most is the language of your thoughts, or the language in which you count. To me, the point of reference is the language in which you feel like speaking to your lover.

After four years spent at the university, I decided it was time to attend school in another language, and I chose a master in English and Romanian and a PhD in Romanian. My decision was influenced by my mentor and diploma coordinator, Andrei Marga, a professor of incredible open-mindedness, who allowed me to write my paper in Hungarian, and who encouraged me to discover studies in other languages.

He was also the one who pushed me to take my first steps in politics. I was aware of his liberal sympathies (ideological, not political), and of the fact that he supported the involvement of the academic world into society. I decided to give it a try. dor • spring 2011 • 35

My family was not at all surprised when I joined the Romanian Liberal Party, my father having been a member since 1993. But others did not understand.

Why hadn’t I joined the ethnic party? Many Hungarians accused me of caring only about my career, and said I wanted to sell my identity for political capital.

My colleagues in the party were surprised that I chose to get involved. It was a gesture of going against the tide, but it was also a conscious decision determined by the people who had taught me that nationality is not the most important thing; competence is.

My career took off. In 2004, I ran for an internal office, and was elected president of the youth branch in my county. In 2005, I was already the vice-president of the Liberal Youth at national level and, in 2006, I became the president of the South-Eastern European Liberals. In 2007, I was elected member of the European Parliament.

Once on top, things got more complicated. At the beginning, my colleagues corrected my Romanian and some would persistently recommend that I take private lessons. For my birthday, they gave me a spelling book. But I was no longer scared or frustrated by such gestures, as I would have been in my teenage years. I knew they were friendly gestures. It was a sign that my colleagues believed in my potential.

I tried hard not to let them down. I even tried going over my old grammar books to improve my speech.

I tried to deliver written speeches to avoid cracking the audience, but looking at the paper made me tense, and I made even more mistakes. There were things thet baffled me, and which continue to baffle me today. In Hungarian, there is no gender, and this proved a difficult obstacle to overcome. After so many TV shows, appearances, speeches and written pages, I still can’t understand why in Romanian my sexual organ is of feminine gender, or why the objects must be masculine, feminine or neutral. What is neutral?

I decided that I didn’t have to be perfect, but I had to be sincere, that it was OK to make mistakes now and then as long as I talked from my heart. After a while, a colleague of mine from southern Romania told me that the errors and accent were part of my charm. He said they made me more European. And I succeeded in making myself accepted as a politician, though sometimes I would eat “an apple”, and other times I would eat “a apple”. Or Lord knows what.

Even so, few people believed I could make it to the European Parliament. Even my most enthusiastic supporter, who was the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies at the time, Bogdan Olteanu, told me that he really doubted the success of my project. In a public speech, he reminded me that I was young, I was Hungarian, and I only lacked being a woman to gather all the “qualities” necessary to secure my non-election.

Yet, politics was what finally destroyed all my prejudices. Although there were a few leaders who systematically turned me down because of my nationality, most of them supported me. I was scared when 36 • dor • spring 2011

I first pre-campaigned in southern Romania, as I was aware of the existing legends and preconceptions. But the parliamentary office I had there became the one I visited most. If in Harghita, my home county, I went no more than 15 times during my mandate, I went down south every two or three weeks.

In Harghita, I was welcomed by many people, but I strongly believe that I didn’t get many votes. Apparently my gesture was far too avant-garde. Although I didn’t lack popularity in the Hungarian regions, I didn’t want the ethnic votes; probably I couldn’t have gotten them anyway. Not even from my relatives. It was absurd that the party accepted me more than some of the people I grew up with. In Olt, I could be proud that I was Hungarian, while in Harghita, I sometimes felt embarrassed.

Today, I am no longer a politician. I took up journalism.

What’s even stranger is that, after four years in Bucharest, it is only now that I realize how cosmopolitan this city really is, despite all its drawbacks. I have been called many names here, but I have never been called Hungarian. I have been told that I am a peasant, that I am a farmer from the countryside, from Ardeal, from Transylvania, but I have never felt threatened.

I no longer struggle to find my identity. I don’t need a box. I know who I am, and I know what I want to do with my life. I realized that there are things that can be changed, and others that cannot. My references are my family, the people close to me, not concepts.

Although, technically, I have always belonged to the “minority,” I have always felt I was in the “majority,” without hiding the fact that I was different.

Regardless of who you are or the place you come from, people will always try to define “the enemy.” For some people, I probably was “the enemy” because I was Hungarian. Had I not been one, I would have probably been “the enemy” because I was too young. Or because I had a beard. Or a cap. Or who knows what else.

Therefore, I’ll go on being what I am: a guy from Miercurea Ciuc, with a difficult mother tongue and an accent, who makes funny mistakes when he speaks Romanian. A man who loves the community he comes from, but who is just as comfortable out there in the big wide world. A man who cannot stand those who try to impose limits within society. A man with an impossible name.

I’m Magor. Nice to meet you.

Magor Csibi is the editor of Think Outside the Box (www.totb.ro). He considers himself a failed politician, although he can’t tell if it was politics that failed him, or if it was him who failed politics.

R Speaking Romanian A report from the frontier of language.

F

– Words by Peter Frank

rom the moment I first heard the word “înainte” I knew it was not a real word. It could not be. It was merely a few consonants embedded into at least six mangled, intertwined, unpronounceable vowel sounds. But I was wrong. I checked. It is a word.

I know that because, while perusing the stacks of antique books at a local shop, I discovered a rare etymological dictionary. Why it was in English, I don’t know. But there it was: the explanation, the first recorded use of the word “înainte”. Of course, as Romanians, you know the story. But to me, it helped explain much about the language.

It seems that on or about October 4 in the year 1183 or so, during yet another invasion by some pesky neighbor, one of the top hefes trying to find Ploieşti, stopped a young boy to ask directions. The two year old, eating the traditional lunch of peanut butter on sliced mamaliga, pointed straight ahead and suggested the man, dressed in what looked like pajamas, go take a nap. And so, as any true Romanian knows, “nani te” – spoken with a peanut butter accent – became the word for straight ahead.

And thus a language is born.

This story explained a lot, for it seems to me that Romanian is one of the few surviving pure ancient languages, a clear pool of pristine words, into which several invaders over the centuries have poured their various buckets of murky water. And now it’s America’s turn. How else do you explain

38 • dor • spring 2011

conversations in which I understand nothing except the occasional “trend-setter,” “hotspot,” “sex bomb” sprinkled throughout? During a meeting, just as my attention drifts comfortably away, it’s like hearing your name suddenly called. “Barul are un happy hour tare.” What? What did you say?

And then the real confusion begins. “Catering” means the shop delivers, not that they will provide a shawarma banquet for your wedding. “Nonstop” means it’s open 24 hours, not that it flies to Paris without any layovers. And when people shout “Hai, Romania”, they are not saying hello. Most importantly, at restaurants, “Fried Crap” on the menu does not mean, well, fried crap.

Now, keep in mind that I’m not the best judge of a foreign language. I’m American. I once had a Scottish employee who, when he spoke English, I could not understand a word he said. And I’ve taken four years of German, each one conveniently called “Introduction to German.”

So I have to be careful. As a former editor, my first inclination is to correct and change things, even (like most editors) when they don’t need it. Verb tenses.

Conjugations. Mispronouning nouns. Like when I learn: “Ce fac?” I immediately want to add a definite article, as in: “What THE fac?”

I realize I’m still a guest in this country, so I don’t want to complain too much. I know this has been your language since, well, at least the revolution. But why do you make it so difficult? For example, all the useful adjectives begin with “m”? Do you realize how confusing that is? “Mult”, “mic”, “mare”. Then there’s “mai

mic”. Mai mic? That’s like being uncertain about another piece of cake and saying “yes no”. I say pick one, it’s either mai or mic. And as long as I’m on the topic, “mult” is a good word. But what’s a “mesc” and why do I wish someone much of it when I thank them?

Then there are your word endings. Honestly, I believe you make them up as you go. For me, I just throw “–ului” at the end when I’m not sure. I don’t know what it means but it usually brings a smile. I recommend that instead of borrowing English words, just borrow the endings. The most we add at the end of a word is “-es” (unless the word’s from Latin then we’re supposed to change the “-us” to an “-i” when it’s plural, but we never bother so nevermind.) And finally, seriously, do you really want me to believe “s-a” is a word? Where I come from it’s the first half of the equation: s – a = x.

I knew, in hindsight, I was in trouble. On one of my first trips here, I was changing planes in Italy and a woman, with four children, asked if I could help carry a bag down the ramp and push her baby stroller

while she struggled with the toddlers. I had no idea what she was saying, and despite my obvious confusion, she continued to speak as if we were old friends. All I knew was that she was talking to me in some language that sounded like Italian fired from a machine gun.

It is certainly true that the biggest problem here is that so many people speak English. I learned more Spanish in one week, immersed in a town where no one spoke English, than I’ve learned of Romanian in a whole year living here.

But soon, I hope, all this confusion will be a distant memory. I plan to be speaking like a native in no time.

I’ve created and memorized helpful phrases like: “Unde este toaleta?”, “Nu înţeleg absolut nimic” and “Îmi pare rău, munceşte cineva aici!?”. And soon I’ll resume lessons. In the meantime, I’m listening to the complete recorded speeches of dubious politicians. But to truly succeed, first I’ll buy some peanut butter.

Peter Frank is American. Since 2009, he has been living in Romania, working in the media, and trying to learn the language.

e t n i a ap în

Cr

Ce

? a t e l a o t e t ? c unde es i m i a m t l u m c a f

. c s e m u ţ l u M

. u ă er

r a p Îmi

! a i n â m o R i,

Ha

* Curious what the Romanian words mean? Google Translate them. dor • spring 2011 • 39

R Free Gigi Four guys set up a prank and become overnight celebrities, adored by two types of diverging subcultures. This is an urban legend, as true as it gets.

– Words by Gabriel Dobre 40 • dor • spring 2011

O

On Thursday, April 2, they chose Cage’s apartment over the drum. It was the day Gigi Becali – landlord, owner of the football club Steaua Bucharest, businessman, member of the European Parliament and populist politician usually surrounded by a commando of bodyguards – was being detained by prosecutors. From dawn ‘til dusk, from Becali’s mansion and all the way to the court, video cameras and armies of reporters were broadcasting live. From the dissonant live reports, and more or less official information, one was able, however, to understand that Becali and some of his bodyguards were taken in for holding people captive and were brought to court.

OTV was broadcasting from outside the court. The images showed a mix of people, filling the screen like fish in an aquarium. Women and men, young and old, beggars and flower ladies; kids, grinning like Cheshire cats, looking into the camera with fascination, and goons leaning against their SUVs parked somewhere to the side, watching people chant, sometimes in an organized manner, other times chaotically, slogans showing their support: “Gigi Becali! Gigi Becali!”, “Freedom!”, “We want Gigi free!”.

When they saw the images, the guys started making fun of the people there. Then they thought they recognized someone in the crowd, a supporter of Steaua whom they knew from the neighborhood. They were not exactly buddies, but they knew each other. “Hey, what’s he doing there? Let’s give him a call!”

If he had answered the phone, things would have probably ended there. But he didn’t. They continued their mockery, making fun of the mob for not even having a sign. What kind of protest was that?!

“Let’s make one ourselves!” said one of them.

“What should we write?”

“Freedom for Gigi!”

“Too long.”

“Set Gigi free!”

No. They needed something shorter, written in caps, which would fit on the cardboard Cage kept behind the fridge. And, it had to be something smart, something funny, something that would be worth the effort of going all the way to the courthouse and infiltrating themselves among the thugs. Yes, they had to go. Cage, who works in media, knew what madness

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n April 2, 2009, four buddies – Cage, Aton, Ces and Bobină – gathered to spend a night, like many other nights before, in a flat in a neighborhood in Bucharest. A tall apartment building, with exfoliated plaster and ground floor walls adorned with colorful graffiti; a building like any other in the neighborhood, in Bucharest, and beyond.

They hung out to chat, joke, and poke fun – all the things guys in their 20s do when they have their buddies over. Somewhere in the background you could hear the TV. Close to midnight, going from one story to another, from one TV channel to the next, they ended up watching OTV, a tabloid-like TV station.

What they saw made them abandon the discussion they were having. OTV was broadcasting live from a justice court in Bucharest, and the news ticker at the bottom of the screen read “Gigi Becali handcuffed.”

Let’s stop for a moment so we can clarify some important aspects. Cage, Ces and Aton are graffiti artists. Bobină, Cage’s younger brother, is a skater.

(Because they wish to remain anonymous we will refer to them solely by their nicknames.) They were all born in Bucharest, live with their parents and have been friends for as long as they can remember. Cage, the oldest, is the only one who has a day job. The others are students. They’re a group – in fact, they are the nucleus of a group of about 20 guys – who get together every night around a table, improvised out of a heavy, wooden cable drum, left behind by a company that installed optic fiber in the neighborhood. “At the drum,” they call it.

If they were a resistance group, the drum would be their operational headquarters. This is the place where they plan their nighttime raids, their secret missions to transform the city – its building walls, poles, billboards, metal doors, subway trains, mostly any type of plain surface – with drawings and tags. Some think of them as vandals who disfigure the city, others consider them urban artists who fight against the gray concrete.

They’re neither – yet. For now, they’re halfway between those who, 20 years ago, used to write with brushes on the walls “Down with Iliescu!” or “Down with communism!”, and Banksy, the anonymous English graffer who succeeded, on purpose or by accident, to make graffiti mainstream and earn good money doing so. Our heroes don’t care about the system enough to leave the house and fight against it. They don’t feel the need to take responsibility for any message other than their names, written almost illegibly on some wall, in the middle of the night, or a more complex drawing, but with no activist significance whatsoever, on a wall in the outskirts. For now, they’re driven by a need, hard to explain to outsiders, which brings them together every night, around the drum.

It had to be something smart, something funny, something that would be worth the effort of going all the way to the courthouse and infiltrating the thugs. dor • spring 2011 • 41

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“Hey, what does it say? What does it mean?” they asked. “It means Gigi free!” they answered. “That’s it, kids, c’mon, shout it out loud!

These assholes must free Mr. Gigi!” they would create in the press if a banner were to appear in the mob. But what should it say? It had to be smart enough to float above all those present, and also mock them, without them realizing it. They kept on brainstorming until one of them, Cage can’t remember who, said: “Free Gigi!”.

They looked at each other.

“Good one!”

Not only did it fit the cardboard, but the message was perfect. In slang, “gigi” means joint, marijuana, weed, ganja, pot, Mary Jane. “Free Gigi,” as the connoisseurs would tell you, would therefore suggest a call for the legalization of marijuana. It was the perfect slogan because it could speak to two sets of diverging people: Becali fans and Mary Jane fans. With this type of message, you cannot get your ass kicked.

At least in theory.

Cage, Ces, Aton and Bobină don’t smoke pot. They tried, of course, but they’re not into it. Cage, who took up graffiti 10 years ago, when few knew what to do with a spraycan and an empty wall, doesn’t even drink alcohol. His kidney problems kept him in hospitals, away from graffiti, right when it started becoming a phenomenon in Bucharest. Football isn’t part of their interests either, and politics doesn’t appeal to them unless there’s something to be mocked.

The “Free Gigi” joke was way too good. How could anyone resist the chance of taking over a mob and turning it into a protest for legalizing marijuana?

How could you resist the temptation of feeding newspapers and television with the two-word banner: “Free Gigi”? In other words, have them give a green light to weed, ganja, pot, Mary Jane. They took the piece of cardboard and a purple spray, got into Cage’s car and drove off to the courthouse. They didn’t know where it was, and being in a hurry, they didn’t have time to look it up online. So they drove through town, calling their friends and asking for directions. Eventually, they found it. They parked the car far from the building and went on a recon mission, without the cardboard and spray.

The mob was bigger than it seemed on TV and much more hostile. A few hundred, mostly men, some young and thin, others older and bigger, many of them wearing track suits. A swarming, angry crowd took over the stairs and parking lot outside the courthouse at midnight. The guys walked among 42 • dor • spring 2011

them and started having second thoughts. If someone wanted to find some guys who didn’t fit in the picture, they were the ones.

They met up with the guy they knew and had seen on TV. “What are you guys doin’ here?”, he greeted them gladly. “You came for Mr. Gigi as well?” They answered yes, they were there for him. He totally bought it.

They gathered their courage and, after less than 10 minutes, returned to the car. With the spray in one hand, Cage bent over the cardboard that laid on the ground and started writing. First the F, then the R, then E, and again E. Then the G, and I, and again G, and again I. Then back and forth a couple of times so it would really stand out.

“Hey, do you guys smell weed?”, one of them suddenly asked.

Indeed they did. They were in a parking lot behind an apartment block, and a few meters away was a blue car, which they had just noticed, with four or five guys crammed inside.

Bobină lifted the freshly painted cardboard and walked with it to the car. When he got close, he lifted it and held it high for a couple of seconds, so those inside could read. People in the car got riled up, probably thinking they were victims of a colective halucination. The guys laughed and wanted to return to the mob, when someone from the car got out.

“Who are you? What’s the deal?”

They asked him if he hadn’t heard what was happening a few hundred meters away. He hadn’t. They told him that Gigi Becali had been arrested and that there were hundreds of people in front of the courthouse asking for his release. And they wanted to go there and hold up the sign. The guy laughed and told them he wanted to take a picture with them. They refused, but told him to check their blog, lamosor. blogspot.com (la mosor = at the drum) the next day to see images of what was about to happen.

When they made it back to Becali’s supporting mob, they didn’t have many doubts. They just thought that English would maybe puzzle the folks there. They quickly found a spot, somewhere in the back, in a more compact group, and lifted the sign.

“Hey, what does it say? What does it mean?” they asked.

“It means Gigi free!” they answered.

“That’s it, kids, c’mon, shout it out loud! These assholes must free Mr. Gigi!”

The people got behind the message. They snatched the sign from their hands and started screaming “Gigi Becali! Gigi Becali!” and “Freedom!” A few seconds later, Bobină was the only one still holding on to a corner of the banner.

As soon as the group where they had planted the cardboard started screaming and waving their new sign, the photographers and cameramen covered them in spotlights and flashes.

Cage, the media man and the one in charge of communication inside the small guerilla pack, quickly

climbed the stairs of the courthouse to take pictures.

Pictures of Becali’s fans waving the Free Gigi banner, of the photographers photographing Becali’s fans waving the Free Gigi banner. Their banner. Their message.

Less than 30 minutes had passed since they had arrived. Cage went down the stairs and together with the other two returned to the car. The guys in the blue car were gone.

On their way back home, they laughed their asses off. They couldn’t believe what just happened. When they arrived home, they sat down in front of the TV and started zapping – this time with the sole purpose of watching the images of Free Gigi.

The next day, pictures and videos of Becali fans waving their sign were everywhere in the newspapers and on news websites. ProSport.ro, a sports newspaper that covered the events in front of the courthouse all night, wrote at 1:30 a.m.: “Becali’s fans took out a huge banner with the following slogan: FREE GIGI! All those present screamed “Freedom!” and “We want Gigi to go free!”. On the Mediafax wire-agency site: “All the props were there, nothing was missing.

They even had banners. One of them simply said: Free Gigi.” In a video shot that night by reporters of satirical weekly Academia Caţavencu, there was an interview with a man holding the Free Gigi sign.

The guys detailed their adventure on their blog the very same night. They posted some pictures and even wrote a text that clearly stated their opinion about those who wanted Gigi free. It was a biting satire that made fun of soccer hooligans with beer bellies, who eat sunflower seeds and wear jakets and big gold chains. It was a text about Gigi and weed.

That Friday, their blog, which had an average of about 1,000 visitors per month, went up to 10,000.

Once the initial euphoria dissipated, they started putting things into perspective. The TV channels were continuously showing Free Gigi images. It had already become the favorite slogan of the entire pro-Becali movement. But Evenimentul Zilei, a broadsheet, and the Antena 3, a news channel, had found out that it had been a prank and posted links to their blog.

The guys got scared. What if Steaua supporters find us? Or Becali’s army of bodyguards? I mean, he did get arrested for sending out his goons to punish some guys who humiliated him by stealing his car. What if the police catch on to us? They could accuse us of promarijuana propaganda.

On Friday night, they took the blog down. Not only the Free Gigi post, but everything. They told no one else what they did, and watched their backs for three days, each time they walked down the street, looking around carefully, waiting to see a thug or a police car. Slowly, they calmed down. After careful discussions with Steaua supporters in the neighborhood, they found out that even they couldn’t stand Becali anymore.

Still, there was the police. But why would the police bother to investigate their prank? It’s not like they smoked weed on live TV. Moreover, they didn’t invent

the term “gigi”. They just used it to make a joke. To cover their backs, Cage went online to an urban dictionary and found the definition of “gigi” – synonym to joint, weed, as in “Hey, man, let’s roll a gigi!” It was posted in 2007, two years prior to them taking advantage of the Gigi Becali situation and spreading the term. He made a printscreen of that page and saved it under the file name “Evidence for trial.”

Three days later, on April 6, after rewriting their post, they put the blog back online. Almost all reactions they have received since are of praise and congratulations. Both from those who wanted Gigi free, after they found out it was a prank, and from those who understood the double entendre of “Gigi.”

That posting brought them over 30,000 views, and Free Gigi took on a life of its own. It became the name of a movement that, for as long as Becali was arrested, asked for his release. There were T-shirts, websites, and for a brief period, even a Facebook cause. The slogan turned full circle when the rapper Grasu XXL wore a Free Gigi T-shirt in his video for the song Mai mult fum (More smoke), more than a month after the guys’ stunt. The T-shirt print then became a stencil – Free and Gigi were written one under the other, with the contour of a joint in between – which later appeared on the walls around downtown Bucharest.

Cage, Aton, Ces and Bobină, the three graffers and the skater, didn’t brag much about their stunt. Soon after, in the subway or on the streets, they happened to hear conversations about Free Gigi. Indeed, it was a pleasant feeling, but they never felt the need to turn around and say: “I did it.” It’s the lesson every graffiti artist, wherever he may be, learns fast. Don’t brag in public. Moreover, what’s there to brag about? They know perfectly well it was an accident that cannot be reproduced or topped.

Everything, from Gigi Becali’s popularity, to the gullibility of his fans, to the impatient media’s thirst for images, to the meaning of “gigi” in slang, everything was perfectly arranged in a cocktail impossible to turn into a recipe. And why would they even try to do it again? They lived through the perfect story, the type of crazy adventure you only experience once in a lifetime.

Gabriel Dobre is a co-editor for DoR. Previously, he was a senior editor for Esquire Romania and projects coordinator at ActiveWatch Romania, a media NGO.

dor • spring 2011 • 43

R

Every Woman Is a Story About Breasts Ever since we anxiously start longing for them up until they fall victims to gravity, we spend our lives obsessing about their fate. Every woman is a story about breasts.

This is mine.

O

– Words by Crina Moşneagu

ne morning, my boyfriend and I were lying on the couch when I asked him, aimlessly, if he liked my breasts. “Yeah,” he said with a flirtatious look, setting his newspaper aside.

“I like them.” “Why?” I continued, skeptical. “Because they fit my palm perfectly.

Because they respond graciously each time I touch them. Look,” he said, gently running his finger over my nipples, which instantly hardened. “I asked, why you liked mine, not breasts in general,” I hissed, letting go of his embrace.

I wasn’t about to let him get away with a truism, because even now, at 30, I occasionally still doubt their power of attraction. My relationship with breasts was a rather difficult one. I always had something to accuse them of: they started growing too early, they didn’t grow fast enough, they grew too much, they

44 • dor • spring 2011

hurt too much, they had suddenly disappeared and would not grow back.

I don’t know if I ever really gave them the chance to prove they were there for me, that they can electrify, open doors, twist minds, and be addictive. It’s true that sometimes I took advantage of their charm, but somehow, either vaguely or directly, on purpose or unconsciously, I think I always rejected them.

My breasts made their appearance sometime at the beginning of 6th grade. I was 11, the youngest in my class. It was already October, but summer and autumn were still negotiating. I went to school during the afternoon and we were getting ready for drawing class. In front of me sat Andrei: Prince Charming, Casanova, God. There was no girl in that class who wasn’t secretly, but passionately, in love with him. We were all hoping that one day – the holiest of days – we would find a note on our desk, in our pencil box, or in our math or Romanian language notebook. A note from him, more valuable than the most precious engagement ring.

Suddenly, he turned towards me, and while stretching out his hand to grab something, he asked: ”Can I borrow a paintbrush?” The sun was spraying a golden aura onto his light brown hair. From underneath the fine eyebrows, his olive-green eyes, stained with muddy beads, were piercing. He had a mischievous tip-tilted nose, and a perfect smile, surrounded by two charming dimples.

Of course he could have the paintbrush. But I didn’t want him to notice my stare and sluggish smile; I was ecstatic. “Not that one,” I barked at him, slapping his hand. “That’s the one I use. Pick another.”

Bewildered by the emotion of having touched him, even if it was to reject him, I knocked over the water jar where I cleaned my brushes. The colorful water spread onto my white and green floral T-shirt. My barely germinated breasts – small, but not invisible, two bumps with no personality – inevitably reacted and contracted.

Andrei burst into laughter and shouted, pointing at the transparent stain on my T-shirt: “Ha, ha! Your tits are showing!”

I felt the sky come crashing down, the blood rushing to my cheeks. I bit my lips furiously to stop the tears. “I don’t have tits, you idiot!”

But that’s when I understood I did.

E

ver since the beginning of the summer vacation, I had noticed two bumps growing from my child-like chest. I ignored them, thinking I had gained weight. I hadn’t found out about periods, and I thought women had large breasts because they had kids. I imagined that once they give birth, the breasts swell up with milk and never deflate.

So I brushed aside the slightly changed manner in which my tops fit me. I thought I was the only one who could tell the difference, and only while I was analyzing myself in the shower. “I’ll act as if they don’t exist,” I said to myself, hoping this would make them go away or slow their growth.

Andrei had, however, seen them. So had Ruxandra, because, shortly after, she asked me if I had gotten my period. I blinked in confusion, trying to understand what she meant. In my mind, “period” only made

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The colorful water spread onto my white and green floral T-shirt.

My barely germinated breasts – small, but not invisible, two bumps with no personality – inevitably reacted and contracted.

46 • dor • spring 2011

sense in sentences such as “a period of economic growth,” “the Jurassic period,” or “you’re not going outside, period!”.

“You know, that thing women get…,” she continued. I didn’t know. I rushed to my mother as soon as I got home: “What’s a period?”. She calmly provided me with the dictionary definition. “No!” I shouted.

“Ruxandra told me it’s something women get.” Mother frowned and her eyes transfixed me. She changed her approach and told me on an icy tone that I’m too young for such things, that I should stop fooling around – I’ll find out about periods when the time comes.

I found out three months later, when I got it. I knew what it meant from Ruxandra, who had gotten it one month before. But not even then, after all that, did we know what it really was. We only knew that it was normal to bleed once a month, and that this was proof of our new gained status. That settled it with the breasts, too: they had grown because of my period and because I was growing up.

This revelation dissipated my shame, replacing it with a combination of excitement and curiosity. I measured my breasts regularly by looking at them, trying to figure out how much they had grown and if they were equal in size; or if, God forbid, one of them was left behind. I would take a peek at my mother every time I caught her naked, and then rush back to my mirror. I had a long way to go. Mine were two firmly outlined tangerines, while mother’s were… two coconuts, each nesting in its own bra cup.

One day, I asked her if I’d ever grow breasts like hers. She smiled with a glimpse of pride in her eyes.

She told me breasts are like flowers. They blossom and keep on growing. So slowly that you don’t feel it. Until one day, when they get to full bloom. “And when’s that day going to come?” I insisted. “When you’ll become a mother.” “That’s when they’ll be like yours?” I continued, and she took my hand gently, smiling again, and told me that the way no two fingers are the same, no two women are alike. She encouraged me, saying that mine are already beautiful: “Look at them, they’re like two apples,” she said. I was surprised when I realized that this was supposed to make me happy, but I braced myself with confidence that one day I’d be able to fill her bras.

But when? It’s true, they did grow some more. At 13, I traded tank tops for sports bras, because running during gym class had become excruciatingly painful. But a bra was out of the question. “What do you need a bra for?!” asked my mom, intrigued. The only one she bought for me around that time was part of the swim suit. “Bras are for women!” she used to say, “not for kids.” I’d sometimes secretly wear my only bra. It brought my breasts together, accentuating their soft curves, and tamed that annoying and provocative bounce. To bring me back to my senses, mother told me that if I wore a bra, my breasts would stop growing and end up hanging loose. That was enough for me. I began avoiding bras like the plague.

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I

t wasn’t until high school that I bought my first bra.

Guys were ruthless and stared shamelessly at my cleavage, which, at 15, could hardly be held back by a sports bra. During recess, the older bullies would build the so-called “tunnel of terror.” They stood on both sides of the corridor and waited for us to return to class so they could push and grab us. They let no one escape and made jokes about “rubbery T-shirts.”

They took advantage of every casual breeze to pierce us with comments about our rebel nipples.

Be it wind, anger, emotion, commotion, fear, our nipples would triumphantly emerge, and every time this inevitable incident took place, it was like our clothes had just melted. I, for one, wished I had known the magic formula that brought them to life so I could discover the antidote: a nipples taming potion.

I wasn’t the only one. Cristina, with whom I shared a desk, had the same problem. I remember how she used to blush and run her hand through her hair nervously every time Cătălin, the punk with a bachelor’s degree in life, teased her during class. “Hey Cristina, wassup? Did you put on your dirty shirt again?” he whispered and smirked, pointing to the nipples that poked through her shirt.

We started wearing all-black, even if outside the temperature exceeded 40 degrees Celsius. We decided, within the locker room board, that wearing a bra would make our breasts less visible. That our nipples, and the consciousness and stubbornness they possessed, could be silenced by a rigid bra. That’s how we ended up at the women lingerie section, where I chose the thickest I could find. It had a lot of cushion and the cups were reinforced with wires. It was deadly uncomfortable, but I didn’t care.

I had found an antidote.

Whereas two years before I was anxiously waiting for them, now I wanted them gone. Thanks to our parents’ words of wisdom, some of us still believed breasts grow as a result of being touched by guys, which meant girls with large breasts were easy – they must have let a whole squad touch them. When my mother discovered my bra in my lingerie drawer, she asked suspiciously: “What’s with this piece of garbage?”. Then, visibly concerned, she started questioning me: when and why did I buy it, did I wear it daily, did I own another one… as if she had found a pregnancy test in my backpack.

That’s something, a pregnancy test! As if anyone was thinking about sex at that age. We were confined to the puritanism of our mothers. At 15, we still had guilty fantasies about “tongue kissing” and sought the answer to existential questions: how is it done, do you have to have sex with the first one you kiss, and consequently, does that mean you have to marry him. Because of course, sex without marriage didn’t really exist in the mating dictionary of postcommunist teens.

My mother was invincible. What about me? My mind would come to a halt, incapable of processing such a scenario. It still does.

I entered sophomore year and, during a trip to the mountains, I kissed Sorin. It was the beginning of November. Our Latin teacher gave in to our pleas and took us camping. I don’t remember where; I only know that we slept in a terrible log house where we refused to take off our coats and hats because of the cold and our fear of lice and scabies. Eventually, we warmed up drinking vodka, and dancing (but only after growing tired of playing card games with fun dares).

Sorin, who was a bit tipsy, asked me to dance, while next to us Cătălin, the naughty punk, and Georgiana acted out a dare, kissing and showing off, in ways we only saw in movies. We were dancing and marveling at the two of them, when Sorin bent over and kissed me, applying pressure and tongue, just as I had read in books and magazines. I froze and stopped breathing.

Time stood still while we were exercising clumsily, trying not to bump our teeth. That was when I felt his hands descend toward my breasts. I didn’t know what to do. Anything would have been OK, but I couldn’t move.

I just stood there, trying not to choke with saliva while his hands ransacked me with greed. He rubbed them together like two pieces of flint trying to spark up a fire.

Thank God I was wrapped in my sweaters and I couldn’t feel much. Much pain, that is.

We finally untangled and returned to our respective group. I spent the night staring at the ceiling, thinking about what had happened. Whether or not I was a whore.

Whether or not I loved him. Whether or not he loved me.

When we got home, he was avoiding me.

“I was drunk,” he finally said. “Let’s forget the whole thing.”

I

t hurt. The one who kissed me for the first time had abandoned me. I was a whore, no doubt. And my breasts were to blame! I scolded myself endlessly and retired my breasts, until one day, at the end of high school, when Sorin brought them back to life yet again.

Somehow, it wasn’t the same. Something had happened in the meantime.

I was 16 when my mother had surgery. She had lost a breast, but acted like she had got rid of a rotten tooth. As if she was born that way, with one breast, and us, all the other women who had two, were freaks of nature. She would joke while putting on her prosthetic bra as if it were her favorite T-shirt. She never complained. She never even sighed. dor • spring 2011 • 47

She didn’t give me the chance to react or fall apart.

If there ever was a force that would make cancer reconsider, that was my mother. She boarded the bus sprightly, heading to the hospital for radiotherapy.

She would come back exhausted, but would tell me that she went grocery shopping and was drowsy because of the heat.

When she started chemotherapy, she took my hand and told me to not be afraid, because her hair would fall out. At least now she’d have a reason to wear those tailor-made chic turbans, one for each outfit she carefully kept in the closet for special occasions.

I remember my father crying. He would come up to me and tell me in a trembling voice that we must be there for her. “You have no idea what she’s going through. She’s the only one who knows.” I looked at him, helpless. My mother was a rock. What could I, a girl as soft as butter, do to shake her? I was trying not to think about the possibility that I might have cancer in the future. My mother was invincible. What about me? My mind would come to a halt, incapable of processing such a scenario. It still does.

Finally, my breasts disappeared when I was 17, after a reckless diet. The skinny woman was back in fashion, and I had curves, so I was obese. I lost 15 kilos, and the last three to melt away were my breasts.

I had become a walking skeleton with the body of a 14-year-old boy.

I thought I would feel relieved, as my mother seemed to feel with only one breast. It was not the case. I started missing them and did all I could think of to bring them back. I consistently and secretly tried antidotes: raspberry tea, ground dill seeds, blackberry extract.

All in vain. I sometimes imagined everything was just a bad dream I’d eventually wake up from.

I gradually started to adjust to my new size. I stopped filling my old bras with pads and bought some that fit me – two cups smaller. At least I was thin. Maybe the T-shirts no longer showed appealing curves, but the jeans fit my ass fabulously.

D

uring senior year, Sorin and I started dating. We hooked up at a party just before graduation. This time, he didn’t reject me the next day and we stayed together for about three years. He had learned that breasts are not made of rubber and that it’s better to touch them gently. And although I would avoid letting him get too acquainted with them, I knew there would come a time when he’d want to see them.

I was tormented by the thought that he’d compare them with what they once were, influenced also by the alcohol-twisted memories of our first clumsy encounter. But I couldn’t postpone it. I just hoped it would happen in those two weeks before my period, when they swelled a little. Eventually, he saw them. To my big surprise and relief, he was not at all disappointed.

Only fascinated, curious and… greedy. Maybe too

48 • dor • spring 2011

inexperienced to tell the difference. Simply glad to see some breasts, touch them and kiss them.

That’s how I started college: confident in my breasts’ somewhat restored power of seduction, but with a certain inability to enjoy the sensations they produced.

My mother’s scar continued to haunt me and crept into my mind at the most inappropriate times.

My mother had survived past the five-year period when the disease is most likely to return. Cancer was only a bad dream. The curls she had promised me were there, framing her serene face, and she took her special outfits out of the closet. She wore them more often, even if it meant damaging them.

But I would still oscillate between curiosity and fear. During college, the locker room conversations started gravitating toward sex. We would swap notes about birth control pills and their side effects – some made you gain weight and some made your breasts bigger. My colleagues often proved to me that the professor’s generosity was proportional to the generosity of the girl’s cleavage.

Gradually, I began to regain the weight I had lost.

One kilo at a time. Then two at a time. Then sometimes three. At last, my breasts returned. They were different than when I was 16 – less perky, less round, but they were there.

This time I didn’t feel the need to hide them. I sometimes imitated colleagues with fewer inhibitions, who would occasionally wear see-through outfits. I no longer found it embarrassing that the nipples were showing, excited by the wind passing through the delicate bra, now free of padding or other reinforcements. I felt awkward when those who noticed them couldn’t take their eyes off them. Awkward, because they were no longer teenagers. At night, however, my mother’s scar continued to haunt me.

All these years, until the summer when we said goodbye, I watched her embrace life. For 14 years she never got tired. Never despaired. Never lost faith or patience. I, however, never touched her scar. Although I often saw her putting on her clothes, I never ran my finger over the pink-skinned cavity once filled with femininity.

During our last moments together, she said: “When you’ll dress me for the last time, please don’t put on my bra. I’ve had enough.” I didn’t put it on.

But I touched her then – for the first and only time I caressed her wrinkled skin and I knew that it was a war that could be won. But I still cannot imagine myself living with two cuts on my chest. I pray to God I never have to, because I know I’m not as strong as she was.

Crina Moșneagu lives in Brussels and works in higher education project management by day. By night she wonders if she will ever have the guts to become a writer.

R Notes from Abroad After fighting windmills for 15 years, I packed up and moved to Luxembourg. This story is about what I left behind.

T

– Words by Miruna Cugler

he right foot presses lightly, the left releases the pedal, the signal is on, we make a complete left turn and get moving after a thorough rearview mirror check when... What’s wrong with you?

Are you crazy? Yeah, honk, that’s right, as if you’ve never been a rookie.” My instructor sighs and shrugs her shoulders. “What to do with all the madmen, Miruna? Come on, let’s go.”

I turn the wheel, look in the left side mirror and cautiously join Bucharest traffic. It’s 10 a.m., end-July 2010, 40 degrees Celsius and I’m sweating heavily. I feel dirty and stupid, although I’m not a bad driver.

I’m on the seventh lesson with my instructor, Rodica, a woman my father suggested, after I asked him to find someone I could communicate with. I am in Romania for a month, just until I finish driving school. I live on the border between Germany and Luxembourg and work for a European institution.

I left Romania a year ago. That day, I looked in the right side mirror, my eyes in tears, my hand pressed against my mouth to stop me from shouting. I was leaving for Luxembourg with a full car and an empty soul. My boyfriend, Radu, was driving; he, too, was leaving behind a good job, friends and parents. I could see my father in the mirror, standing in the middle of the street, in front of the house I had lived in nearly my whole life. A house that ultimately contributed to my departure, when a car wash opened across the street.

The endless noise, which no authority, petition, or request could protect me from, made me want to live in a place where no such home violation was possible.

Obviously, I didn’t leave just because of the house.

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I was born in 1976 and I guess I was one of the fortunate. I have not suffered the degrading poverty I used to hear about. I only experienced a few very cold winters. I studied foreign languages since I was four and I had a piano (but I never became fond of it), a color TV and a VCR in the ’80s. My mom taught economics at Ştefan Gheorghiu Academy and my dad was a chemistry teacher. I was class president. I was always pampered, the star performer of French poems whenever my family had friends over.

I do not know why I always rebelled. Why I used to bring home the most undesirable classmates to watch videos and eat fries. Why I constantly questioned rules and authority. Well, actually it was because they seemed stupid, though lots of people assured me they were not. In high school, I developed an obsession for things done right. Afterwards, for the need to help others. I do not know where they came from, but in time, I realized I was living in the most unsuitable place for such instincts.

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hy did we stop?” Rodica asks, looking in the rearview mirror. “Well, I thought I would let this guy get out of the gas station, even if I don’t have to,” I answer.

“Miruna dear, go on, they’re honking with no reason as it is.”

Indeed. What the hell was I thinking, I tell myself, remembering the countless crossroads in Luxembourg where smiling and slightly absent-minded drivers take turns inviting each other to pass, calmly ignoring signs.

Luxembourg seems implausible in Romania. It is like a parallel universe. The small, rich, bourgeois duchy Illustration by Vitalie Chirică (vitaliechirica.com)

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My “other” life is an arguably more sterile one. It is calm, steady, with no tension, fright, useless haste or despair. has the highest GDP per capita in the world, a people frozen in time, and a banker’s monument at the heart of the neighborhood where the finance industry and European institutions are flourishing.

Since I left, I have gauged the extent of the crisis in Romania by the number of emails I got from friends asking me to explain “how I got there”.

What should I say?

Romania has always stirred in me a suffocating fury and an equal will to fight. I have volunteered for Save the Children since I was 17. I used go to the Railway Station with groups of Swedish volunteers and search the sewers for homeless children, talk to them and try to help them. I rode a bike in Bucharest before most did. The most frightening experience was when a driver chased Radu and me, trying to hit him, shouting that cyclists have no right to be on the streets. I have worked for NGOs almost all my life, in one way or another trying to fix the laws, the infrastructure, the practices, the eternal mentality, the injustice, the poverty, the inequality. I studied journalism for the same reason. I organized protests and flash mobs for causes ranging from the Iraq war in 2003, to minority discrimination, to cyclists’ rights, to some sort of hippie event promoting neighborly love.

There were more than 15 years of fighting windmills. And, though they made me feel alive and useful and proud and powerful, they have also worn me out. Almost every success seemed futile in the sea of problems and carelessness. At a certain point I realized I was continuing the fight because I could not do otherwise, not necessarily because I still believed something would actually change.

Aside from NGO work, I tried all kinds of other things: translations, PR, journalism, training, CSR, management. I wanted to build another kind of country. Somewhere, undefined, there was a possible Romania, with people who minded their own business, public authorities who did their job, communities open to projects and a positive state of mind.

Sometimes, as with the job I left behind (PR of MaiMultVerde, an environmental NGO), I felt I contributed to this possible Romania. I really thought we were changing people and habits. The day we opened Cicloteque, the first bike rental center in Bucharest, was a glorious one. In Romania, “there is everything to be done,” Dragoş Bucurenci, my friend and boss 52 • dor • spring 2011

from MaiMultVerde, used to tell me. It’s true, but it can become tiring to do everything.

While fighting for the country, I also had plan B: leaving. I was told countless times that I should leave and I began thinking about it seriously in 2004 at the beginning of my relationship with Radu. Leaving was his dream, and when he shared it with me, I realized I had also been flirting with the idea, but had not expressed it yet.

I started applying to various competitions organized by the European institutions: proofreader, translator, PR, policy expert. One turned into a job offer in Luxembourg, three years after I had been informed I was on the waiting list. I took it after a few weeks of careful consideration and many doubts.

Does this answer your question about how I got there? Maybe I was just very lucky. I do not know.

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y hands are on the wheel and I feel the sun burning. A Dacia Logan passes me swiftly on the right, cuts in front of my car and stops 20 meters ahead at the red light.

“Forget it, you won’t have such problems there,” Rodica says. I also stop for the red light and in the right mirror, I squint at a cyclist. He is an old man scorning toward our car. I smile at him, one cyclist to another. He turns his head in disgust and rides on.

When I left, I thought the world was going to end.

I was leaving behind a large group of friends, people who I felt would be by my side no matter what.

Everything that was most familiar and dear to me.

Objectively speaking, I was leaving out of fear. Fear of having to deal with the health and justice systems; of growing old in Bucharest; of maybe raising an asthmatic and precociously neurotic child.

The first months of exile were moments of happy discoveries and idyllic life, in what a friend used to call “a society based on goodwill and trust.” I moved to Germany, got a big, beautiful house, with the best vibe possible, a river in front, a cherry tree and lilac bush in the backyard, neighbors living in “gingerbread” houses. My village is surrounded by a 180 km-long bike path network. We all say hello when we meet, we mow our lawns, and we have a volunteer fire brigade which does fire drills at least one Sunday every month.

In time, I got used to my job and the atmosphere within the institutions. Parents and friends came to visit. I spent my first Christmas away from Romania.

It got cold. It became difficult. Radu didn’t have a job. I felt overwhelmed, alienated and sad. A major depression followed in early spring. Everything was bad. Everything was difficult. Everything was dark.

I instantly felt a heartbreaking desire to go home.

In April, I bought a plane ticket. I came home after eight months of separation and I burst into tears when I saw a supermarket logo as the plane was

landing. When I set foot on the runway, it felt as if someone had shocked me. I knew I was linked to my birthplace and all I had to do was come back from time to time to revive it. And I knew, as the car left Otopeni Airport for Bucharest, that I was very happy I had come; I was also happy there was a Luxembourg to go back to.

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t is early August 2010 and I am in downtown Bucharest, with two friends with bicycles. I stare in disbelief at the new design of the area. Not long ago, there were just dusty streets and a few cafés that seemed to have been there since the beginning of time. Now it was all shiny – as if a horde of hip corporate workers had taken over. Which they have.

I remember some of the moments that drove me away: getting off the bike to meet a communications executive of a sponsor, and the reception clerk telling me delivery persons use different access doors; smiling randomly on the street, and getting sour looks in return; picking up trash at picnic areas and having some party people shouting: “Take these beer cans too, sweetie, we were going to throw them in the river anyway.”

It is my third visit since I left, clearly my longest and toughest so far. I came to take driving lessons because I live in Germany and I don’t speak German.

Anyway, my official address is still in Romania and Romanian is the language in which I learn best. My friends are still here and we love each other just the same, even more now that we see each other so rarely.

The interaction is more intense, everything has to be said quickly, because you never know when I am going to disappear again. The eggplant salad with tomatoes is as good as always. The summer nights, when I ride my bicycle from Cişmigiu Park (which smells of pee from hundreds of yards away) toward Una, Verde Café, Baraka or Uranus are just as dear to me. I still love going to the Cărtureşti bookstore and running from MŢR (Museum of the Romanian Peasant) into Kiseleff Boulevard. It is good to be on vacation in Romania.

I wandered through Bucharest. I wanted to breathe it in and feel it in a thousand ways. I love this place, but I cannot pretend the landscape is not bleak. I cannot pretend that I don’t see the repulsive plastic kiosks, the garbage under balconies and windows. I cannot pretend I do not feel lucky for having escaped, that I feel ashamed of thinking this.

I hesitate writing this. Romania is dear to me in an overwhelming, painful, impossible way. But I do not feel it is my home (anymore). There is chaos and there is poverty and it is like everyone is lurking, waiting for something to happen. Anything. And I do not know if I could play this game again.

My “other” life is arguably more sterile. It is calm, steady, with no tension, fright, useless haste or despair. I have accepted the fact that I will always be a little melancholy. But when I think of “home,” I see

the white house on the bank of the river, the gingerbread homes, the bike lanes, the highways, the calmness, and goodwill of the people around. I hear the peacefulness and I feel that anything is possible.

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yes glued to the mirrors, go steady, slowly, lovely, like a missy, be focused, you don’t want to embarrass Rodi, right?”

I nod and look lovingly at the lady next to me. It is the last lesson before the exam. I am driving from Presei Square to Barbu Văcărescu Boulevard, going to IOR Park where all the applicants are gathered. The traffic is still light and I grip the steering wheel. This is how I wish the exam would go. Since I got home, I have heard some apocalyptic stories about the test.

You cannot pass without a bribe, no matter how well you drive. They fail you on principle the first time around. They are offensive, they ask you to make swift maneuvers you can’t carry out and they humiliate you, just because they can. I even heard a story about sexual harassment. The overall idea was that, no matter what I did, I couldn’t pass it. (I did.)

I chose not to listen. I think if you do a good job, if you act like a decent person and have confidence in yourself, you stand a good chance. After all, this is what I have been doing in Romania all my life: I went about my business and ignored the chorus foretelling the gloomiest catastrophes. I look into the rearview mirrors carefully calculating the timing of every car I pass and realize what a bitch I could become if I were to drive in this city. No, I would not pass on the right side, I would not honk the instant the light turned green, I would not cut in front of someone every time it seemed like they were too slow. But I would probably let myself get dragged into savageness, a musthave skill if you want to survive Bucharest traffic.

I allow my mind to wander for a second down the road smoothly going up the vineyard hills in my German village. I feel I belong there as much as I belong now on Barbu Văcărescu Boulevard. No matter what happens with the test, I have a plane ticket for tomorrow. I’m going home, I say to myself as I look into the rearview mirror and plunge into traffic.

Miruna Cugler worked as a communicator, translator, civil society activist, volunteer and occasional journalist. In august 2009, she left Romania to work for a European institution in Luxembourg.

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The Scapegoat A portrait of Romania’s most important filmmaker. words by cristian lupșa photographs by carmen gociu cover photograph by alex gâlmeanu

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hree hours in one of the cherry-colored seats of the Republica movie theatre in Cluj, and I feel like I’ve slept on the floor. My back hurts, my neck is stiff, the upholstery has branded my skin and my knees are sore from all the leg crossing and rubbing against the seat in front. I’m not alone. Most of the 1,000 people who showed up for the premiere of Cristi Puiu’s latest film, Aurora, at the Transylvania International Film Festival, are still here, and they’re clapping. They clap for more than 20 seconds after the closing credits interrupt the mind games that the wonder boy of Romanian cinema put us through, and they clap again, moments later, when he strolls down the corridor and hops on stage.

He’s wearing jeans, a sailor tee, and a professor’s jacket. His scruffy hair clashes with the precise cut he had in the role of Viorel, the murderer he plays in his film.

“Thank you,” he says into the microphone. “Thank you for holding out to the end. I’m sorry I didn’t say it at the start: those who can’t take it can leave. I’ve been standing there, by the exit, writing everyone down.”

He laughs and the audience responds. He told us from the very beginning that Aurora was going to be a long film; not to apologize, but to warn us that it’ll be an experience, three hours that will batter our brains and bodies. Three hours that Puiu needed in order to show Viorel crisscrossing the 54 • dor • spring 2011

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city, committing four murders, and, at the end, confessing as he turns himself in. Puiu rarely sits in the theatre when they screen his films. He did now, somewhere by the exit – a perfect spot to spy on the audience and to analyze his directing decisions. Aurora was first screened at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and returned with no awards, but with loads of contradictory reactions. Critics debated its length; the fact that Puiu plays the leading part; his decision to withhold information; the similarity to other films – from Taxi Driver to Police, adjective; the symbolism of the title.

Nothing unusual for a Puiu film, a director that has become, in 10 years of activity, a landmark. Film critic Alex. Leo Şerban divides Romanian cinema into two eras: BCP (before Cristi Puiu) and ACP (after Cristi Puiu). Aurora is the director’s first movie in five years, when he won Un certain regard at the Cannes Film Festival for The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu, which put Romania on the map of film critics and cinemagoers round the world, influenced the style of future local productions, and launched the so-called “new wave.”

Aurora was one of the most expected Romanian films at the Cluj festival. Before the screening, the lobby throbbed with film aficionados, organizers, guests. Over here, the American guests, most of whom were introduced to Romanian cinema through Cristi Puiu; over there, Wim Wenders, the renowned German filmmaker, one of the festival’s VIPs; over there, a spectator ironically addressing a friend: “We’re going to school.”

Not everyone managed to make it to the end. Some decided to walk out, because “nothing happened after the first hour”.

Others said that it was “genius”, “exhibitionist” or “longer than all Lost seasons put together, commercials included”.

Wenders called it “disorienting.”

Still, most of the audience – ecstatic, confused, displeased – is still there when the film crew joins Puiu on stage. His daughter Ileana steps to his right and grabs his hand. Anca – Puiu’s wife and one of the film’s producers – is also there, holding their baby girl, Zoe. “There were many actors in this film…” Puiu continues. “In fact, this is a five-hour picture that eventually turned into a three-hour picture. Many of the actors involved were left out, not for commercial reasons, but simply because this is how we thought things should be.”

Puiu is not an artist who explains himself. A few hours before the screening, at a round table on the marketing of Romanian films in America, he said about trailers: “I don’t make films to catch the audience; I make films for people who love cinema. I hate trailers. I’m not interested in Oscars. I’m not interested in people who are not interested in cinema.”

Mihai Chirilov, the artistic director of TIFF, walks on stage to translate for the foreign guests. It is past 10 p.m. and Chirilov didn’t expect Puiu to speak after the screening.

Someone in the audience asks about the title. “I keep getting that question,” says Puiu. “I didn’t kill anyone in my life. I was really into this story, of a man that ends up committing murder. Especially because, I don’t know how, the beginning always seems promising. And I believe that the beginning is a beginning, period. The beginning of anything.”

This is how Puiu talks. Always. On TV, in print interviews, or live. A hodgepodge of words stemming from a rush of thoughts and concentration, never superficial, but often ob56 • dor • spring 2011

scure, as if thoughts were too elusive to be captured in precise sentences. He adds that Aurora feels like one of those cold mornings when you have to wake up and have to go to school. Then, as always, he sidetracks the initial question and starts explaining some of the film’s genesis: “Our relationship with murder is mediated by television and cinema. We tend to imagine that these stories – murders – happen as they do on screen. I am referring especially to our visual cues, as literature tells us all sorts of things, too. Hence this three-hour story. And the audience complains. Not many can endure; but I’m glad you did. I’m not sure if I succeeded, but it’s been my constant concern – to undermine this image we have about murder, an image that was built by cinema.”

One of the reasons Puiu is making films is the need to find a substitute for words, using the camera as a research and recording tool that can convey at least some of the space-time continuum of the world. In order to better understand the truth – truth in 24 frames per second, as Jean-Luc Godard put it – both the director and the viewer must take their time to observe, listen and strive to put all the pieces together.

“In Cannes I felt like shouting: WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU PEOPLE? YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT A THREE -HOUR MOVIE?” Puiu’s voice, now rising to the level of shouting, covers the entire hall. “YOU THINK KILLING A MAN IS EASY? TAKE A MOMENT AND OBSERVE THIS MURDERER. WHAT’S GOING ON THERE?”

Cristi Puiu didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a director. The world looked different from his ground floor apartment on Fetești Street in Ozana, Balta Albă, the Bucharest neighborhood where he spent his childhood and lived for more than 30 years. Cristi was born on April 3, 1967. His parents were from Botoșani; his mother, Iuliana, was an elementary school teacher, and his father, Emil, managed supplies at Colentina hospital. He grew up with his big sister, Florentina, and little brother Iulian.

They were always climbing trees, as they lived one block away from an orchard. When they were kids, they would pick cherries; later – as teenagers – they would sit and talk for hours, or listen to their friends play guitar in the pavilion amidst the walnut trees. (On New Year’s Eve, during Ceaușescu’s speeches, they would place a speaker on the window sill and blast AC/DC’s Hell’s Bells).

Iulian Puiu, an art director at Re:ply, a communication agency, remembers his brother as a true leader of the neighborhood boys, a stubborn Aries who would make everyone follow. Cristi was the “the smart one who read” and, over the years, he amassed a library he knew by heart. Iulian used to play a game with him: pick out a shelf, then the position of a book on it, and Cristi would instantly name it.

Both parents were amateur painters, and their mother, who kept a diary of her children, once wrote about Cristi that he loved history and drawing. When he was about 10, inspired by his mother’s paintings, as well as those of an uncle from Botoșani, Cristi started taking art lessons. (Florentina was studying violin and Iulian clarinet.) At 12, he tried to make his own charcoal, following the instructions of renaissance artist Cennino Cennini: he put a few linden twigs in a pot, covered them with clay and placed them in the oven.

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“ERR! If you don’t make mistakes, you won’t know things. tempt the world. You have to challenge the universe.”

He wasn’t very successful. He tried to make his own brushes and worked on his canvas stretching skills. When he was 14, he took a test to get into Nicolae Tonitza, an art school. His family, his tutors, everybody thought the exam was going to be a formality.

He failed. This affected him deeply. He stopped painting for a while and decided to study chemistry.

High school was difficult for the Puiu kids: Florentina had to repeat a year, and so did Cristi. On his second run at 12th grade he was expelled. It took him seven years to graduate. Because of the family’s financial shortcomings, Iulian transferred to evening classes and got a job at the heating plant. “I had to provide for my brother,” he remembers. “When I was buying socks, I would buy two pairs. Underpants, shoes, everything in pairs.” Sometimes Cristi would ask for money to buy clothes, but he bought books instead. He was doing poorly in school because he didn’t care – he would rather stay home and read.

After high school he joined the army, determined to follow it up with history or philosophy. He took up painting again because of friends with an art background, and his army comrades nicknamed him The Painter. Because of his poor school records and an aunt that lived in England – something frowned upon in communism – he was sent to a tank regiment in Constanța, where he had to serve alongside convicts, and men from correctional facilities. He brought along a carton of Kent cigarettes and a pack of coffee, which greased his way to a first leave a few weeks later, after a superior found out about his artistic skills and asked him to paint a 7 by 2 meters landscape on a wall of the shooting simulator. Then they had him paint planes and tanks on billboards. Things got worse when he was transferred to “diribau” in Bucharest (forced labor for soldiers with lousy records) – he had to shovel, load cement, the kind of labor that he believes contributed to a cervical disc hernia that prohibits him from lifting heavy weights. Art came to his rescue again: he spent three months on a copy of an Aivazovsky for an army captain.

When the ’89 coup began, Puiu was hospitalized with indigestion. He was discharged in early 1990 and joined, along with brother Iulian, the nightly crowds in the University Square shouting slogans against FSN (National Salvation Front), and then against mineworkers. He then got a job as a fire fighter at the Museum of Art where, before being fired for leaving his post, he would stare undisturbed at paintings by Paul Cézanne and Pierre Bonnard.

For a long time, he didn’t think cinema could be art. It was too technical; not as tactile as painting. Movies meant entertainment, Saturday night westerns, thrillers, film noir, and, of course, Sergiu Nicolaescu – who would later become his artistic nemesis. The Puiu brothers remember that Nicolaescu used to swing by the neighborhood – he once stopped to talk to the kids about films, a moment of sheer joy for them. Later,

his friends took him to the Cinematheque to see The Exterminating Angel by Luis Buñuel, a film that made him think. But Puiu was still dreaming about painting.

In 1990 he participated in a joint exhibition with six other young Romanian painters, in Lausanne. One of his best friends, painter Matei Șerban Sandu, had an aunt in Switzerland. She knew someone at an art gallery there who helped organize a cultural exchange. The trip to Switzerland was a cultural shock for young Puiu, who left Bucharest wearing espadrilles, jeans made in Turkey, and a tank top. When he returned, he applied to get into the Bucharest Art Institute and he failed. It occurred to him that he wouldn’t be able to make a living from painting and decided to study jewelry in Geneva, a trade he was passionate about and that could have paid for his painting. (His wife, Anca, who grew up across the street, said that Cristi once made her a brass bracelet and also gave her a ring he made from her grandmother’s molten jewelry.

They met during the late ’80s – she was 16, he was 21 – when Cristi crossed the street to offer her a cherry.) Eventually, in 1992, he was accepted at École Supérieure d’Art Visuel in Geneva, painting department.

After the first year he transferred to film. He had seen Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger than Paradise, the story of a three slackers in ’80s lethargic America; then Oliver Stone’s JFK, which made him say: “I can do that! Now I understand cinema.”

What he saw then, but couldn’t articulate until later, were things that pertained to image interpretation. The first was the brain’s ability to take static frames and turn them into movement; the second, its propensity to give meaning to a string of images, regardless of editing or length.

He says he chose film for two reasons. First, he believed he had learned everything there was to learn about painting in an academic environment, and all that was left to do was practice. Second, film was a challenge. He was 26 at the time, and Iulian remembers his family was quite confused. “First he wanted jewelry, then painting and now directing. We kept telling him: You’ll come back a tailor. And he would answer: It’s a process. You search, you find. What’s the problem with that?”

The film he made for the admission exam catapulted him directly into the second year. There he learned everything there was to know about the mechanics – cameras, loading film, sound – but he never cared too much about that. In his spare time he would watch up to six movies a day just to catch up. What interested him most was the function movies can have, as well as the relationships between characters and the ones between the spectator and the film. He once told me: “I am very Bauhaus, in my mind. I really believe that function determines shape. You just can’t say that you make movies because people need them.”

Puiu found the primary function of cinema: a technique for investigating reality, a means of recording the world. In an ardor • spring 2011 • 57

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“Artists get involved in the order of things. a criminal gets involved as well – but he does it brutally. he’s the dark side of the creator. i’ve come to believe creator=dictator. dictator=creator.” dor • spring 2011 • 59

ticle in Dilema on his debut film Stuff and Dough he said: “In my final year I was interested in the realist film. My purpose was to abolish the frontier between fiction and documentary, in an attempt to bring together the observer and the inventor.

I wrote all about it in my graduation thesis. If I applied some of the conclusions I had reached, they would’ve enabled the creation of a different type of cinema.”

Critic Alex. Leo Șerban said about Stuff and Dough (2001) that it landed like a UFO in Romanian cinema. “It was so new, so fresh and challenging that the cinema world did not know how to react to it.” Film critic Andrei Gorzo calls it “the head of a bridge.” Stuff and Dough broke a pattern, dazzling critics from the first press screening in 2000 – Gorzo remembers one critic called it “providential.” The film launched the careers of actors Dragoș Bucur, Ioana Flora and Alexandru Papadopol, and, more importantly, of the screenwriting duo of Puiu and Răzvan Rădulescu. (Because they were fresh, the more experienced Stere Gulea and Lucian Pintilie asked them to write scripts for them.)

Today, Stuff and Dough appears to have been a success. But at the time, the movie was accused of being vulgar because of all the cocks, shits and fucks (nonetheless fewer than in the original script), that spiced up the journey of three friends to Bucharest, to deliver a bag of “medical substances,” as the gangster who paid for the delivery called it.

Some said it was just amateurish nonsense anyone could have shot, and that it doesn’t qualify as cinema. What’s hard about shooting for an hour in a van? (“I’ve seen more exciting X-ray films,” a viewer commented on cinemagia.ro) The distribution shortcomings stopped it from becoming a box-office hit. (According to the National Centre for Cinematography, CNC, there were almost 4,000 spectators by 2007; Puiu intends to release it on DVD this year.)

When he returned to Romania from Switzerland, he wasn’t entirely convinced his future was in the movie industry. He received an award for his graduation film and another of his films had been selected at Locarno, yet with the money he managed to save up in Switzerland he bought a flat he intended to turn into a painting studio. For a while he worked in television, perfecting his documentary making skills.

The idea for Stuff and Dough came to him in 1998, when Anca’s brother died in a car accident while hauling merchandise. He was a student, but he also managed a small neighborhood kiosk. Puiu saw that several of his friends were running all sorts of businesses in order to make a living. They compromised. This became the subject of the movie: Papadopol agrees to make deliveries for a local gangster in order to open a shop downtown, one step up compared to his parents’ balcony kiosk.

At the time Puiu was still writing long hand, but he wrote his part of the script on Rădulescu’s computer. (Rădulescu was a young writer that Puiu had befriended several years before.) They began exchanging emails with parts of the script and reworking them until they reached common ground. The problems began after Stuff and Dough won funding from the CNC. The RoFilm producer embezzled part of the funds and sabotaged the production of the film every step of the way.

A movie about making compromises became a compromise in itself. The money was barely enough for a rusty van; the fees were hardly ever paid; the technical support team was 60 • dor • spring 2011

always arguing; promises weren’t kept; when actors were asking for water they were told there was no money; there was no one to ensure the continuity of the props; and when Puiu asked the producer for help, the answer he got was: “Who do you think you are? Spielberg? Get out.”

Harassed, disgraced, with the film almost destroyed, he decided to ask the party for help. Since the beginning of the ’90s Puiu had become a member of the center-right National Peasant Party, thinking that if the communists were ever to make a comeback, he’d love to be thrown in jail with the resistance.

Although not an active member, he paid his membership fees.

He also knew that the RoFilm manager was a member of the same party. He went to ask for help, but to no avail. The film would have never come out without the financing received from Pintilie and without Gulea’s help, who filed a complaint with the Romanian Court of Audit. Around the time of the release, Puiu wrote in the cultural weekly Dilema: “[The movie] is ready. It has a beginning and an end and there is even a certain shine to it. It makes sense. And still I cannot distance myself enough. Each line, each cut, each frame shows me how far I strayed from the initial project.”

In 2001, Stuff and Dough went to Cannes, brought by Marie-Pierre Macia, the director of Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at that time. (Macia was also Cristian Mungiu’s personal counselor for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.) It was an exhilarating moment. Chirilov remembers he felt the movie was like a book he had just read and now wanted to share with others.

So at Cannes he told everyone to go see it, he helped the crew, and he even distributed flyers. Something had happened to Romanian cinema and it was all because of Cristi Puiu, a newcomer with his own views on cinema, an outsider.

Not much had changed when Puiu returned from Berlin in 2004 with The Golden Bear for A Carton of Kent and a Pack of Coffee. There was not a single soul in Romanian cinema that hadn’t heard of him, but he was considered more of an uncomfortable, abrasive debutant. “He didn’t have the wariness or the conservation instinct of a debutant,” remembers Gorzo. “He made many enemies before getting the international press on his side. He never made a movie to make friends. He criticized those who controlled everything, he denounced the corruption and the mediocrity of the system, and he was not afraid to name names. And thanks to him, things have got a little better.”

He criticized the CNC’s ways of granting funds, both in 2001, when Rădulescu and he were declined funding in favor of Gulea and Pintilie, and in 2003, when he received money for Kent. In 2003 he wrote in Dilema that Romanian film is bad because the directors “clog cinemas with sub-mediocre productions.” “To pay for a ticket to see a Romanian movie is a sign of affluence, a fad, if not even proof of masochism. (…) It is not easy for me to be this drastic with my fellow colleagues, and I believe many will be angry, but I believe this is a fair attitude.”

Reactions were immediate, and just before the short film won in Berlin, there was a kind of anti-Puiu movement going.

Leo Șerban said that the award was not as important as it first seemed and that “I am afraid that Puiu’s most durable talent is that of pissing everybody off.”

The short was a double tribute Puiu paid to Jarmusch and his Coffee and Cigarettes, and to Moromeții, directed by Gulea, which Puiu considers one of the best Romanian films ever made, next to The Forest of the Hanged by Liviu Ciulei and Sequences by Alexandru Tatos. Initially, Puiu wanted the father and son that meet in the restaurant to be played by Rebengiuc and Ionel Mihăilescu, the father-son duo in Moromeții. But eventually the son was played by Mimi Brănescu after Puiu had an argument with Mihăilescu, allegedly because the latter had failed to memorize his lines.

Puiu believes the director is the supreme authority on set.

He’s always hated some Romanian actors’ propensity to improvise or recite in a dramatic fashion. He says that when interacting with actors his most commonly used words are: “Bad. Very bad.” He lets them have a take whichever way they want, lets them watch it, but then he has one his way, too.

Luminița Gheorghiu, who stars in all three of Puiu’s feature films, describes him as “horrible” – she used to call him Hitler on the set of Lăzărescu –, but she also says “I’d play any part, anytime, for Cristi Puiu. He is the director with whom I know I cannot fail.”

After the 2005 Cannes festival, where The Death of Mister Lăzărescu was awarded Un certain regard, the press, especially the foreign one, gave extensive praise to the 2h 34min Romanian film, which had become an unexpected hit. Lăzărescu was far from being a certainty. The film was first screened in an almost empty theatre and got only two or three reviews. The one written by Jay Weissberg in Variety, combined with the pro-Puiu lobby of Argentinean critic Eduardo Antin (Quintin) brought a large audience to its second screening.

Dozens of festivals and awards followed, and the film topped critics’ lists, both in 2005 and 2006. It was a glorious moment for Puiu and Romanian cinema, but it didn’t come easily.

The story of the 63-year-old man dying before the eyes of his neighbors, ambulance staff and medics, while being shuttled in the middle of the night from one hospital to another, began for Puiu shortly after Stuff was presented at Cannes.

One night, due to mere indigestion he started throwing up blood. Iulian remembers receiving a phone call from Anca’s mom: “Come quickly, Cristi is dying.” He got in his Renault and barely made it to the hospital. “I was shitting my pants. And my dad said: Son, I don’t know what to say. He lost about one liter of blood. That’s a lot.” Cristi had had an aneurysm, a blood vessel ruptured in his stomach, and the doctors forced an endoscope down his throat to stop the bleeding and remove the clots. Iulian could hear Cristi screaming with pain from the corridor. He calmed down when he finally saw him, although Cristi looked like a ghost: in a wheelchair, pale, haggard, both feet on the same footrest, as the other one was broken.

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This traumatic experience sparked a bout of hypochondria for Puiu, which would produce a series of self-diagnosed deathly diseases before it produced a memorable movie: cancer, multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, mad cow disease. It is because of his fears that Puiu is weary of flying. This is why he doesn’t attend most festivals and why his first US trip only happened at the end of 2010.

Apart from fighting his fear of illness and death, Puiu also fought the CNC. Having two projects rejected by the Center in 2003, he came up with his own concept: micro budget films. As cheap as possible, shot in digital, with friends and acquaintances as actors. He identified six ideas and gathered them under the title Six Stories from the Outskirts of Bucharest. He co-wrote all with Rădulescu.

It was Lăzărescu’s story they related to the most. The character, Dante Remus Lăzărescu (played by Ion Fiscuteanu) was reminiscent of both their fathers and Cristi’s hypochondria.

They conducted research in hospitals, they spent time in the E.R., took turns writing, and finally entered the project in the CNC contest of 2004. It was rejected.

Outraged, Puiu filed an appeal with the Minister of Culture, who, impressed by the recent award Puiu won in Berlin, requested the commission to finance the film. He got the money, but this public battle of wills put a tremendous amount of pressure on him to make a great film. (The movie was produced by Mandragora, the production company founded by Puiu in May 2004 together with his wife and an old friend.)

Production literally wore him out. The film was shot in November-December 2004, 40 exhausting nights in hospitals and apartments; 40 nights followed by 40 mornings and afternoons of reviews; 40 nights in which Puiu resembled a zombie. In the making of and the photo album on the DVD, Puiu looks detached, despondent. The images perfectly capture his power of concentration, but also the anxiety of some of the crew members. No wonder Iulian says his brother “makes the air vibrate without uttering a word.”

Lăzărescu was shot with a handheld camera. Puiu meant to transfer a kind of restlessness to the observing camera; he wanted it to have absolute freedom to follow Lăzărescu into his world, but without anticipating his every move. And since he didn’t always get what he wanted, Puiu says he had to choreograph every movement – not an easy task when it comes to six-minute shots.

This movie was an important stage in crystallizing Puiu’s views on cinema. In an interview with Observator Cultural, he said “I am preoccupied with conveying this truth of reality as accurately as possible – since the perfect depiction is impossible. I am no fool. I know I’ll never get there. But it is particularly important for me to try.” Truth is achieved through as few cuts as possible in the editing – “every cut is a lie” –

“I don’t make films to catch the audience; I make them for people who love cinema. I’m not interested in people who are not interested in cinema.” dor • spring 2011 • 61

and through long scenes, such as the hour spent in the apartment, with Lăzărescu and his cats, a scene that goes beyond a simple cinematographic exposition and turns into a record of the prosaic preceding death. Lăzărescu succeeds in expressing philosophical concepts such as the loneliness of death, love, and our inability to help each other. Maybe that explains Puiu’s indignation when Lăzărescu was described as a film about the shortcomings of the medical system – it sounded too simple. For him, it is a film about a dying man and the 62 • dor • spring 2011

last people he meets. Some of them look down on him, some of them help him, but clearly none of them wish to harm him – they are just overcome by problems and prejudice.

At some point Lăzărescu tells the nurse on the ambulance: “We are miserable human beings madam.” These words capture Puiu’s profoundly human manifesto: we are all here to die and we can’t even deal with each other on our way there.

“I don’t think that the things you discover by this process will change your life, I’m not so optimistic,” Puiu told an Ameri-

can journalist. “But I think you can deliver a very precise story about humans in order to allow the audience to assume – to help the audience to assume, at first I help myself to assume something – that we are weak. To accept our weakness and our failures. We do not talk enough about our imperfections, and cinema can confront that.”

The director’s main achievement, film expert Petre Rado wrote, is succeeding in telling “in real time a story that is so lifelike that it attains a level of strange documentary credibil-

ity.” Quintin, who has also seen Stuff, said he wasn’t prepared for such an exquisite proof of artistry and that Puiu is one of the few contemporary filmmakers that “is very close to becoming a maestro” after only two films.

Lăzărescu was very well received in Romania – it brought in almost 30,000 viewers and a fair share of detractors. People complained about the duration, the “miserableness” of the story, and the relationship Puiu began with businessman Bobby Păunescu, one of the film’s producers.

Soon, the Lăzărescu style was to be found in other films: The Paper Will be Blue, 12:08 East of Bucharest, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. It was a film that spawned films. “His influence is very wide,” says Gorzo. “There are those who regard it as a recipe. There are others who made it a starting point for their own search. And there are those who were motivated by the movie’s success.” The focus that was placed upon Romanian film by Lăzărescu led to epithets such as “the new wave,” which Puiu countered immediately. He did not, and still does not, believe in a “new wave” because, he says, for there to be a new wave there have to be authors as well. And there are no authors in the Romanian cinema, except for the accidental ones and a handful of rookies.

The phrase stuck, helped along by several prizes abroad, culminating with the Palme D’Or award for 4,3,2. “Puiu put us on the map,” Leo Șerban wrote in an e-mail. “I cannot pinpoint it better than this: Puiu planted the seed, Porumboiu watered it, and Mungiu harvested.” The battle that the young directors lead against the CNC, against obsolete regulations, against the complacent attitude on set seemed validated by each and every award received abroad.

“The artist’s desire to protect his uniqueness and singularity is only natural,” Gorzo told me when I asked him about the phrase ”the new wave.” “But it is a generalization that we all use – critics, distributors, public. It is appropriate to talk about a new Romanian cinema, about a new wave. There is no lie in it. There is a clear distinction between the Romanian cinema before and after 2001. We have to put a label on it. People work with definitions. One cannot regard each person individually.”

The debates between critics and filmmakers pertain to an isolated world, since the Romanian audience is still small. At the Cluj round table about Romanian film in the USA, Porumboiu was optimistic, and said he feels an audience is forming.

A more pessimistic Muntean expressed his disbelief in Romanians’ interest in anything else but blockbusters: “The future of our films is in a museum.” Puiu added that we are a nation that has consumed almost all post-communist products in English: music, films, Internet. “We have been waiting for the Americans to come. We have been watching American movies. We grew up with westerns. The audience is just the same. We grew to believe that unless it’s American, it’s not cinema. Unless it’s in English, it has no value. It will probably take us 100 years.”

Weissberg from Variety, a Romanian film enthusiast, told me during TIFF that it is not fair to expect Puiu, Porumboiu or Muntean to make films for the masses: “These people create art films, others make comedies. Romanian cinema will be deemed healthy only when there will be such diversity. Until then, one cannot expect Puiu to direct Toy Story 3. It is not fair. It is not fair to be burdened with this responsibility. No artist can be the savior of the country he lives in.” dor • spring 2011 • 63

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“Interviews are perpetual translations of thoughts, and the results don’t always reflect what we aimed to convey.”

Cristi Puiu’s apartment is a mess. Three weeks after Aurora premiered in Cluj, Puiu’s family has just returned from viewing an apartment. The five of them: Cristi, Anca and their three girls, Smaranda, Ileana and baby Zoe, plus Otto, a permanently hungry pug, thick as a log. The Puius have been living in this downtown apartment for some years now, but they are looking for something more spacious.

Cristi wouldn’t mind moving back to Balta Albă, but he knows the girls wouldn’t like that. The connection to the neighborhood of his childhood and the people he met there are ubiquitous in his films. Both Lăzărescu and Viorel live on Feteşti Street, just as he did.

The white front door opens into a hallway that leads into a living room crammed with books and a wooden table apparently used for storage. In the next room, part of the same living room, Puiu is vacuuming crumbs left over from last night’s TV watching session. A huge painting of an old telephone, painted by Puiu himself, hangs over the couch. On the wall between the living room and the kitchen there are two shelves packed with over 1,000 DVDs. They include those whose path he follows: John Cassavetes, Raymond Depardon and Frederick Wiseman, and those to which he goes back when he wants food for the soul: Akira Kurosawa, Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut. Among them there’s one of his favorite movies: La Maman et la Putain by Jean Eustache. Today he brought a stack of DVDs: some Ingmar Bergman films and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus for the girls. He also bought some bottles of beer, wine, gin, which he stashes in the kitchen fridge.

The kitchen often comes up when you read about Puiu; it is where he retreats to do the cooking, but it’s also where he meets with reporters. Puiu enjoys a challenge, and loves to talk (once, when he was struggling with his hypochondria, a doctor asked him if he eats as fast as he talks).

The kitchen is L shaped around the fridge and the washing machine, small and crammed: dishes, hangers, glasses, espresso machine, laptop, and pots of azaleas. We sit on the colored pneumatic bar stools, leaning on the kitchen slab.

Puiu pours me a beer – he has Stella and Peroni – makes a gin and tonic for Anca and a Campari Orange for himself.

Ileana takes the dog out for a walk and then plays with a hula hoop. Smaranda tries on her brand new tennis outfit. In the middle of all this commotion, there’s Puiu, dressed in a pale pink and cream colored shirt, cheerful, jolly, and visibly affectionate when calling his daughters “honey.” He has cut his hair since Cluj, but he still has the habit of tucking it behind the ears, combined with the habit of rubbing his face with his hands, a gesture that makes one think of sandpaper when he is unshaven. He’s going grey around the temples, but that gives him a rather sophisticated look. Then there’s his nose, 64 • dor • spring 2011

sharp, anchoring the entire face, and the pale green eyes, so terrifying in Aurora, and always restless.

It’s not long before we get to Aurora. After Lăzărescu Puiu intended to shoot Food for Small Fish (after a script initially written for Gulea). He even received funds from CNC. But at the end of 2006, they rejected another two of Puiu’s projects and he fought back. Eugen Şerbănescu, head of CNC, mocked him in a public letter and Puiu refused the money for Food and said he would never ask them for funding again. He felt alone in this, and he was left without a project to work on. Furthermore, there were the uncanny personal events following Lăzărescu. Rădulescu’s father died before the movie premiered in Romania, Puiu’s father passed away in spring 2007, and at the end of the same year Fiscuteanu also died.

Anca signed him up to some film markets, where directors, producers and distributors share ideas. Puiu had an idea for a film about a murderer. The idea came from his love for crime novels and some documentaries on serial killers he’d seen on TVR. The perspective of digging deeper into the soul of a murderer intrigued him. He asked a prosecutor friend to allow him to watch murderers’ depositions. He understood there are no clear motivations and decided upon creating the subjective portrait of a murderer, going beyond the explanations and the causes characteristic to this genre.

The 80 meetings he had in Berlin and Rotterdam enabled him to refine this idea. Back in Romania, he went to the mountains to write the script. (He no longer worked with Rădulescu, a split Puiu doesn’t talk about.) As a wife, but also as a producer, Anca (who jokingly calls herself “the bitch that brings up money”) convinced him that he must apply for funding from the CNC if he is to access money from abroad for a co-production. Puiu did as his wife advised and in the summer of 2008 he received over 1.5 million lei (some 350,000 euros). Anca managed to raise the rest – up to two million euros – from foreign partners.

The most difficult thing was the casting for Viorel. Over 60 actors auditioned, none of them perfect for the role. Clara Vodă, who plays Viorel’s mistress, suggested he should try, too. When Puiu evaluated his own tape, he noticed a series of gestures he didn’t like, but he discovered the look he was searching for: that of a man obsessed with his mission.

Some critics said that no one else could have played this part. Leo Șerban sees Aurora as a movie in the first person, with Puiu, and about Puiu’s obsessions: “It is a story about his inner landscape, a type of self-portrait by means of an alter ego.” “Viorel showcases the worst in Puiu,” Gorzo added. Puiu says that there are few who can begin to comprehend the importance of his undertaking in Aurora. “It’s Madame Bovary, c’est moi. I take the role and I go all the way. I’ll be it and I’ll

look for the murderer inside of me. I’ll take upon myself this extremely delicate position.”

Aurora is a complex film, and Puiu has talked a lot about it.

He already disclosed the characters and the story – 36 hours in the life of a metallurgical engineer, divorced, father of two, who ends up committing murder. He also suggested possible interpretations, as he believes the story is much less important than the cinema.

Puiu opted for a witness-camera again, this time mounted on a tripod, which turns the spectator into a direct observer.

The story unfolds before your eyes, which means that there are no clues, such as what relationships exist between characters, what motivates them, etc. – so typical for the vast majority of films. Aurora is a puzzle. It is a radical film to be discovered during and especially after the viewing.

“Making a movie is like building a path to the world,” says Puiu. “It is a path to things. It’s research.” Trying to find the murderer within him, Puiu takes his research to the highest limits of authenticity. This boundary is signaled by the abrupt cuts that disrupt the long sequences. It is Puiu’s way of saying “there’s no story, just a storyteller.”

According to Puiu, we all have our own truths, we only see what we choose to see and we synthesize other people’s messages and, in fact, most of the time we’re not even paying attention. A powerful moment, like that of a murder, marks an apocalyptic clash between several worlds, each with its own truth. Aurora is precisely about the details that we’re missing, a very difficult aspect to convey in a movie. How can one express cinematographically that some things are visible and others are not? How can one suggest that there’s an author cutting the material as he wishes – regardless if that helps the story or not?

Puiu built Aurora based on two things: “On one hand, I’m relying, cinematographically, on the partial truths I have access to – characters vanishing behind walls, undisclosed identities – and on the other, I’m assuming the spectator was present, they know what I am talking about when I show them a man.” Like he did for Lăzărescu, Puiu undertook to capture a life: “I don’t make a movie to show a story. I make a movie to show people. Take a look at the person; take a look at people.”

Puiu said he dreams of capturing a day on film. But not just in any way. He doesn’t want to capture something just because it can be captured. He doesn’t want to undermine the story completely. His ideal film lies on the thin and tense line between what’s unpredictable and what’s controllable.

He loves accidental shots – when people, other than the extras, pass by, when something falls – and yet he does not want to make a documentary. He says he’s too self-conscious and he believes that real intimacy cannot be achieved when mediated by a camera. He prefers the intimacy of the author’s mind, even if it presents a filtered, relatively controllable truth.

In Puiu’s fiction the quest for the unpredictable is constantly battling a desire for control. Not knowing is hard when you know it all. He somewhat achieves that in Aurora because, although Puiu the director controls the choreography of the shots, Puiu the actor does not fully understand

the murderer he’s playing. His ideal film would probably be a type of fictional documentary, in which some actors playing pre-determined parts are confronted with unforeseen situations they have to manage. Meanwhile, the director and the team are fumbling – they are making a movie in order to find out what it is they want to say, as Cassavetes put it.

“It’s a process of learning and we are all part of it” says Puiu. “Director, cameraman, actor, everyone. We are conducting research. We are not interested in the final outcome.

The final outcome will be a mere pale expression of the cognitive process. And should this pale expression make the audience question themselves and get them thinking, then we achieved something. Get them thinking would of course mean to impart all those things words cannot express. Otherwise, why would we be making films?”

He talked about all these in the kitchen that evening we spent together. He smoked several cigarettes, had some coffee and his good mood slowly sullened. As time passed, Puiu kept repeating phrases such as: “it’s very hard” and “it’s very complicated” – regardless of the topic: capturing ideas in images, raising money for film, team work. He is criticized for being difficult when he makes a movie, but it’s not an easy process for him either: “I can consider myself a person difficult to live with, but I could also say that I am a person that has a hard time living with myself. So, a little consideration, please.”

He sacrificed friends for his vision (Rădulescu is just one of the many). “I don’t think you can find in the world of cinema too many authors that are also friends at the same time. The impetus that drives you to make movies or art in general is much too potent not to consume the friendship. It’s very complicated. It’s very complicated.”

Sometimes he even argues with critics, usually for criticizing something without compelling arguments. But they usually make up, as he needs their feedback. But the way some critics or spectators are on the hunt for mistakes, just to be the first to bust him, saddens him deeply. It’s why he wears a pendant around his neck – the scapegoat.

Puiu sometimes seems annoyed with the world, as Leo Șerban puts it. His stubbornness and obsessions can be overwhelming. His way of making movies might not be the only legitimate one, but it does consume him. “Once you’ve discovered a path, what is your biggest responsibility?” Gorzo wonders. “To stop, fearing that nobody would be able to follow you? Or to take that path, aware of the risk of it being a dead end, of the risk of you ending up alone?”

Aurora has already gathered a few festival awards, but it will be a difficult movie to market and distribute and the path Puiu has chosen seems to become even more obscure. He says that, compared to Aurora, Lăzărescu is an easy film, considering all the clues and explanations. And he has no intention of going back to that. „Bye bye, don’t cry. Good bye. GOOD BYE. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take it anymore. I turn on the TV and all I see is explanations. Bye. I don’t care. I am just not interested. And you know why I am not interested?

Because it’s all bullshit, that’s why. It’s rubbish. It’s rubbish.

OK, an explanation. But what does it explain?”

Cristian Lupșa is the editor of DoR. Carmen Gociu is the art director of the magazine.

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dor • spring 2011 • 67

One Thursday evening, at the end of April 2010, Vama Veche was quiet, calm and almost deserted. The main street, that houses, among others, the wooden skeleton of the bar La Piraţi (Pirates’), the double floor restaurant/canteen La Canapele (Couches’), and, a little bit further down, the very popular Bibi Bistro, was free of people and cars. At the end of it, in the dark, you could make out the sea. Because it was completely people-and-carfree, you could also see something else: a fresh, smooth, gray strip of asphalt. The worn-out alley that will always be remebered for the dust people used to kick up with every step, had been covered with a clean carpet, ready to welcome tourists.

At about nine in the evening, the most lively spot was the Stuf beach bar, a wooden (and reed) construction with rustic touches and a profit margin liberated from the burden of having a too-expensive décor. The speakers blared Depeche Mode and about 50 people – two groups of smart-casuals in their 30s and a few couples of silent teenagers – were scattered at the tables, enjoying the beer, wine and spirits, almost as high-priced as those in Bucharest. The toilet, which wasn’t there the summer before, had functional sinks, liquid soap and ceramic tiles.

A long awaited necessity, but one which will surely be mentioned among the changes that make nostalgics sadly conclude that “Vama isn’t what it used to be.”

Part of the beach was immersed in darkness; the sea was but an interrupted hush. The light bulb on the totem in front of Stuf, a wooden, carved pole about three to four meters high, which used to shed light on everything around it, was out. Still, in the sallowish lights shining from under the rooftops, you could still make out the curves of some tents planted in the nearby sand. Out of the halflight, fragments of conversations would sometimes emerge, coming from a group of guitarless young people.

Almost everything had a natural serenity to it.

Commotion could only be found behind the bar. For half hour, 14 men carried beer, water and Red Bull crates in a hurry somewhere beyond the place where Ovidiu, the pub’s iconic owner, prepared his coffee in a pot.

It was Thursday, April 29, and Vama Veche – a former rebel enclave, now one of the most popular Romanian searesorts, after Mamaia, Costineşti and Neptun – was awaiting Labor Day weekend.

The Vama Veche village, part of the Limanu township, is near the border with Bulgaria, and was set up in 1811 by the Gagauzes, who named it Ilanlîk. This is a place with such an improbable story that few others in Romania can match it. First of all, Vama Veche is an accident.

A historical, and then a cultural one, whose career as a place with a special, bohemian and nonconformist spirit began as 68 • dor • spring 2011

a modest and circumstantial substitute for a more appealing destination of interwar Romanians: Balchik.

The Bulgarian sea-resort was located in the Cadrilater area, a region in South Dobrudja which belonged to Romania between 1913 and 1940. (When the Romanian frontier was modified to include the Cadrilater, Ilanlîk turned into Vama Veche/Old Customs – the place where the old frontier used to be.) At the time, mostly owing to Queen Mary, Balchik was the favorite destination for the Romanian artistic and political elites. In 1926, it had 6,500 inhabitants (the majority of whom were Muslim) and stretched over a few white hills of Southern Dobrudja. It was surrounded by a rich forest that came within 50 meters of the sea and was crossed by small streets meandering towards the harbor, flanked by red-shingled, white, stylish villas.

Visitors enjoyed promenades, parties and walks along the beach. They relaxed in Turkish coffee shops, where they smoked hookah and drank coffee made in a pot. Some of them sunbathed nude. They discussed books, music, theater and politics. And at the end of the holiday they came back not only relaxed, but also validated. It was the place to be if you were (or aspired to be) someone in Bucharest.

On September 7, 1940, The Cadrilater was returned to Bulgaria, and the frontier moved back, near the village Vama Veche.

According to Murat Soium, the only person at work in the Limanu Townhall the Friday before May 1, back in those days Vama was a village of 15 to 20 houses, lined up on both sides of the road. Soium, 58, was born in the nearby village of 2 Mai, and his features are proof of the mixture of Turks, Tatars and Gagauzes living there for hundreds of years. He says that the area next to the beach, and even the place where Stuf bar is now, was originally covered in thornbush and you needed a machete to walk through it.

Vama was not necessarily a fishermen village. Maybe some people fished, but most of them either worked in state-run agriculture, or took care of some animals and garden. Tourists would stop in 2 Mai, especially because it had a school camp. Families with small children used stay there for two or three months – the same every year. Important people, artists, famous actors, they all became regulars, eventually befriending the villagers.

Soium isn’t sure of the details, but he remembers that during the mid ’60s, nobody had heard of tourists in Vama Veche.

Photographs: After the war, some of the BalVeche. Not many, but more joined year after chik bohemians tried to find or year. Until the ’89 Revolution, they had their Previous spread A couple making out in the water, in Vama Veche. recreate a part of the atmosphere in the own center, a camp, in a house somewhere They met a couple of hours before and they kissed before finding out Dobrudja-style houses next to the border. on the outskirts of the village. They liked it each other’s name.

Mamaia and Mangalia were popular resorts because no one was there and they could Down Fishermen at work before even when Balchik was part of Romania, mind their own business and have fun. sunrise, bringing fresh fish for the local markets. but had become destinations for the new The Vama fans slept in tents, on the beach communist elite. Therefore, the old elite or in the villagers’ gardens. They brought (and those who were raised in that spirit) food from home or bought whatever they had to seek refuge somewhere to the south, could find around the village. And because first in 2 Mai and, starting with the ’60s, in Vama Veche. the customs officers did nothing more than seldom ask for One of the factors that pushed them south was probably the their identification documents, in time the place became an isdevelopment project of the Jupiter and Neptun-Olimp resorts land where, besides nudism, you could talk without much fear north of Vama Veche. Being working-class destinations, enorabout the world outside Romania: from western music and mous hotels were built for thousands of tourists. The beaches books, to the Ceauşescu regime. They probably wouldn’t have had to be more accommodating; therefore sand was brought been able to start a revolution, but, the same way the interwar from 2 Mai, where the beach was up to 100 meters wide. In bohemians had chosen Balchik as their peaceful oasis, here Vama Veche, however, being a frontier settlement, high buildwas a community who had created its own version of freedom. ings could not be erected, as everything coming from Bulgaria After the revolution, more and more people started coming had to be visible from faraway. Soium remembers that, in ’67, here. Next to initial Vama goers, who were getting older, more a group of students from the University of Cluj came to Vama and more young people found out about the frontier village.

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Most of them were students, as the village’s fame spread Of course, Mamaia and Costineşti had much more to gain out mostly in collegiate circles. Therefore, the “Vama Veche from the new wave of young tourists, as they were more acspirit” outlived the communist era, protected by inertia: it no cessible and offered more clubs, bars and street cafés. Howlonger existed to be against something, but to be for itself. ever, Vama attracted enough of them. Even if it was still far At the end of the ’90s, Vama exploded. A pop-rock band from concepts like “guesthouses”, “reservations” or “services” called Vama Veche (which started in ’96) recorded the moment and had a reputation of being “owned by rockers,” Vama was with the hit Vama Veche, released at the beginning of 1999. It cheaper than any other place on the Romanian seaside. soon became that summer’s anthem: “To Vama Veche I took When the number of tourists increased, the village became off / To find my pair and live well off / In Vama Veche I touched appealing to those eager to make money. “They started builddown / And started acting like a clown / On Vama Veche beach ing guesthouses, bars, terrace cafés, organizing concerts,” I stay / Her lips kissing my ear all day / Vama Veche’s the only says Soium. “It’s not like before. Most of them come for the place / We’ll find our pairs in an embrace.” The song sold an weekend, they don’t stay for months like they used to. For Laaccessible idea: the beach is where we have fun and hook up. bor Day, there will probably be around 10,000 people.”

Who wouldn’t be curious to see such a place? What teenager Vama got crazy on Friday, April 30, around wouldn’t want to reach the beach of promises? noon. Hundreds and hundreds of exhausted people Maybe the band is not responsible for the avalanche of flooded the main street. A guy with shaved head, dressed in tourists that followed, maybe it had already begun, but they army pants and nothing else, carrying a certainly succeeded to put their reasons backpack, stopped where the Ion Creangă into words. In the early 2000s, with RoStreet makes a left toward Stuf and, pointing manian dance music going into heavy roPhotographs down with his finger, screamed to nobody in tation on the radio, outfits like the newly Up A group of guys help a stranded particular: “Yo, who put asphalt here?” A established Atomic TV sold the “at the driver get his car out of the sand.

“Dude, I didn’t want to end up here, teenager with a Japanese-style haircut, who beach, in the sun” idea even more conbut some guys blocked me.” was heading right to Expirat, answered with vincingly to teenagers with increased Next Page Djena Mariette, Antonia laughter: “Some fucking wankers!” social mobility. Modest as they still were, Wagner and Emad Sa’adeh, volunteers working in Romania, They kept on coming: packed in the the advantages of capitalism enabled sharing breakfast on the beach, in buses that arrived every half hour; driven many parents to give an affirmative anfront of their tent. by taxi drivers who charged extra to bring swer to the “Papa, let me go to the beach!”

A sketch artist draws a group portrait in front of an audience. them from 2 Mai; or in their own cars (from plea. At least for the weekend.

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Romanian Dacias to SUVs) which they parked on each side of the road in a line almost one kilometer long.

By nightfall, 10,000 people had gathered on the terrace cafés, the beach, the guest houses or tents.

You could not get into Bibi’s Bistro after 9 pm. The once grocery store now turned bistro

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Photographs Previous spread On the beach, people check out their tan before sunset.

Down On the night of May 1, a few men jump on the floor of a bar, after having ripped it off and thrown into the fire.

was now hosting a concert by legendary rockers Iris. Much to the delight of those blocking the two streets in front of the bistro, you could hear the lead singer’s voice bellowing from inside, sharpening in evergreen lyrics (“I’ll be waiting for you still / I’ll come to your house uphill / I’m forever waiting / Without you I am aching.”)

The beach was dotted with fires. Dozens of people gathered around them, attracted by the light, guitars and warmth. Several thousand listened to alternative rock band Viţa de Vie, playing on a stage in the sand.

There were so many people and so many things going on that it all seemed to be an amusement park out of control. Shirtless youngsters running around with wooden boards under their arms were screaming victoriously. Those

gathered around the fires passed on the plastic wine bottles, and tried to sing folk songs. Vama was a mix of people, impossible to find in any other place: high school kids from Alba sitting next to students from Bucharest, emo kids next to postadolescent hipsters, family men with cameras around their necks next to the guy who asked everyone for weed. On top of everything, you could hear a rock-punk-folk cacophony.

Music is the only binding agent of the Vama spirit that made it to 2010, and the aspect that brings the least points in the “Vama isn’t what it used to be” game. Without resembling too much, the playlists of all bars in Vama seem to share the same slogan as Europa FM: “The best music from the ’80s until now.”

Those who went to the same bar in Vama twice are very likely to recognize not only the songs, but also their playing order.

The music, currently lying in the cryogenic suspension, holds the key to understanding Vama during the past few years. No matter what song drew them there, visitors are greeted by the resistance: Bob Marley, The Doors, Guns N’ Roses, Deep Purple, Nirvana, Rolling Stones, Metallica, Depeche Mode, etc. Not even places like Expirat, which opts for a more underground playlist, take the risk of playing too much new stuff.

It’s a kind of resistance that could explain why, despite the attempts, genres like house or manele didn’t catch on in Vama.

Or why, somewhat ironically, Stufstock – a festival that started in to fight those altering the spirit of Vama – lost part of its audience when it started going down the alternative road.

Music is the most plausible explanation for the nostalgia that takes over the regulars of Vama, but what really makes it “not be what it used to” is gentrification.

This socio-cultural phenomenon appears when rich people begin buying property in a poor community. The recipe is simple, and Vama Veche – where almost 40 percent of the inhabitants are guesthouse owners who came from elsewhere, and where, in 2004, the square meter cost the same as in the northern part of Bucharest – is not the only place where this phenomenon appeared.

A shabby place, with a certain sentimental value but with small prices, attracts the bohemians. For a while, the area is stuck in a state close to collapse, nobody invests, except for those who are already there. With time, the number of bohemians grows, until the ambiance they create becomes a selling point. The only one. The first investments appear, corporate or cosmopolitan people start showing up, imagining that - if they had more time and fewer worries - they could be just as bohemian. With them, the purchasing power grows, therefore more and more bars, shops and cafés open. The place changes and, thanks to its initial historical or sentimental value, it becomes a must-see destination. The prices go up, and the bohemians can no longer afford, or simply refuse, to come here.

That’s how Balchik was transformed from the village it used to be in 1913 to the must-see destination of the ’30s.

That’s how, over the last two years, Bucharest’s Old City became a hot spot. That’s how Vama Veche became an architectural, social, and economic swarm.

The moral: every place that attracts enough people is nothing else but the flavor of the times in which they’re living. It’s not Vama Veche that changed. We did.

Photojournalist Andrei Pungovschi is a regular contributor to DoR. His work can be seen at andreipungovschi.com.

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f Betting on

filip florian

A legendary writer is created in Time, word by word, book by book, myth by myth. However, if you pay attention, you can see the signs ahead of time.

Words by Georgiana Ilie Photographs by Mircea Struţeanu

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he is not the most translated Romanian writer today.

This title is disputed between poet Mircea Cărtărescu, novelist Dan Lungu and Romanian writers living abroad, such as Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller and Norman Manea.

Nor is he the only one published in America. Lucian Dan Teodorovici also had a novel published there.

Nor is he the most prolific. On the contrary: during the past 10 years he has published three novels, one written with his brother, Matei. Moreover, he does not write essays, short stories, or journalism – like other authors do.

Filip Florian is, however, the only writer to have all literary critics declare his novel, Degete mici (Little Fingers), the best literary debut of the past 10 years. And with his most recent work, Zilele Regelui (The Days of the King), he had them talk about a new Romanian novel.

To readers and critics alike, Filip Florian came out of nowhere in 2005. He didn’t belong to any literary circle, he didn’t hang out with fashionable writers, and he was a rookie, with only a short story under his belt. He was 37 and his debut novel, Little Fingers, was built around the discovery of a mass grave in a mountain town. The story shows what happens in the town when different groups – former political prisoners, local authorities, archaeologists – try to impose their own explanation for the existence of the grave. The skeletons are either proof of a mass murder committed by the communists, or the victims of medieval pestilence. The mystery is deepened by the discovery that the skeletons are missing their little fingers, and by a monk who has a lock of hair growing at a striking pace and who appears to know more than he says. Ovidiu Şimonca, editor-in-chief of the magazine Observator Cultural, says that this is the mark of a great prose writer: keeping the reader in suspense and leaving him wanting more.

The book received the debut prize from România Literară, a prestigious cultural weekly, and from the cultural foundation Anonimul, followed shortly by one from The Writers’ Union.

Little Fingers was a breath of fresh air, remembers critic Paul Cernat. The story was clean, the characters complex and convincing, the style clear, the stake a lot more interesting than the emotional outbursts in the books of his peers. Şimonca summed up the difference stating that Florian “did not stop at navel gazing, but aimed to create worlds.”

The novel was published in the Ego.Prose collection of the Polirom publishing house, the only one that publishes young local writers. (Two years later, the novel was re-published in the Fiction Ltd. Collection, dedicated to better known authors such as Ştefan Agopian, Norman Manea or Mateiu Caragiale.)

In the preface, critic Simona Sora laid the first stone of the tower of legends which were to surround Florian in the coming years. She said that Florian probably wrote many other novels and that Little Fingers is the one he chose to pull out of the drawer to mark his debut. There was no other way to explain the maturity of structure and the refinement of language.

Florian’s vocabulary represents the most obvious difference when compared to his peers. All the critics, both in reviews and in interviews for this article, point out his reach.

“Reading Filip Florian I realized how poor the vocabulary of the other new wave writers is,” says critic and writer Marius

Chivu. “You recognize the richness of language and style out of two or three phrases. It may sound like an outdated concept about literature today, when themes are so important, but great contemporary writers of other literatures confirm it: language is the writer’s raw material.” Matei Florian calls Filip’s style “a love of nuances” and critic Alex Goldiş compliments him in Vatra magazine with a rare remark: “a language enthusiast.” Writer Dan Lungu has also cheekily confessed his admiration in an e-mail: “Filip Florian is a jeweller, a scrupulous miniaturist, a stubborn hero. In a revolting and rebellious generation which has discovered post-communist liberties, Filip Florian is a Franciscan monk.”

after writing features for newspaper Cuvântul at the beginning of the ’90s and then being a correspondent for Radio Free Europe and Deutsche Welle, Florian quit in 1999 to become a writer. In an interview with Formula AS magazine in 2009, he remembers that, even though he was a passionate journalist, closely watching the political scene, he became

frustrated, realizing his work was not changing the world, as he dreamed it would. At one point, the desire to write “burst like an abscess.” Back then, in the winter of ’98, at age 30, with his wife, his little boy and Comisaru’, his tomcat, he moved to Sinaia, a winter resort north of Bucharest, into the attic of his grandmother’s house. It took him a year to shake off the weight of political journalism. During this time, he did little else but read – from Dostoyevsky or Bohumil Hrabal, to Romanian writers like Radu Cosaşu, Mircea Cărtărescu and, not accidentally, Ştefan Agopian. He played soccer with his friends and mountaineered. He wrote nothing. After a while, his wife began to give him weird looks.

The idea for Little Fingers came from news he read at the beginning of the ’90s about the discovery of a mass grave.

He wrote around that idea for the following five years, no hurry, because, he says, he didn’t have a deadline. His only expectation was to be satisfied. He sent the manuscript to Humanitas publishing house in 2004, but after three months, he found out it hadn’t even been read. He tried again with Polirom, which had started publishing young writers that same year. dor • spring 2011 • 77

After the novel was published, he came back to Bucharest, but not permanently, and not to enjoy his suddenly acquired popularity. His life is built around his family, caring for his maternal grandmother, the games of Dinamo soccer team, fishing, and paying the bills. He stays away from the literary world because he doesn’t take pleasure in pointless conversations on the purpose of literature.

To write, he retreats to the mountains. When I asked his wife for a meeting regarding her role as Florian’s first reader, she modestly told me that “Filip actually wrote the books in complete loneliness. I have no role, so I have nothing to talk about.”

In time, the talk and gossip about who he is and how he works have created the image of a secluded romantic writer.

Proof of his having been accepted within the pop culture is a drawing of Little Fingers on the painted bookshelf of a sophisticated boulangerie in downtown Bucharest.

It was around 2003 when Florian asked his brother Matei to write a book together. Matei was a reporter for the weekly Dilema Veche and also wrote music reviews. They first tried to create a structure and write accordingly, but, Matei says, their styles were so different that they did not find a common pace. Then they realized they could write in parallel about their childhood spent mostly in Drumul Taberei, a Bucharest neighborhood, in an apartment building on Băiuţ Alley.

Matei wrote the first chapter, about being five and a half and about Dinamo, an impossible love for a little boy living in the heart of rival Steaua’s neighborhood. He sent the chapter to Filip, who lived in Sinaia. The answer came after a while: a chapter about Filip’s life before Matei’s birth – there are eleven years between them – and lots of other stories starring Matei as a baby boy. The game continued for two years. “We would talk about fish, football, anything really,” says Matei.

“But never about what we had written or had read in each other’s chapter. The only thing we knew for sure was that Filip and Matei are us, and also two characters with their own personal lives in the book.”

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The characters took on lives of their own, even though there are a lot of resemblances between the two pairs of brothers: a grandfather who loved mountaineering, an absent father, the divorce of their parents, a younger brother named after the grandfather, Mircea, and in the end, the move away from Băiuţ Alley. “It was only then that we discussed it was time to put an end to it,” remembers Matei. “We had to stop somewhere if we wanted it to be published. No doubt we could have continued writing forever.”

Critic Paul Cernat says The Băiuț Alley Lads (Băiuţeii) is a novel in the tradition of Mark Twain or Molnár Ferenc. It blends the magical time of childhood, populated by supernatural beings, as seen by Matei, and the lucid and hypersensitive time of adolescence, recreated by Filip. Matei asks many rhetorical questions and keeps everything short, whereas Filip offers answers and writes long explanatory phrases.

The Băiuț Alley Lads was published in 2006, and then republished a year later and once again in 2010. Just like Little Fingers, it has sold over 5,000 copies.

Around 2007, when The Băiuț Alley Lads was re-published, Florian was among the first Romanian writers to draw the attention of foreign publishers. At first introduced to the German publishing houses through a project of the Goethe Institute in Bucharest, Florian sold the translation rights of Little Fingers to Suhrkamp. Magvetö in Hungary and Czarne in Poland followed.

Simona Kessler, the only literary agent in Romania, was already representing him when the offer came from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, one of the biggest publishing houses in America.

Kessler says that, in the beginning, the possibility of representing him was not under consideration as her agency does not work with Romanian writers. She specializes in corporate relations and hardly ever works with a writer directly. However, Florian was a special case. She appreciated his seriousness and reserved nature. But, most of all, she liked his books. “I am always being told that I’m not a patriot and I’m not representing Romanian writers,” Kessler says smiling. “Well, with Filip, I am doing a patriotic act, but I do it out of pleasure.”

Today, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt holds the full publishing rights for Little Fingers all over the world, except Germany: whoever wants to publish Florian needs to negotiate with them. Even if this is not the most beneficial agreement - if HMH does not promote it, the novel risks fading gradually from the public’s attention - the fact that Florian was chosen by this prestigious publishing house is a recognition of his talent and potential. Moreover, the name of the editor who signed him is an unquestionable stamp of approval: Drenka Willen, the one who introduced the US public to Nobel laureates Günter Grass, José Saramagó, Wisława Szymborska, and Octavio Paz. Little Fingers was published in the US in the summer of 2009 and sold over 2,000 copies in the first six months, with Newsweek being one of the publications that recommended it. Since then, it has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Slovenian and Slovak.

nated the excess. The novel was a success – over 4,200 copies sold in less than 18 months. Director Radu Gabrea wants to turn it into a movie. It was bought by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt - for a period of 10 years: the English translation is to be published in August 2011.

In his 2008 manifesto, Cernat claimed that not even today’s best writers can be compared to Romanian classics such as Liviu Rebreanu or Mihail Sadoveanu and that their stakes remain provincial. With the publication of The Days of the King, he restated his theory, saying that Florian’s talent and his ability to flee the “now and here-ism” is the exception that confirms the rule. An experienced critic and professor of literature, Cernat saw beyond the three stories, “each one pregnant with each other.” He looked for those things used to evaluate the talent of a great writer: the narrative structure and the capacity to create worlds.

“His true merit,” Cernat says, “lies in the ability to build coherent stories, with mysteries and drawers where forgotten worlds are subtly revived.”

His second solo effort, Zilele Regelui (The Days of the When we talked about Florian’s potential and about what King), came out in 2008, a year marked by an ideological conhe might need to become a great writer, Cernat strenghtened flict initiated by critic Paul Cernat, who accused the young the critics’ verdict for The Days of the King: “I think it would be writers of not living up to expectations. “One of the real isgreat if he managed, just like he did in The Băiuț Alley Lads, sues of young literature is the self-sufficiency and inability to grasp a social identity, but on a greater scale, which would to address a different type of public, besides the young and strongly individualize him. And I think he knows and feels alternative,” he wrote referring to the writers endorsed by that, too. I am very curious to see how he will do that.” Cernat Polirom’s Ego.Prose collection. “Instead of the superior underseems sure that Florian will not disappoint and that he will standing of what is human, we get either self-conscious provsooner or later deliver the book that will push him to the highocations, socio-anthropological micro cuts, or kids playing est levels of literary reputation. And, he adds, Florian has 20 literature.” He didn’t leave Florian out of his criticism saying years to get there. (According to a theory by Ştefan Agopian, that he lives off the glory of a single successful book, which writers produce their best artistic works by the age of 60. Flois “neither The Leopard, nor Craii de Curtea-Veche (a famous rian will be 43 in May.) turn-of-the-century Romanian novel).”

Florian says he has already found a story for his next book, Some critics backed up Cernat’s opinion, others were but there is a long way to go until he finishes it. It is certain against it. The Days of the King was published in a context of though that it will be different, because he likes every book to vigilance on the part of critics. It told the story of the birth open a new universe. The back cover of the first edition of Litof modern Romania, King Charles the First, his dentist, and tle Fingers carries a note which sums up his attitude towards the dentist’s tomcat. Built on three narratives, “the historical writing: after finishing a book, there should be a memorial reconstruction of the reign of Charles I (macro history), the service for the characters. In other words, he would not rehistory of dentist Strauss’s family (private history) and the turn to the beaten tracks. All he wishes is to be able to live like lyric fantasy of Siegfried the cat (the sacred camouflaged),” as that, writing, for as long as possible. Of the entire publishing identified by Marius Chivu in Dilema Veche, the story presents ecosystem, he appears to see only the part that concerns him a Florian ready to take on more complex themes and difficult and his writing. People who say they have read his books still narrative structures. “We begin to have a novel,” Chivu writes amaze him. at the end of a raving review.

Until critics’ expectations are met, Florian continues to Almost all the critics considered the novel a confirmation. write in a solitude he defends with everything he’s got, on A few voices disagreed, but they didn’t say that the novel things he chooses against the literary trends, refining each wasn’t good. Critic Mihai Iovănel complained about Florian’s phrase until it finds a shape that reflects him, thus, unknowstyle, which, he believes, focuses exingly, giving birth to myths. In the cessively on language and which, he Romanian literary landscape, he says, is more of a purpose in itself stands out not only through his style than a means of telling the story. and a talent for recreating worlds, filip Florian, Alex Goldiş was dissatisfied with the but also through being a man who unlike other young characters not evolving and with the believes that his only acceptable desadorned style, but insisted on clarifytiny is that of a writer and who gave upcoming writers, ing – when I spoke with him – that he up everything to follow it. didn’t stop at navel really enjoyed the book. Still, he begazing, but aimed to Georgiana Ilie is an associate editor at DoR. lieves Florian could have used a betMircea Struțeanu is Filip Florian’s younger brother. His photographs can be seen at struteanu.com. create new worlds. ter editor, one who could have elimidor • spring 2011 • 79

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Wo sebrds b pho asti y Ioa togr an i na aph spa Cîr s b s lig y

This is Otto the Barbarian.

A 16-year-old* punk who wants to change the world. * This story was originally published in august 2010, when Otto was 16. He turned 17 this winter. He is still rocking.

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Bucharest is filthy. Next year is going to be as hot as hell and this end of December feels more like April. Four kids are rocking a punk tune on the stage of the Suburbia club. They’re a bunch of nobodies, opening for Chuck Norris Roundhouse Kick, a German hardcore band, and they can’t believe it.

Otto the Barbarian stands in the middle, moving frantically, striking three notes on his bass guitar. His black sweatshirt reads Misfits, and hangs on him like on a scarecrow. This is his band’s first concert, and the last punk concert of the year.

With his blond hair turning green and red in the club lights, he approaches the mic and opens his jaws: “For this world, do I maaaaatter?

There’s no other way ooouut, but…”

Arms wearing bracelets are raised in the air, and Otto clenches his fist and yells: “For this world, do I maaaaatter?

There’s no other way ooouut, but…”

The instruments stop for a moment, and Otto greets the audience with a short “Good evening!” He signals the drummer and, just like Dee Dee Ramone, beats the rhythm by mouth: “1, 2, 3, go!

Anarchy-equality, anarchy-equality! Eee, eee, eee, eee!

Anarchy-liberty, anarchy-liberty! Eee, eee, eee, eee!”

The bass and the guitar build up a wall of noise. Otto shouts: “Anarchy!”

From his left and right, Tavi and Leo respond: “Equality!”

“Anarchy!”

“Liberty!”

It all comes to an end with Ioniţă’s hollow break. Otto grabs the mic again: “Thank you. This was Alarma!”.

When I say music, the first thing that comes to mind is protest. It’s not necessarily about the sound or its quality. You know, I think music is meant to send a message. It’s not enough for you to hear it and say, wow, that sounds nice. If you want that kind of music, listen to classical music or something.

But if you wanna listen to music with lyrics, I think that it must get a message across. It must express something. – Otto Otto is 16 and this fall he will start his sophomore year. His real name is Octavian Albu, but nobody calls him that. Being born on January 17, his parents named him Anton as well, after St. Anthony of Padua. Nobody calls him that either. His 82 • dor • spring 2011

folks and a few friends call him Otti, but he can’t stand it.

Octavian is a Latin name, just like his father’s, Tiberiu, who used to teach Latin. He’s got this thing with foreign languages from his dad – he speaks English, French, Italian, German and a little Latin; which is not an extinct language, as he speaks it with his father.

Otto likes Italian because it’s easy and musical – he’s been going there, visiting his mom’s relatives for four years now.

He liked German until 4th grade, when they changed his teacher. Otto likes tough teachers better: his history teach’, his French teach’ – even though everyone else hates her – and his Latin teach’.

He’s in a philology class with emphasis on English at the Elena Cuza high school in Drumul Taberei. He also lives there, which makes his route to school conveniently short.

If he had really applied himself, he could have gotten into a better high school. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t give a fuck. In secondary school, he was the best in every class and got loads of diplomas (from school, from the British Council, most of them in foreign languages). At the same time, he did all sorts of stupid things, as he enjoyed playing the fool. The smart kind of fool, not the stupid one.

For instance, history teaches us about the mistakes of the past. If we’re aware of them, we know what we shouldn’t do, get it? Even when it comes to Christianity, there have been so many examples of Catholics - the people they murdered, the crusades they started.

And they killed a whole lotta people in the name of God, when in fact they were after territories and economical gain. – Otto Otto the Barbarian stands up from the crowd of drunken kids crashed over the tables of Suburbia, puts down his beer, grabs his bass guitar and gets on stage. It’s February, but it doesn’t really feel like winter, so he decided to wear a T-shirt and a black leather jacket with a sketched skull on the back, the Misfits logo. They’re his favourites.

This is the second concert for Alarma, part of a charity event for Haiti organized by Anopsia, an online radio station.

In the three months since the first concert, they have put together several other songs, including an opening meant to set the audience on fire. Otto has shaved his head on the sides, showing his growing mohawk. He has Leo on his left, Tavi on his right and Ioniţă behind him on the drums. With sparkling eyes, he approaches the mic and roars: “It’s a night full of wackos and pogo.

Who sounded Alarma? We are Alarma! “

The song is less than two minutes long, after which Tavi starts playing a simple, three-note riff, and Otto flames out almost possessed: “2, 3, goooo!”

Basketball... we’re kind of alright there. We also have volleyball, handball.

As for individual sports, what’s the deal? We have that guy, Oncescu, who does arm wrestling. We mostly have football... That doesn’t excite me either, but it’s all I hear about. – Otto Otto got the nickname the Barbarian from football. When he was in secondary school, he played a one-on-one with a colleague as part of a bet: the loser had to do 100 push-ups. They had asked another guy to be their goalkeeper, and the score was 2-2. He was determined to win, so he fouled his adversary, who received a penalty kick. Otto chose to defend the goal (himself too). He was a good goalie; he had even received a diploma for this, the best goalkeeper of Spiru Haret Cup. So he went in front of the goal. Before defending, he took off all his clothes, (they were on school grounds, but it was late) and started shouting: “Otto the Barbarian, with the sword in his hand, slashes the dragon and kisses the bride!”

His colleague kicked the ball towards the upper corner of the goal and Otto defended. The nickname Barbarian stuck even though eventually he lost the game and had to do the push-ups.

I think this will be the universal language. Almost everyone speaks English. I don’t think there’s someone out there who doesn’t know what’s English for yes or no.

To say the least. – Otto Otto started the band when he was 13, together with two friends. Back then it was called White Road. Otto played bass, Muky drums, and Alex guitar. Their first song was called Bitch, it was written in English, and had rather emo lyrics. (“Cut your fucking wrists / Throw your fucking heart away / But don’t let me cry for her / Cause I don’t wanna fall for a bitch.”). When he reads them now, he can’t help laughing – how the hell can you not? They even shot a video, but it’s no longer online.

Then, Tavi came to replace Alex, because Alex was more metal, while Tavi was more punk. Tavi is one of Otto’s childhood friends. When they were 10, they watched Boogie Nights together and loved it. Tavi’s mom wrote the lyrics for

Umbra (The Shadow), the song they recorded in 2009. It’s on YouTube, but this one is even less punk: “My shadow’s always on the ground / While yours lingers in my heart / I walked behind you from the start / Yet you can’t see the love.” In the footage, Otto has Leo to his left, a guitarist from Roşiori who temporarily replaced Tavi for the recordings because he broke his leg in a scooter accident.

The line-up came together before the first concert: Otto played the bass, Tavi and Leo the guitar, and Ioniţă the drums. The name White Road seemed a bit Nazi, so they thought of changing it – they had about 80 alternatives, including Holy Hand Grenade (a weapon from the computer game Worms). But it’s better to have a Romanian name and sing in Romanian. Because you cannot change everything at once; you must make a change here, and then outside. First you set off Alarma around the country.

Message is information. A good message is a political message, a call for unity, meaning it should bring people together to fight for a common goal, in other words, for change. It must have a reason. – Otto Otto has been listening to punk since he was in secondary school. The first song he remembers is Green Day’s Wake Me Up When September Ends. After listening to them for a while, he ended up hating them and switched to more hardcore punk. Nobody can say for sure where punk started. Maybe it started in the US, with Velvet Underground and The Stooges, from where it developed and spread across the world. Otto doesn’t believe it really began there. England is where it all happened: Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Clash.

Besides Misfits, who play horror-punk, Otto listens to The Casualties, The Exploited, Oi Polloi, Abrasive Wheels, Circle Jerks, Resist and Exist, Black Flag, Toy Dolls, Dead Kennedys, Destroy and many others that he has listed on his MySpace profile (he doesn’t have a Facebook account for now, because he thinks it’s crap). Of the Romanian bands, he likes Protex, Scandal, Stuck in a Rut, Recycle Bin. When he thinks about punk, he doesn’t have only one band in mind. For him it’s not only music, it’s a movement.

I want to add a strange instrument to punk.

Accordion!- Otto Otto the Barbarian walks along a corridor with damaged walls and barred doors. The rehearsal room is in a former jail, close to the North Railway Station in Bucharest. It’s Recycle Bin’s studio, a band that’s been playing for about three years, and that took the kids under their wing. Alarma comes here dor • spring 2011 • 83

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every weekend for two hours (which costs them each 40 lei per month; aproximately 10 euro).

The room is packed with audio equipment: a sound amplifier, monitors, microphones, guitars, two sets of drums, and loads of cables. To the left, Leo is trying to learn some lyrics written on a piece of paper. He’s 17, wears a NoFX T-shirt on top of a longer shirt and a growing belly. He’s from Roşiori, Teleorman and met Otto in 2008, at a Cobe concert.

To the right, Tavi is jamming on his guitar. He’s 18, has a neat mohawk, a black t-shirt, black jeans, grey sneakers, all clean.

He’s a fashion victim. In the middle there’s Otto, with his Misfits jacket and brown sneakers and jeans. The one behind the drums is not Ioniţă, but Creţu, the newest member of the band. Otto met him this winter, on a music forum. He’s a 21-year-old lightheaded peaceful dude who likes both punk and drum and bass. He’s a good drummer and is good with lyrics (he wrote the opening song for the concerts).

There are also two girls in the studio, fidgeting about, taking pictures. Otto simply ignores them and starts playing the ska version of Pink Panther. Alarma is angry but also has a sense of humor, so in every concert they insert a funny piece. In the first concert, there was Santa Claus is Fucking Your Mom – quite festive, what the hell – and in their second, the main theme from Mortal Kombat.

Then they move on to a new song. With a lowered voice Otto begins: “The Internet is a disease!

It destroyed my social ease With the national catchphrase: Come into the digital age, Come into the digital age!”

These were written by Creţu’ as well, but they all write – Otto is responsible for Made in Bucale and Berea (The Beer), Leo for Bătaie de joc (Mockery) and Stai în casă (Stay In), and Tavi for Anarhie-egalitate (Anarchy-equality). They work together on the instrumentals, but Tavi seems to be cut out for this.

They start playing, they push the rhythm and fuck it up at the fourth verse. “Look, I made us a structure,” says Tavi and hands them some sheets. Otto turns to one of the chicks: “Hold this,” and places the sheets in her hands, as if she were a stand.

“Is there a new verse?” asks Leo. “Yeah,” says Otto. “But how do we play it?” he continues, a bit confused. They first try out the instrumentals, but they mess it up.

“For how long? A verse?” asks Tavi. Leo shows him, then plays a riff on his guitar. A ringtone echoes through the room.

Tavi stops, drops the guitar and looks for his phone. “He’s got a message!” Otto says and starts laughing. Once he has finished texting, Tavi comes back and plays a short solo. They’re ready.

“1,2,3 gooooo!”

You can find a lot of things on the internet. But people have used it excessively.

Creţu’ told me that the internet started off as an 86 • dor • spring 2011

idea of a bunch of hippies who wanted to build their own network, to be connected to the same world and stuff like that. And they tried, they succeeded – I don’t know how - but the world found out about it and that’s how it all started: porn, games, all kinds of crap. Everything is connected virtually. – Otto Otto took up guitar when he was about 12, encouraged

by Tavi (who eventually quit the lessons and continued on his own). He was in the same class as other half-dozen kids who were taught by a 50-year-old teacher. During the first year, Otto didn’t hold the instrument much. The class was an excuse to leave home, drink and smoke. He made bongs out of beer cans. He didn’t smoke pot, just tobacco. He got so wasted that once he fell asleep on the teacher’s doormat. That’s why they started calling him Druggy Druggy.

Eventually he began taking music seriously. At first, he only practiced his vocals, then his old man bought him an Ibanez acoustic guitar. The first song he learned was 25 or 6 to 4 from Chicago. A piece of crap. The teacher understood that he’d like something else and taught him Some Kind of Hate from The Misfits. That’s all he needed. He moved on to bass guitar in White Road because he found no one else for the job.

DIY. It was again his dad who bought him a Behringer guitar and Otto started studying. He realized that if you have a band, you must also practice on your own.

Those hillbillies in front of my building were all sitting on a bench laughing at their own farts and that’s how their days went by. - Otto Otto the Barbarian moves frantically in his Misfits sweatshirt in the middle of the stage in Fire, a dump in Bucharest with a big basement. It is far from crowded tonight.

His hair has grown and stands up straight in a yellowish mohawk, a palm high. The few punkers in the audience are ecstatic. They throw themselves on top of each other and jump like cigarette burned fleas. Otto starts playing Berea with a musical bass intro, then they all jump in, yelling: “As a kid I came across a drink that really made me toss.

Made of just four ingredients: Malt, hop, barley ‘n cold water Quite like it there is no other!”

They’re full of energy and totally wasted: Creţu’ hits the drums so hard that his hair flutters; Leo is fooling around

in a low voice, then takes off his T-shirt and sings with his belly sticking out. Otto didn’t have that much to drink: only four beers and a bottle of wine. But he’s in the zone. They all shout out the chorus: “Beer is better when it’s cold, Better when it’s cold, Better when it’s cold!”

Then they switch to ska. They still have six songs left; among them a cover of Time Bomb by Rancid. They play a cover at every show, but never the same one. Otto grabs the mic and hands it to the audience to sing. Behe, his girl, who came all the way from Buzău, is somewhere in the back. She’s petite, blonde, with black fingernails and is straight edged: she doesn’t drink, smoke, do drugs or have sex.

His mother is also present, wearing a fur coat and high heel boots. She works for the Authority for State Assets Recovery.

Later that night, she’ll help him find his bass guitar slip case.

She doesn’t like his music that much, but when she went to his first concert, she cried. Since he was young, she tried to push him forward: at the age of ten she even sent him to a modeling agency.

His father sits on a chair and watches peacefully, even though the music is insane. He studies historical documents for the National Archives. When he was young, he too went on stage, not just anywhere, but in Sulmona, Italy, where he acted in a play. For about 10 years, he organized disco nights at a summer camp by the sea. Thousands of kids would come there, so he knows how it is.

This time Alarma opens for Recycle Bin, and the concert is titled Welcome to Retardia. On the poster, a chimp running for president makes the victory sign. Alarma, too, will make their own poster when they go touring the country in Tavi’s wagon.

On the poster they’ll have a retarded fish with bulging eyes and a mohawk painted in the national flag colors. But Tavi has to get his driver’s license first.

I’d rather go with the scientific truth. There are a lot of people who sat and thought about stuff and they’re not just a bunch of fools. If you bother to look them up, you’ll see that they’re not idiots. They graduated from university, they have no reason whatsoever to lie. They demonstrate things that actually make sense. – Otto The walls in Otto’s room are white, decorated with a tapestry of Venice, in pale colors. He put it there to make the walls seem less empty. He only has three posters, all glued on the back of his wardrobe door: one with a crossed out swastika

– the anti-fascist symbol –, one with Alarma, written with A from Anarchy, and one with The Addicts.

Otto’s computer is black; all the electronics on the desk are black, except an old beige phone. He has an iPod with 60GB of punk music, but he hardly takes it with him, fearing he will lose it. The desk lamp is dressed in the coat of a teddy bear, a souvenir from his cousin in Italy. On the cupboard there are two bags with stuff that belonged to one of his granddads: some old watches and a military cap. He wasn’t his real granddad, because his grandma remarried, but Otto was his favourite.

On the wall next to the door, Otto has three stands where he hangs his instruments: his Ibanez acoustic guitar, a red Fender Strat, the Squier electric bass – red, black and white, with a skull; plus some other musical equipment, some of it belonging to his dad. An expander with only two springs left hangs by a nail on the wall; he removed the other springs because he found it too difficult to pull, but even so he hardly ever touches it. However he has a pair of white rollerblades that he takes out for a spin from time to time. In that box he also has two basketballs – one’s deflated –, a soccer ball and two weights, hollow on the inside. His father got screwed over with these: there’s no use filling them up with water, they won’t get heavy enough. You must fill them up with sand or something.

He can even smoke in his room if he desires, cause it’s his room; he puts the ashes in a cigarette holder. When he goes out, he asks his mother for a cigarette to go.

Lies breed stupidity and there’s no escape from stupidity. You can’t rise above it. You end up at 40, stupid, what can you do about it? Education is the most important thing, but many people don’t realize it. Far too many people... That’s the problem of our generation: most people don’t realize that without education you’ll end up as their slave. The State’s slave. – Otto Otto wants anarchy in Alarma. There should be no leader and everyone should feel free to say whatever they want.

That’s why they write songs together. They all sing, but in certain concerts they don’t have enough microphones to go around. And if Otto stands out, it’s because he’s the youngest, blondest of them all, with the highest Mohawk, even if he doesn’t style it with soap and hairspray for every concert. He doesn’t wear it to school.

He wants everyone to be equal, even within our country’s politics. But not like during the communist era – when all were forced to be equal – but differently. Communism was a perfect dor • spring 2011 • 87

system; too bad people are not perfect. Those who have more should help those who have less. A supportive community should be created, based on respect and reciprocity. If people would respect this, there would be no need for police to keep things in order. But people are the source of all things.

As long as Nazis and extreme-right sympathizers exist in Romania, Otto will remain anti-fa. He’ll fight racism and discrimination of all types. He knows that not all skinheads are Nazis and that not all Nazis are skinheads, but it doesn’t matter what they look like. The problem is that they go and beat up punkers. They beat up gypsies for stealing. We should integrate them somehow; you can’t blame them for not being accepted by others.

At school, Otto met a guy who plays the trumpet and is a gypsy. He’d like to add him to the band.

When I went to Italy, all I saw on the news was: Romanian rapists, burglars, etc. This is all you see all day, Nazis getting together and shouting merda, cazzo, va fa’n culo Rumania... There was this rapper and three or four of his songs were about how

stupid Romanians are, nothing but a nation of thugs. That’s all they show on TV. That’s all they get on us. – Otto Otto the Barbarian is passionate about DIY. In April, for his fourth concert, he no longer counted on outsiders. He and Creţu’ spoke to the guys from Obey, a rotten basement with a low ceiling and anti-system slogans on the walls (“Capitalism is Crisis”, “Buy, buy, buy or die, die, die”), which used to be a crematory for dogs and has a toilet reeking of doughnuts. The guys searched the forums for new bands; they didn’t want it to be just them. They found I Change the System (ICS), three punkers from Aiud who sing in both English and Romanian.

“Nobody’s ever fucking heard of them. We did them good,” says Otto. Stoned Addams should have also come, but didn’t make it. Nor did his girlfriend from Buzău.

Everything could have ended badly before the concert even began when two huge Nazis showed up among the punkers and metal heads. Eventually they left bored. ICS gathered the kids in a pogo mob in a mixed concert of punk and stand-up. (“What’s the difference between Ciulă and a drunken man?” the vocalist asked between two songs. “None! Ciulă here is our driver, and he’s wasted!”) Otto was in the middle, with his Misfits sweatshirt, careful not to hit people at random and tempering those who jumped too hard.

An hour later, Leo, Tavi and Creţu’ got on stage, crammed in the tight space, tangled in cables. “We’re gonna torture you with 16 songs.” Otto announces proudly, even if later he’ll swear never to do that again; it is way too exhausting. They begin, as always, with Alarma and continue with De ce ţara-i amărâtă (Why’s the Country So Miserable). The audience mobs into a claustrophobic pogo dance, but it’s not like they have any other option.

“These are no longer the teens of the stolen revolution.

They must’ve woken up, c’mon people, it there a solution!?”

In the end he earns a bit over 150 lei (about 30 euros), enough to pay ICS, but he counts it again just to make sure.

He doesn’t handle that much money on a daily basis.

He’d like to get a job somewhere, but still hasn’t found anything. Once, in Italy, he worked for one day gathering and loading melons. He had muscle pains for two days. He wants to do something else, not this kind of hard work, but he doesn’t know what just yet.

Money is the best form of slavery that they’ve come up with so far. I don’t think there’s anything quite like it. If you don’t work, they can’t pay you, you don’t eat, drink, nothing. The world without money? I thought a lot about it. There must be a solution to this. – Otto 88 • dor • spring 2011

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Otto broke up with Behe after an argument on instant messager. She was kind of dumb anyway. That night in Fire, there was this guy with a glass eye and he kept taking it out and putting it back in and she asked him if he could see with it. He liked her though and wouldn’t have wanted to break up with her. She said they were too far apart. Is Buzău really that far? It’s just two hours away by train.

There were other girls as well. When he was 14, he fell in love with a 21-year-old accountant. They listened to the same kind of music and they met a couple of times but it didn’t work out.

One day, his dad came back from work and found him hiding three girls on the balcony. He said nothing. He went straight to the bathroom, so that the girls could leave. He had come too early, anyway. And there was this Anca, a girl who used to come along when the guitar instructor organized days out.

She liked him, but he didn’t like her. When he began falling for her, she didn’t care anymore. That happens to him all the time.

He’d like to have a girlfriend, not a fuck-buddy. One that dresses up nicely, but they’re way out of his league. It’s like all good chicks go out with rednecks for money, they’re all gold diggers.

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It’s genetic, as well, ‘cause we’re mammals and we have to reproduce that way. But it also has to do with society and the fact that there’s that pleasure of doing it.

And then we tell our buddies: dude you won’t believe what I did with that blonde last night. – Otto Otto rarely watches movies. He likes the smart ones, which you have to watch twice or three times to understand. Like Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. He knows it’s an old one, but he saw it recently and he loved it. It is brutal and sad, but it depicts the truth as it is – what’s great about it is that it shows exactly what junkies see when they inject or snort drugs.

Otto knows what it’s like, ‘cause he had tried some stuff as well, besides alcohol and weed: nepra (butapren glue), correction fluid, Tussin Forte, Tantum Rosa and others. When he did those, his mind would wander off and he thought he knew everything. A brilliant idea would come to his mind but he wouldn’t hold on to it – he would instantly forget it. Then another idea – just as easily forgotten. And so on.

More than watching movies, he reads a lot on Internet. That’s how he found out about the adverse effects of that glue and he was terrified. To die instantly choked by your own vomit?

Horrible. (He also plays games on the computer, especially strategy and history games, like Medieval: Total War but also FIFA.) He reads encyclopaedias to discover new things.

He knows that people don’t read that much, though in his class, things aren’t that bad (he’s studying foreign languges). He thinks it’s a pity they don’t study more of the urban literature, he’s had enough of the life in the countryside, and love. That’s all they study from the first grade to the eleventh: love and life in the countryside. It’s not that he has something against peasants, but there are many other things to write about.

It happened to me many times... being stopped by the police for no apparent reason, and having my pockets searched. I also met nice cops who gave me some shawarma and cigarettes. They were very nice. But there are many stupid policemen in this country. I’m surprised they weren’t put into a special needs school, that’s how dumb they are. No, really. It’s unbelievable. – Otto Otto the Barbarian first ran away from home when he was 15. He stole about 2,000 euros his folks had saved for the holidays, hidden in an envelope under a flower pot, and went with Leo to Sibiu. He didn’t take anything to drink or eat with him, just a hair dryer. The idea was: “Who needs eating or drinking when you can style your own mohawk?”

After three nights in a guesthouse with a Jacuzzi tub, and after spending all his money on alcohol and ethno-botanical plants, he was left with nothing to eat. His dad alerted the police, but Otto came back home before he was found, just in time for going on holidays. Yet, his dad took him to the station just to set things straight; there, a cop pulled out with the pliers the three piercings a punk had made him. Now he doesn’t dare leave home like that, without saying a word.

Once he fell asleep in an abandoned warehouse on some lounge chairs which he took from a terrace. Last fall, he had a fight with his parents and lived for about a month at a friend’s place. His parents have stopped trying to control him ‘cause

they know they just can’t do that. Once, Otto broke a window just to start a fight with his dad. His dad didn’t hit him, and told him that it was time he took his life seriously. That he had done everything he could for him. If he wants to be a loser, then so be it.

Punk is a form of art, too.

It creates something, it conveys an idea. It’s more of a philosophical art. It’s not that peaceful, though.

There’s no one to be peaceful with. There’s no one. Who am I supposed to be peaceful with? All the assholes in the Parliament? Cops that make all kinds of abuses, they come after you for nothing and stop you in the streets? There’s no one. – Otto Bucharest is filthy. As July approaches, the weather gets even hotter. Otto the Barbarian stops at a street food joint for a cheap shawarma.

He queues with Bianca and Alexandra, a 24-year-old chick who plays the guitar and with whom he already had some rehearsals. (She lent him Capital by Marx and Engels, but Otto didn’t manage to figure it out. He has to learn some economics and he had begun reading the 10th grade textbook – but lost it at the beach) He couldn’t get hold of Tavi lately, and punk guitarists don’t just grow on trees. He met Cosmin, a 20-year-old, long-haired, lean guy at a Rammstein concert.

He’s going to try to sound the alarm again with them.

Fifteen minutes later he’s wolfing down the mix of meat, potatoes and sauces. “I don’t eat vegetables at all.” he says disgusted. “Except for carrots and maybe celery. Or parsnip.

But no tomatoes, or bell peppers, or any of those. If I eat tomatoes, I throw up.”

He leans against a dirty metal table and eats. It’s dark already, and it’s gotten cooler. He bites into his pita as if it were the last bit of food in the world and when he finishes it, he licks the plastic bag clean. He throws it into a bin and runs to take a leak. He goes around the corner, looks to his left and right and pees on the sidewalk.

He returns relieved and asks Bianca for a cigarette.

“After a cancerous meal…” he says with a nervous grin.

He smokes his cigarette like he gobbled his shawarma.

Anyway, he’ll be going to Alexandra’s in just a few minutes to rehearse some tunes, but first has to wait for Cosmin.

When he sees him, Otto takes one last puff and chucks the butt. It’s time to go and play some punk.

Sebastian Ispas is a founding editor of DoR. He currently writes and edits for Playboy Romania. You can see more of Ioana Cîrlig’s photos at ioanacirlig.wordpress.com.

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Roman Style Review 92 • dor • spring 2011

anian w Photographs by Alex Gâlmeanu Words by Matei Schwartz

The greatest problem of contemporary Romanian fashion is confusion – neither the consumers, nor the experts seem to agree on what the word means. You can see it on the runways, in the avalanche of local “fashion weeks”, in magazine editorials. Is fashion something created by omnipresent scandalprone celebrities, or is it an entire ecosystem, ranging from design schools to factories?

The professionals featured here argue for the latter. They are a reason for hope. >

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Diana Dondoe model “As long as the business is limited to three weeks of shows, we can’t speak of Romanian fashion, but of Cluj fashion, Iaşi fashion or Bucharest fashion. I am sure good things – as well as bad things – happen during these three weeks. But what can regional fashion shows really amount to?

There are young talented designers in Romania who deserve more. Before comparing ourselves to Galliano, we should get it together and stop behaving like children posing as designers.”

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Eugenia Enciu designer Eugenia used to work as a model for the Venus Fashion House. Until 2003 she worked in Irina Schrotter’s Bucharest studio. Now she makes tailored clothing for a loyal clientele.

Ovidiu Buta GQ Romania fashion director “Our problem is that we talk too much and do too little. What fashion currently needs is finality, and less of the false philosophy, “conceptual” ideas and recycled collections. Otherwise we will vanish.”

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Alina Lăţan designer Alina studied at a fashion institute in Paris and had an internship with Rick Owens. In Romania, she was a designer for Irina Schrotter. She opened her own studio a few years ago, where she designs for her own label, Endless.

Maurice Munteanu designer and fashion editor Elle Romania “Romanian fashion is impatient, hurried. It lacks professionalism (with very few exceptions) and motivation.

It rarely inspires. And, also with very few exceptions, I must say it takes its inspiration from elsewhere.”

Cosmin Bumbuţ photographer “I believe the fashion industry, at least the editorials, which I come in contact with, tends to be more and more unprofessional – it’s packed with untrained stylists, photographers obsessed with the size of their lenses and flashes, celebrity make-up artists and hairstylists.”

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Lucian Broscăţean designer and teaching assistant at UAD Cluj “Promotion platforms, complex events, concept stores with smart selections, professional fashion weeks and international fairs are just a few of the elements that highlight an upward trend.”

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Mﾄビiuca Teiu model She is represented by MRA and has worked in Hong Kong and Tokyo. She is a model you will be hearing more of in the next few years.

Diana Bobina design student, National University of Arts, Bucharest Diana comes from the Republic of Moldova. She has worked on a project with Olah Gyarfas, one of the most prolific Romanian designers.

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Stephan Pelger designer “Romanian fashion has started to become aware of the fact that individualism is what really makes a difference in this field. Local creativity is increasingly more appreciated, and there is an obvious trend towards supporting local designers.”

Andreea Inankur fashion blogger “We have a long way to go, minds to open, prejudices to eliminate. This is not a gloomy perspective. It’s a starting point in an assessment process the entire fashion system in Romania should implement.”

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Alex Gâlmeanu is among the best known Romanian photographers. In the past 10 years he has shot covers and editorials for nearly every major local magazine, including DoR. His series People I Know was exhibited in Paris last May. You can see his work at galmeanu.com.

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Breve, ˘ circumflex, ˆ comma 

Where did the diacritical marks come from? How come they are subject to linguistic and technological disputes? Why is it that we don’t use them correctly? And why do we need them?

Words by Lavinia Gliga Graphics by Radu Manelici

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n October 27, 2008, designer Cristian “Kit” Paul declared war on the misuse of Romanian diacritical marks in an article published on his personal blog. He had had enough of the ă written with caron or tilde instead of breve, of the ş and ţ written with cedilla instead of comma, of all the publications and television channels and designers that use them randomly, of the lack of any coherent standards and the lack of compliance where standards were set. Romania looked like a country of semiliterate people – even the ă in naţională (national) on the Romanian bills had a caron on its head.

A partner at Brandient, the most reputable branding agency in Romania, Kit speaks like a wise man who knows the world is not divided into black and white – surely not when it comes to diacritics.

Yet, his article was meant to draw attention: it had to cover the typographical errors of the past 20 years and have the force of a manifesto. So, besides information, he used persuasion: it’s better not to use diacritics at all than to use them at random. It’s the same with underwear – better none at all, than to wear them outside your pants.

Kit’s manifesto spread, became reference on foreign forums and continues to attract comments. It hasn’t lost its actuality and immediacy as it isn’t just hair-splitting done by stubborn designers – who sometimes go as far as criticizing the typography of funeral wreaths - but an important lesson on the need for conventions.

Writing, just like speaking, is based on conventions. Without conventions, it would miss its fundamental purpose: communication. It is just like waltzing: two people have to take part and coordinate; the music and the steps must follow a

known pattern; a standard of correctness must be observed. If you just swing or sway, it means you swing or sway; it doesn’t mean you’re waltzing.

In Romanian written language, the diacritical marks are a basic orthographic norm. Five letters of the alphabet are assigned three glyphs to mark a different sound than that of the initial Latin letter. The norm became an impediment about two decades ago, when technology reorganized text production and brought about various options: diacritical marks completely left out, replaced with other letter combinations or simply replaced with other signs.

That’s how we ended up with some ambiguous Internet article titles: “Bulgari de vara! Turistii de la munte s-au distrat de parca ar fi iarna” (“Summer Bulgarians! Mountain tourists enjoyed themselves as if it were winter.” Had diacritics been used, the line would have read: „Summer snow balls! Mountain tourists enjoyed themselves as if it were winter.”) or “FMI a aprobat a doua transa pentru Romania” (“IMF approved the second trance for Romania.”

Instead of “IMF approved the second installment for Romania”). Or sloppy signs such as: “Banca Romaneasca” (Written with the correct glyphs: “Banca Românească”- The Romanian Bank), and commercials announcing: “Plãteşti mai puţin primeşti mai mult” (TN: Written with the correct glyphs: “Plăteşti mai puţin primeşti mai mult” – Pay less get more) .

The options built up to a real Babylon.

Of course, not everybody wants to, nor should, be a waltz champion. Kit knows that any reader understands that ă is ă, ş is ş and ţ is ţ regardless of the glyphs used and even if they are written a, s, t, sh or tz. What he meant to convey in his manifesto is that this relativism cannot be auspicious.

Designers are not the only ones affected.

Programmers, academics, they all try – once and for all – to put an end to a more than 200-year-old debate over the use and writing of diacritics.

ǎ ș� ț ă

The most common errors when writing diacritics, along with the correct versions.

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T

he first war of the diacritical marks began during the second half of the 18th Century with the shift from the Cyrillic alphabet – introduced in the church books of the 10th – 12th Centuries – to the Latin alphabet. The first to have this initiative were Samuil Micu and Gheorghe Şincai, active figures of the Transylvanian School, which aimed at defining the identity of Romanians in Transylvania and proving their Latin origins. The idea, a very inspiring one socially and politically, was quickly adopted by scholars in Ţara Românească and Moldova.

Nonetheless, from a technical point of view, the adoption of the “ancestral letters” proved to be a difficult process. The Cyrillic writing system was well adapted to the language, each sound having its own graphic counterpart. The Latin alphabet left out some of the sounds in Romanian language. The problem was: we have a sound, how should we write it?

The solutions were divided between two opposing principles: the etymological and the phonetic.

The war between the two sides – the “etymologists” (Latinists) and the “phonetists” – lasted for more than 100 years during which the Romanian scholars created more than 40 orthographic systems.

“The Latinists’ spelling would have saved us from the diacritical marks,” jokes Rodica Zafiu, Ph.D., head of the Romanian Language Department at University of Bucharest. The etymologists intended to make the origin of words as transparent as possible; the phonetists were aiming for a strict sound-letter relation. The phonetic principle relied on functionality: inventing new letters would have been uneconomical, whereas diacritical marks were very economic as they made use of something that already existed.

In 1780, Micu and Şincai proposed a strictly etymological spelling, very much resembling the original Latin words. Petru Maior went a step further and, in 1819, published a new orthography, reprinted in 1825 as an addendum to “Lexiconul de la Buda” (The Buda Lexicon), a work of reference in today’s orthographic disputes.

He suggested writing ă with the original vowels marked by an apostrophe, and î with the same vowels marked with a circumflex: mâni (tomorrow), vêntu (wind), gûtu (neck), ara’mu (brass), sa’ni’tate (health). Z, ţ and ş were to be written with d, t and s with a cedilla. Aron Pumnul, a scholar born in Bucovina, also chose the cedilla for z and ţ, but he proposed ă to be written with æ and î with i and circumflex accent.

The first certain standard was the official enforcement of the writing system with the Latin alphabet: in 1860 in the two united principalities and in 1862 in Transylvania. Nevertheless, the consensus over method was nowhere in reach.

The most renowned promoter of “etymologism” was Timotei Cipariu who published the most com-

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prehensive orthography in 1866. He considered phonetism pure madness. Taking after his predecessors (Budai-Deleanu, Heliade Rădulescu), Cipariu argued in favor of the elimination of the words of Slavic, German, Hungarian and Turkish origin and their replacement with West Roman elements.

As for the differences in pronunciation between different regions, Cipariu believed they could be leveled through writing. To this end, a “regular usage” comparable to the language of scholars had to be created. “There is no such usage” replied Titu Maiorescu, and Al. Philippide gave him the final blow: “The language usage depends on the scholars’ consensus. Where’s our consensus? Or isn’t it that every writer writes as he pleases?”.

Indeed, every scholar developed an orthographic system according to his personal beliefs.

In that, every system was as correct as any other.

The same was true for the printing houses, which complied with the orthography particular to their specific area. Texts were written in transition alphabets, combining Cyrillic and Latin letters, and some contained inconsistencies from one page to another.

The most significant step toward order was made by Maiorescu. In 1866, with “Despre scrierea limbei române” (On the Writing of Romanian Language), he hoped to eliminate the confusion between “the etymologic, phonetic, phoneticetymologic method, or whatever they are called.

A method must be logical. We are not meant to make alphabets and graphic creations: we deal with the Latin alphabet.”

“The intellectual principle” of Maiorescu stated: sounds with a corresponding Latin letter are to be written with that letter regardless of the etymology. Ă is written with a or e with a hat, according to the original sound. But in new words, it will always be ă. Maiorescu considered î a “mere nuance” of ă, which only deepens the voice one level more. The difference, he said, is irrelevant; it is unimportant if some will read hărtie instead of hârtie.

Since ţ is derived from t and ş from s, they need to be written in a similar yet clearly distinctive way. How should the difference be marked? With a cedilla, said Maiorescu.

“Any sign, be it letter or traffic sign, must fulfill two essential conditions: to have a set meaning so that it might not be interpreted in more ways, and secondly, to have a meaning known by everybody. It is only the cedilla that is according to this purpose.

1) Because the cedilla has no other meaning than that of softening a sound, 2) because it is known from French by everybody with this meaning.”

But “cedillas are ugly” and make writing more difficult, many argued. Maiorescu replied incisively: “It is one man that writes, but thousands that read.”

The decisive criterion should not be making writing easier, but making reading easier.

Maiorescu’s “On the Writing of Romanian Language” was the foundation of the first writing system adopted in 1880 by the Romanian Academy, founded in 1867 as the Romanian Academic Society.

The concessions made to etymologism created discontent, so in 1904 a new orthography was adopted. It was based on Maiorescu’s golden rule: pronunciation is decisive. It was then that the principle “one sound – one graphic sign” was first put into practice.

The 1904 writing system marked the end of years and years of orthographic battles. Many of the rules remain unchanged to this day. Yet the disputes never really ended, they just became more specific.

I

n 1996, Rolf Gröschner, a law professor in Germany, took his orthographic complaints to the Constitutional Court. Together with his 14-year-old daughter, Alena, he challenged the orthographic reform made public in 1995 by the education and culture ministers in the 16 states of Germany and approved by the other German speaking countries in 1996. The reform was meant to be a simplification. In compound words – the Germans’ hobby – triple letters were not to be reduced to two (Flanell + Lappen was to be Flanelllapen, not Flanellapen). Orthography was to reflect more clearly the root word: Bendel (lace) was to be written Bändel, as it is derived from Band (ribbon).

One of Gröschner’s arguments was that the reform violated his constitutional right to the free development of his personality. It also violated his constitutional right of raising his daughter, as she would learn new rules, different from the ones he knew. Alena argued that the reform altered her right to free development of personality and being contradictory to her “mental lexicon.” And such violation of rights could not be enacted by a ministerial decree, but only by law (in which the reform was not stipulated).

In the end, Gröschner lost the case because of a technicality. Nonetheless, this trail, as well as many others that resulted from the German orthography reform, says Richard Oliver Collin, Professor of Political Sciences, in his work “Revolutionary Scripts,” constitutes an important lesson: when the orthography of a language changes, especially if it covers several countries, there are considerable chances for people to rebel.

Many linguists consider writing nothing more than “visible speech,” a mere transcription of what we say. Noam Chomsky argued that speech is the essence of humanity, and Steven Pinker, an MIT colleague of Chomsky’s, said that writing “is clearly an optional accessory; the real engine of verbal communication is the spoken language we acquired as children.”

From a political point of view, this attitude is questionable: laws, judge’s decisions, fiscal papers, official reports are always written and meant to be read quietly by oneself. And from the same legal perspective, the verbal agreement is often worth less than the piece of paper it wasn’t written on.

Sociolinguist Peter Daniels said in his “The World’s Writing Systems” that “Humankind is defined by language; but civilization is defined by writing”. Writing has the power to confer unity to linguistically fragmented communities but it can also deepen a conflict within a community of the same language.

We don’t have to look very far for an example of “orthographic intolerance.” For as long as there was Yugoslavia, Serbo-Croatian was considered one language, divided into mutually intelligible dialects. Yet the community was always divided regarding writing: the Croats, Roman-Catholics, preferred the Latin letters whereas the Christian Orthodox Serbs used the Cyrillic alphabet. In the ’90s Yugoslavia divided into five sovereign states: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia and Serbia&Montenegro (the latter separated in 2006). The Slovenians, who have always used the Latin alphabet and the Macedonians, who have used the Cyrillic writing system, were finally able to claim that they do not speak Serbo-Croatian and went their own way. The other three states accepted linguistic unity; the political collapse that followed led to a separation reflected not in language, but in writing. Schools in Croatia began to teach the Latin alphabet exclusively. In Serbia the Latin alphabet was excluded from the educational system. Both of the communities performed a “lexical cleansing” program. The Muslims in Bosnia used, until the beginning of the 20th Century, Arabic characters, and during the time of Yugoslavia either Cyrillic or Latin alphabets. Nowadays, the Bosnians speak officially three languages – Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian – and use two

cedilla

Caron

Tilde

Trema

Diacritics can make you pay, as was the case for an importer who got fined at the Romanian border because his invoice read paturi (beds) and he had pături (blankets) in his truck.

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alphabets, both Latin and Cyrillic. This separation is proof that defining language - spoken and written - is essentially a matter of politics.

The shape of the written letters itself has a significance of its own. Therefore, says graphic designer Iulian Puiu, they should be called characters, not fonts. “The character conveys something very simple. It is not the drawing, but the character of the design that makes you choose it. It has personality, voice, tone.” (A theory proven by an accountant in New Zeeland who got fired for sending an all staff e-mail full of coloured letters written in CAPS.) Puiu is art director at Re:ply, an agency specializing in corporate publishing. He speaks respectfully of fonts, as a man who grasps their power well. For example, the Nazis used Fraktur, a German, nationalist font, characteristic of aggressive, revolutionary people who don’t see any shades of grey. “It strengthens communication,” says Puiu. “You don’t take it, it’s being given to you.”

Ionel Funeriu, Ph.D., is passionate about textology – the comparative study of texts to establish the original version – and the hermeneutics of publishing and typographical codes. He is for the protection of the “consumer of literature”: The law should sanction the creators of faulty texts just as it punishes criminals guilty of selling plonk as Bordeaux wine. The imperfections may seem minimal, says Funeriu in his book “Reflecţii filologice” (Thoughts on Philology), but the consequences are never so. Reading Eminescu’s line “Când în straturi luminoase basmele copile cresc” (When young fairy tales in glowing layers grow) (“Memento Mori”), George Călinescu, due to a transcription mistake, read copite (hooves) instead of copile (young) and launched into a delirious commentary, with baroque exaggerations, metaphors and imaginary animals.

The least we can do is use the signs that do exist – diacritics. The lack of diacritics may alter the meaning of a message, especially when the context is poor. For example, in headlines: “Un tanc ameri­ can de 16 ani violeaza doua minore din Siria” (The line reads: “A 16 year old American tank violates two minors in Syria” instead of “A 16 year old American kid rapes two minors in Syria”).

Neglecting these apparently insignificant norms may even lead to murder. The tragic end of the young Turkish Ramazan Çalçoban and his wife,

Emine, began from two vicious dots on i (theoretically, the dots on i and j are also diacritical marks). After a quarrel with Emine, Ramazan sent her a text: “Zaten sen sıkı�ınca konuyu deği�tiriyorsun” („Anyway, each time you don’t have a reply to an argument, you change the subject”). A simple accusation in a poor marriage, yet one that turned fatal in the version read by Emine: „Zaten sen siki�ince ko­nuyu deği�tiriyorsun”. Free form translation: “Anyway, each time they fuck you, you change the subject.”

Emine showed the message to her father, who angrily called Ramazan, accusing him of calling his daughter a slut. Ramazan went home to his wife to ask her forgiveness only to be stabbed by her, his father-in-law and two sisters-in-law. He managed to grab a knife, stab his wife and run away. Emine died from the wounds. Ramazan committed suicide in jail.

What did really happen? Ramazan wrote sıkışınca, the gerund of sıkışmak, to block, here “the incapacity to respond to an argument”. Emine read sikişince, a form of sikişmek, to fuck. The roots of the verbs sıkış to block and sikiş to fuck differ only by the presence or absence of the dot on the i.

Emine’s phone had a deficient localization for Turkish and failed to display the letter i without the dot, thus replacing it with i.

U

ntil the beginning of the ’90s, the writing of Romanian language was dependant on controllable mechanical instruments and didn’t have a lot of propagation power. Publishing houses were controlled by supervised standards. The Revolution led to the deregulation of writing. The number of periodicals, publishing houses and printers went through the roof, which didn’t leave much room for standards. After a few years, anyone could produce text as long as they had a computer and a printer. Then came the internet.

This free access to technology triggered the second war of diacritical signs.

Dan Matei, “an old man with a white moustache,” was a programmer at the Central Institute of Informatics (ICI), founded before the Revolution, and worked with electronic instruments – early forms of computers – that recognized only the basic Latin alphabet, written in capitals. No such thing as diacritics.

After the Revolution, Matei was appointed manager of

“When you use something else instead of ă it means you don't care; you would be better working in agriculture than in design.”

Cristian “Kit” Paul

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the Institute for Cultural Memory, responsible for digitizing and filing objects from the national heritage.

“Afterwards, we didn’t have to use only the basic alphabet anymore,” says Matei, “but we were used to it. And there was no resistance, not even from linguists. They even allowed us to write sarma (cabbage roll) instead of sârmă (wire). There was no street riot to protect the Romanian language.”

The first computers were not built for public use and did not reproduce the particularities of all languages. The details refined as computers became a necessity. In Romania, the change was done later than in the West. Matei says, without reservation, that computer experts - himself included - are the first to blame for today's chaos: “A newspaper that would not even consider writing without diacritics in its printed version lacks diacritics online. Why? Because the IT guy says ‘it’s complicated’. And instead of getting the whip, his bosses believe him.”

Matei had the chance to make up for his mistakes around ’97, when ASRO, the Romanian Standards Association acknowledged by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), appointed him to coordinate the work for a Romanian keyboard standard.

By that time, users got used to American keyboards, sold from the beginning as the default, and those who did write with Romanian diacritical marks got used to Microsoft's character mapping.

Legend has it that at the beginning of the ’90s, the guys from Microsoft came to Romania to find out how to localize their operating system and went to the police. It makes sense, because the police issue the documents related to births, deaths and marriages related documents and one would assume that the language requirements are known.

Well, it seems that, at the police, they found some German typewriters and this is how we got the z and the y inverted, and ă, î, ş, ţ on the keys for the square brackets, semicolon and apostrophe.

Therefore, the Romanian standard could no longer rely on the frequency of letters or other requirements by the language, but instead it had to interfere as little as possible with the habit. So ASRO didn’t change much: Romanian characters stayed on the same keys; only y and z were back in the right place. The problem with this standard, adopted in 1998, was that almost nobody heard of it.

Even Cristi Secară, who had been trying to create his own character arrangement, heard about this standard quite late. Secară – “Secărică” for diacritics enthusiasts– speaks as if dozens of ideas come to his mind and need to be let out all at once. He works as a technical assistant in television, but his obstinacy to solve the diacritics debacle made him a guru in the field. Secărică first had to deal with diacritics around ’95, when he wanted to play writer and discovered that Windows was a mess. “I needed decent writing. Not that character cluster fuck.”

He started to experiment with different versions of character arrangements, alternatives to the “Romanian” language setting in Windows. He asked for advice on forums. At some point, he met Matei and together they decided to revise the current keyboard layout standard. They worked on it for about two years in a committee that became the core of a virtual community – the Diacritics Google Group – where every detail was debated with the enthusiasm of the 19th Century scholars. The difference is that back then, work was done to adapt an alphabet to the language. Now, work was done to adapt technology to its writing.

The flaw of the first standard was that it provided a single character arrangement, therefore it didn’t meet the needs of more than one user group.

Punctuation marks were still confusing, there was no euro sign, and quotation marks were difficult to access. They agreed that the new standard would contain two arrangements: one for users who use mostly Romanian characters and one for more technical use (exactly like the keyboard set on English, with Romanian characters accessible by combinations with AltGr key).

Soon, the group realized that the distribution of the characters on the keyboard was not the only problem: the shape of some of the signs was not established in any reference work. For example, quotation marks. What do the Romanian quotation marks look like? Like „this“ or like „this”? Who decided? They could offer their opinion or think of symmetry criteria, or of the specifics of other countries. But what was the standard? “I have a grudge against Romanians, because nothing is documented,” says Secărică, who then decided to ask the linguists for help. “I had an obsession with quotation marks, so I pestered the Academy.”

He found a huge building, with sinuous corridors and massive doors. First he spoke to a gentleman who knew a lot about language but nothing about computers, and could not understand the problem. Secărică eventually met Ioana Vintilă Rădulescu, the assistant manager of the Linguistic Institute of the Romanian Academy.

He called a meeting with her, the standardization team and other potentially interested people (Microsoft and Apple representatives) to clear up the quotation mark issue. “It was at that moment that she found out, for the first time, what was the problem with the lack of a standard,” remembers Secărică. “She knew them quotation marks. How else could they be?”

In 2003, the Romanian Academy officially declared: In Romanian language, the correct quotation marks are like „this”. And the letters ş and ţ are marked with diacritical marks shaped as commas, not cedillas. The second specification was critical: the entire evolution of the digital writing of Romanian was determined by the case of ş and ţ. dor • spring 2011 • 107

T

itu Maiorescu and the orthographies from the beginning of the 20th century claimed that below ş and ţ stands a cedilla.

Because, back then, printers had limited resources, the theory didn’t exactly match practice and characters were graphically represented either with a cedilla or with a comma. In 1909, Convorbiri literare magazine (Literary Conversations) was written with cedillas, and Luceafărul with commas. In time, commas became common place. “The Romanian Language Dictionary” in 1910 is written with ş and ţ with commas, and so are “The Orthographic and Orthoepic Guidebook” from 1965 and “DOOM I” from 1982. Yet none of these works clarifies the transformation of the cedilla into a comma.

The statement made by the Academy in 2003 – and restated in 2005 in “DOOM 2” – was the first official certification of the commas. Vintilă Rădulescu, who coordinated the work on the dictionary, explained in an email: “In the typographical and didactical practice, the use of the comma is lost in the time immemorial. There was no decision, no argument, just the acknowledgement and the explication of a reality.” As for Maiorescu’s cedillas, Vintilă Rădulescu says: “the term sedila (cedilla) was used incorrectly, being at the time, the only term known, as loan word from other languages in which the cedilla is used.”

Indeed, Maiorescu had borrowed the cedilla from French, and he did it on purpose: just as in French, it was to soften the sound marked by the basic letters. Moreover, the sign is based on the Visigoth z and it appeared in the writing of the Old Spanish combined with c in order to mark the sound ţ.

Vintilă Rădulescu’s explanation supports the idea that the appropriation of the comma was based on a printing tradition, and not on a linguistic decision.

At present, the cedilla is used in combination with c in French, Catalan, Portuguese and Albanian and with s in Turkish. The diacritical comma is used just in Latvian under the consonants g, k, l, n. The Latvian commas have the same problem as the Romanian ones: they are always being replaced with cedillas.

In handwriting, this diacritical mark never represented a problem. In the first grade, we are taught: breve (hat) on ă, circumflex (or roof) on î and â and comma under ş and ţ. In digital writing, the cedilla and the comma are two things completely different. The treacherousness of the detail consists in its viciousness: it is almost invisible to the naked eye, so the user cannot imagine its effects.

The linguists didn’t think about this. Until they began to write on the computer themselves, says Zafiu, the two worlds were completely separate. The texts went to the publishing houses and it was there that it was decided how the letters looked.

The cedillas under ş and ţ were first certified internationally in 1987 in the set of standard

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characters adopted by ISO for Eastern Europe. It took ASRO 10 years to request the introduction of the commas for Romanian. In 1998, ISO published an update of the ’87 standard ignoring the request.

In 1999, ASRO adopted the first set of standard characters for Romanian (created by the same team responsible for the keyboard) in which ş and ţ had commas. The same year, the Unicode standard defined codes for characters with commas. It was only in 2001 that ISO introduced them, too.

Until the clarification of the standards, the ş and ţ case took a turn for the worse: the pair ş with cedilla and ţ with comma. Since ţ with cedilla doesn’t exist in any alphabet, the letter was mixed up in a variety of numeric and alphanumeric codes, descriptions and instructions – detailed in Kit’s manifesto in 2008 – and it ended up in fonts with a comma. Optically speaking, it is correct. Technically – from the computer’s point of view – it is just like having a cedilla.

The ISO and Unicode standardization of the correct diacritics for Romanian didn’t bring the case of ş and ţ to an end. It was only in 2007 that Microsoft reacted, with Vista. The keyboard setting for Romanian is finally in accordance with the ASRO standard, and the fonts include ş and ţ with comma.

People who legally own Windows XP can download an update for four fonts (released thanks to EU’s needs of writing documents in Romanian when Romania became a member state); without this update, documents written with commas in Windows Vista and newer versions cannot be rendered correctly. Apple introduced ş and ţ with commas in 1997, but they were rendered correctly just on Macs and weren’t recognized in Windows.

The solution consists in synchronizing all the mechanisms involved in this mess – operating systems, applications manufacturers, users – and it proves the power of the resistance to correcting a standard once it was incorrectly used. “Fortunately, the migration is, willy-nilly, towards the correct writing,” says Secărică. There are some who argue that it is too complicated to write with diacritics. (Romanian has to be set as local language, you have to change the keyboard from English to Romanian, and learn the position of the characters.) “If you don’t want to, suit yourself.

But if you want to, you can,” says Secărică. This is what motivated him in his fight to bring things to a normal state: “I want to be free not to comply, but also to be free to comply.”

The ball is once again in the court of the computer specialists, says Matei. “It is a thing of technical refinement; can you explain to average people that they aren’t writing the ş correctly?

They’ll just say that if it isn’t all right like that, they’ll write it with s. I’d just work against diacritics because of my stupidity. And my interest is for them to write correctly.”

Dexonline.ro sets a very good example, being one of the few Romanian sites that uses the correct diacritics, using an application that recognizes in searches all types of ş and ţ.

“The incorrect use of many things, not just of diacritics is a disease,” says Puiu of Re:ply. “We could make something out of nothing and brag about how creative we are. Wouldn’t it be better if we made something out of something and actually make it work?”

I

n conclusion, the standards are there: breve, circumflex, comma. The technical problems have also been solved, though there is still the argument that it is safer not to use the diacritics or to use the incorrect ones, if you want to make sure that the readers won’t read a text full of empty squares or question marks. It will probably take years until all the applications and operating systems are updated and synchronized. The users, the designers, the programmers, they will all comply with the norms. It is no longer a question of “if ” but of “when”.

It's true, nowadays if you want to write using the correct diacritical marks you have to make an additional effort. And what is the most common reaction when it comes to additional efforts?

“Why bother?”

The why-bother mentality was – and continues to be – the main weapon in the massacre of diacritical marks. “We are not strict enough with ourselves,” says Matei, who is now working to impose a Romanian keyboard layout to public institutions. “I don’t care about my language, I use five letters less.”

The Romanian letters marked with diacritics are neither many – the Polish have nine, the Icelanders 10, the Czechs 15 – nor complicated. Maybe it is just because they are so simple that they’ve become so messed up, Secărică jokes bitterly. “I blame it on the nation. We are capable of building an oil drill, but we can’t make a match that lights.”

It is not very troublesome when reading, but it makes a difference when you search in databases or digitized texts. More and more documents are uploaded on the websites of public institutions; digital libraries are expanding, and since the contributions come from different sources, they have to observe the standards. Any deviation means having the access to information restricted. “If instead of ă, it writes a with a tilde, which it often does, I can see it

with the naked eye,” says Matei, “But when I search Costică, I can’t find it.”

The problem with norms is that there is no one to have them enforced.

“The CNA (National Audiovisual Council of Romania) is able to give fines because there is a control instrument of the audiovisual,” says Zafiu, who is a member in the team monitoring the use of language. In 2008, CNA sanctioned TVR, OTV, Prima, Antena1 TV stations with fines and public summons for having failed to observe the standards of Romanian language, including not using diacritics – which famous late linguist George Pruteanu described in one of his articles as “a horrible act of unprofessionalism and even graphic retardation.”

But the CNA does not intervene if the diacritics are used incorrectly. And what’s more, the publishing houses, the papers, the magazines are private bodies which can write, if it suits them, even with Cyrillic letters. The risk of not making themselves understood is all theirs.

The only ones compelled by law to write according to the most recent edition of the DOOM are the authorities, the public institutions, and notary publics. And even they don’t do it right.

On the site of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the logo reads Romania instead of România, the Public Health Ministry is called Ministerul Sanatatii Publice instead of Ministerul Sănătaţii Publice. On the site of the Internal Affairs Ministry, the diacritics are completely missing, whereas the Environment Ministry sometimes uses them and sometimes it doesn’t. “The institutions must respect the language, the code, the citizens,” says Zafiu. “The French, too, write texts with mistakes, but on the internet pages of the ministries they never write without accents.”

It is certain that there is no easy way. And having such examples as the Culture and Cults Ministry, whose logo doesn’t have diacritics, the Department of Romanian Language of the University of Bucharest, whose logo doesn’t have diacritics, presidents who address the citizens from a tribune that reads Administratia Prezidentiala instead of Administraţia Prezidenţială, it is clear that the why-bother approach is still the norm.

Lavinia Gliga is a co-editor at DoR and a baker of cakes and cookies.

Radu Manelici is a graphic designer based in Bucharest.

“We could make something out of nothing and brag about how creative we are. Wouldn't it be better if we made something out of something and actually make it work?”

Iulian Puiu

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style

give us our daily shawarma You think your designer shoes are too good for the sidewalk of a street food vendor? You think rucola is better than cabbage? You think certain foods belong to certain social classes?

We don't. That's why we insist you're never too good for a shawarma*.

Photographs by Andrei Pungovschi Styling by Ailin Ibraim Styling assistant Gabriela Piţurlea Make-up by Marina Chiorean Hair-styling by Bogdan Mirică/ Fantasy Hair Team

* Shawarma is anything but a traditional Romanian dish. Still, we eat it as if it were.

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Ipekyol raincoat Louis Vuitton handbag DnV – Zebra Love pumps Rebelle gloves Oxette watch

Chicken shawarma with garlic sauce and mint – Shark, Buzeşti Open Market, Bucharest.

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M Unu Doi dress Mihaela Glăvan pumps Oxette earrings Chicken shawarma with white and red cabbage, parsley and peppers – Bundetot, Old Town, Bucharest.

Car: Mini 50 Mayfair, BMW Group Romania.

Previous spread Ipekyol shirt Louis Vuitton handbag Ipekyol necklace Rebelle gloves Shawarma with chicken breast – Dristor Kebab, Dristor, Bucharest.

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Zara jacket Aldo tie Crystal ring, onyx ring and earrings from Oxette Chicken shawarma with the house’s special hot sauce – Melissa, Rahovei Street, Bucharest.

Store info: M Unu Doi atelier_m12@yahoo.com Timişoara DnV Wings Fashion Boutique Bucharest Maria Lucia Hohan www.mlh.ro Mihaela Glăvan www.sepala.ro

Oxette Bucharest Mall Rebelle Bucharest Mall Zara Băneasa Shopping City Bucharest Ipekyol Băneasa Shopping City Bucharest

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Shirt from the stylist's wardrobre Crystal ring, onyx ring, bracelet and earrings from Oxette

Sânziana Negru, our model, is a VJ at 1 Music Channel. This was her first experience with shawarma, and she loved every bite. By the end of the shoot she had eaten a total of two. Her dog, Skittles, helped with the leftovers.

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C

comic

Comic by Andreea Chirică (http://dessinscalins.blogspot.com)

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14 Romanian Contemporary Art Turns 20

20 Legends of the Flag

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08 The Many Faces of Ana Ularu

16 Why Bucharest Should Be Your Next Home

40 Free Gigi

The true story of a prank that brought together the pro-pot movement and soccer hooligans.

23 Romanian Facts and Quirks

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The draft, the traveling she-wolf, and a spoonful of plum butter.

29 The Camera Between Us

Diana Dondoe on being photographed

by Nobuyoshi Araki

44 Every Woman Is a Story About Breasts

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A moving personal essay on the most personal of topics.

80 Otto the Barbarian

He’s 16, he’s in a punk band, and he wants to change the world.

54 Cristi Puiu

Inside the mind of Romania’s most famous film maker.

102 Use Your Diacritics!

The neverending story of ș, ț, ă, î and â.

EUR €7 USD $10

110 You’re Never Too Fancy for a Shawarma A visual argument for Romania’s favorite street food.

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