Owlspotting

I had coffee with a friend today and we somehow ended up talking about akward social moments. She mentioned being in elevators with strangers and all those seconds that seem to strech forever before the doors open and you can return to your personal space. I realized during our chat that many of the social […]

I always believed that the main problem with summer was the heat. Without heat, summer has the potential to be a really great season. That’s one of the few thoughts my mind could articulate while in Greece, where the heat just refused to let me do anything much besides nothing. Below are a few random […]

…and will return Aug. 25.

In Romania we read a lot of literature by dead white guys even though a lot of modern literature is being translated. One author that hasn’t had the pleasure of a translation yet is Jonathan Safran Foer (see photo), who penned the gorgeous “Everything is Illuminated” and the mind-blowing “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” I […]

Do you have your balls on you? You do? Then charge ’em and slap ’em on because you’ll need them powered up for this parking adventure. There are few things that happened to me since I returned home that have made me as mad as this. It happened twice last week when I was cruising […]

The Placebo concert in Romania was supposed to be a landmark musical event in Romania–proof that not only “dead” bands make a stop in our country. But the Placebo concert was a weak affair. The organizers did a horrible job planning the event–it took two hours to have people trickle in through one entrance, like […]

Elle wrote this article about Romania after visiting for the first time in december 2004. It originally appeared here. Romania is a filthy, foul-smelling, burnt-out pit, with beggars and thieves lurking in its every piss-soaked alley and behind its every news camera, state bureau and cash register. Anyone who would even think of visiting, much […]

A self-conscious Romanian joke says we Romanians are expert in everything. When confronted with this issue-usually when guests on talk-shows give their all on topics they know nothing about–my dad loves to play on that and say things like: “I’m the best soccer player among doctors and the best doctor among soccer players.” Yesterday I […]

In 2000, a couple of friends and I were looking for an unknown Romanian rock band to book for a party we were throwing at school. Someone gave us a demo CD for a band called ab4. We listened, we liked, we paid $300 and we let them rip. At the time, ab4 was nothing […]

Here are some pictures from Vama Veche. They were snapped by my good friend Andrei, who until recently was a photographer for the Mediafax press agency. Now he’s packing his bags for a master’s program in photography at Missouri.