Another "hero" comes along (BBC News)

Rich populist woos Romanians

By Oana Lungescu European Affairs correspondent, Bucharest

Published: 2007/03/16 10:57:12 GMT

Less than three months after Romania joined the EU, the country is in deep political crisis, with the president and prime minister accusing each other of lying and corruption.

Meanwhile, a third man is climbing in the polls. He is Gigi Becali, the multi-millionaire boss of the champion Steaua football club.

From humble beginnings as a shepherd, Mr Becali made his fortune in real estate after the fall of communism to become one of Romania's richest men and the second most popular politician after the president himself.

His New Generation Party (PNG) headquarters is as flamboyant as the man - a palace in Bucharest being polished back to its former glory with no expense spared.

Restorers carefully apply gold leaf to every moulding, while Gigi Becali, a dark-haired man in his late forties, looks on whistling O Sole Mio.

In Berlusconi's footsteps

His soulmate among European politicians is Silvio Berlusconi. Like the former Italian prime minister, Mr Becali wants to use football and money to get to the top. But he is also a devout Orthodox Christian.

I met him on his return from Mount Athos, the holiest site in Eastern Orthodoxy. He often goes there in a private jet to pray before key matches.

His office looks more like a shrine, with Byzantine icons on every wall, a life-size painting of himself as St John in the desert and on his desk a statuette of his namesake St George killing the dragon.

"I too want to kill the devil in Romania, the corruption and lies," he tells me, with an eye on the huge TV screen in the corner to check how often his own face pops up on the news channel.

So how does he explain his spectacular rise from shepherd to multi-millionaire politician?

"In the Byzantine Empire, the great kings were shepherds. And if you want me to quote the Bible, Jesus didn't say I am your captain or your driver, but I am your shepherd. So in Romanian politics, I see myself as an apostle because I'm trying to do something no one has tried before", he said.

"Now that Europe has been reunited, I also want to see a spiritual reunification of Europe, I want western Christian-democracy to be enriched by Eastern Orthodoxy. If we don't counter sin with faith, then the end of the world is nigh," Mr Becali says.

Fan base

This messianic tone goes down well in a country where the Orthodox Church is the most trusted institution. Football too enjoys cult status.

At a match in the Black Sea port of Constanta, I saw Steaua fans furiously chanting and waving their red and blue banners.

Some even had flags that looked suspiciously like iron crosses. Notorious for their violence and their racist taunts against Hungarian, Roma or black players, they are a force to be reckoned with, on the pitch and at the polls.

"Gigi would make Romania a cleaner and fairer country, because he has faith in God and he wants to clean out the mafia," one young man said. "He helps poor people, he understands their difficulties, while other politicians do nothing," said another.

Help for poor

For leading political analyst Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Mr Becali "satisfies an important need in the voters right now - the need to denounce the whole corruption of the political system".

"He managed to create an image for himself of a person who not just speaks differently from the rest of the political class, but also is different. He's a man of his word, he is a provider, he delivers what he says he does," Alina Mungiu-Pippidi says.

The proof can be seen in a village in eastern Romania called Vadu-Rosca. It is now known as Becali's village.

The houses here were swept away by catastrophic floods two years ago. Then came Mr Becali in his trademark Maybach limousine and promised to build them all up again. And so he did.

Eleonora Lazar showed me into one of 200 identical small white bungalows, all built by Mr Becali. A widow with three children, she told me she had more faith in the football boss than in the government.

"He's so generous, he deserves to become president," she says. "Why should we elect someone who didn't even bother about us? We pray for him every day, for his health and so people should stop accusing him of all sorts of things. He's never done anything bad," Mrs Lazar told me.

Mr Becali has fought off accusations of tax evasion and dodgy deals. He equally rejects any charges of extremism and intolerance.

Anti-gay stance

But what about an offer he made last year to give a few million dollars to anyone who would root out homosexuality in Romania? Amid the faint smell of incense that pervades his office and with three bodyguards looking on, he got visibly angry.

"I love homosexuals like everyone else. I have nothing against them. But I insist, it's a sin. And I will repeat it everywhere, including in the European Parliament, because I'm not afraid of any European policy or whatever, homosexuality is a sin, and that's that!" he shouted.

If he is elected, I asked him, what are the first three things he plans to do?

"I will ask God to give me wisdom," came the answer after a pause. "He will tell me, this is the first thing you should do, this is the second, and this is the third. I can't tell you now what God will tell me then."

Mr Becali's parting words were just as striking. "We'll see," he told me with a smile, "if you are on the side of God or on that of the devil."

In one of Europe's poorest countries, his voice is unashamedly anti-liberal, promising some sort of salvation to those angered and frustrated with conventional party politics.

Political turmoil

Mr Becali's party is gaining ground on the more established Greater Romania Party, which recently caused a stir in the European Parliament by helping to form a new ultra-nationalist group.

Polls credit PNG's list headed by Gigi Becali with 10-15% of the vote, which could see it wining four to six seats of the 35 allotted to Romania in the European Parliament.

But as Alina Mungiu-Pippidi explains, it is not just happening in Romania. "People like Becali and others in Central Europe, where everywhere radical populism is on the rise, are the product of a certain failure in our political transition," she says.

"Our transitions were very successful economically, they succeeded in bringing our countries into the EU, but didn't succeed in creating normal politics. If Becali fails, it's going to be somebody else. The problem is that normal politics don't manage to deliver as they should," Mrs Mungiu-Pippidi says.

If he fails, Mr Becali told me he would buy a few thousand sheep, make cheese and stop answering journalists' questions.

But many fear his flock will be the stray sheep of Romania's long transition to democracy.

Timidly peeking out into the world (Wall Street Journal)

Transylvanian Town Set to Shine as This Year's European Cultural Capital

By MARK BAKER
March 16, 2007

Although Sibiu's recorded history goes back eight centuries, a stroll through this city's broad, handsome squares and neat, cobblestone alleys in many ways feels like a glimpse into Romania's happier future.

The sheer anarchy of a place like Bucharest makes you wonder if the European Union didn't bite off more than it could chew this time around, when it took in both Romania and Bulgaria as members in January. The social fabric of the capital seems so shorn apart, you wonder if it can ever be knit back together.

But here in Sibiu, about 250 kilometers northwest of Bucharest deep in the heart of Transylvania, you sense a social and cultural cohesiveness that immediately feels different and even sparks a glimmer or two of, well, euro-optimism. Maybe it's the anarchy that's the anomaly, and this is the real Romania.

That was probably the hope in Brussels when the Council of Ministers chose Sibiu to co-host, along with Luxembourg, the European Cultural Capital for 2007. At any rate, they couldn't have selected a more Europe-friendly introduction to the EU's newest member state. A visit here makes a fine weekend for anyone looking for an unexpected touch of architectural beauty and plenty of culture to go along with it.

Few people will have ever heard of Sibiu, but for centuries the city—known by its German name of Hermannstadt—played an important role in governing Transylvania, what the Germans called Siebenbürgen to refer to the region's seven fortified towns. German settlers were originally brought in by the Hungarian kings in the 12th century to secure the region from Tatar barbarians to the east.

By many measures, Sibiu was the most successful of these Saxon-dominated burgs. In the 15th century, the town's clannish Saxons repelled wave after wave of attack from the feared Ottoman Turks. Just 100 years later, Sibiu was hailed in travel books of the time as the biggest and most beautiful of the seven German towns. One account describes it as "only a hint smaller than Vienna," then the seat of the Hapsburg Empire.

Sibiu's lapse into relative obscurity began in the middle of the 19th century. The Compromise of 1867, establishing the dual Austrian-Hungarian monarchy, transferred Transylvania to Hungarian control. The Hungarians preferred to run their affairs from Kolozsvár (the modern Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca), Sibiu's rival to the north. By the end of World War I, when Transylvania was awarded to Romania, Sibiu had dwindled to the status of a prosperous county seat—essentially what it is today, with a population of about 170,000.

The 20th century wasn't kind to Sibiu's Germans. The Nazis dominated this area in World War II, and many of the ethnic Germans who survived the war were expelled in its aftermath. The rest fell victim to Nicolae Ceausescu's crushing version of Communism. Many eventually escaped to West Germany or were bartered by the regime like car parts in exchange for deutsche marks.

Today's ethnic-German population numbers only about 3,000, though it is the town's undeniable Saxon feel that visitors will notice first. The architectural styles -- a fusion of early Gothic with a later overlay of Hapsburg-inspired Baroque and Secession -- the faded pastel colors, and the rough-hewn textures of the walls and roofs all recall something of a prosperous German or Austrian provincial capital.

And the sheer scale of the historic core is shocking. The central Piata Mare, the Large Square, is one-and-a-half football fields long and another one wide. Unlike Prague's or Krakow's central square, this one is largely unadorned in keeping with more modest Saxon tastes, but it provides a dramatic backdrop to a leisurely stroll on a warm evening.

Sibiu's trademark feature has to be the evocative, eye-shaped dormer windows that stare down from ancient rooftops across the city. In the years before 1989, their relentless gaze must have felt more than a little sinister—like the watchful eyes of 1,000 Securitate informers. (This was not such a stretch in the 1980s, when Ceausescu's son Nicu lived here as a kind of village-idiot overlord). But these days the windows' upturned corners appear to be smiling.

The European Cultural Capital designation is one of those quaint bureaucratic honorifics for which Brussels is famous. Each year, the EU Council of Ministers chooses one or two cities to showcase its history as a way of parading Europe's cultural diversity. Being a cultural capital is a big deal for smaller cities like Sibiu. Curiously, Brussels doesn't provide any extra funding to the winners, but at the same time, the mere designation alone exerts a kind of "Olympics effect" on the hosts. It's a perfect excuse for city fathers to finally fix up the sewer systems and streetlights, to paint the facades and make sure all those glossy "Invest in Our Town" brochures are neatly stacked up at the tourist information office.

Sibiu has spent about $100 million on infrastructure and renovation, according to Cristian Radu, an energetic, young-looking man who's in charge of coordinating the year's events. That's big bucks in a country where a decent salary tops out at $10,000 a year, and many people make much less. Sibiu probably hasn't looked this good since the Compromise of 1867.

Sibiu's main attractions are clustered amid its three main squares – the Piata Mare, Piata Mica (Small Square), and Piata Huet (Huet Square) – and it's possible to take in the high points in an afternoon of dedicated strolling. The focus is the pedestrianized Piata Mare, the town's center for
the past 500 years. Just off the square, you'll find the respected Brukenthal museum, dating from the early 19th century and holding one of the country's best collections of European and Romanian art. Running the length of the square is a large Baroque Roman Catholic Cathedral and the impressive Council Tower. Scattered in and around all this highbrow masonry are literally dozens of cafés, bars and restaurants.

Just off the Piata Mare, the much smaller Piata Huet is dominated by the enormous Evangelical Cathedral, a late-Gothic masterpiece that happens to hold the country's largest pipe organ. Connecting the Piata Huet and the Piata Mica is a local wrought-iron oddity known as "Liar's Bridge." Lore has it anyone telling a lie on the bridge will send it crashing down – a dubious claim given Romania's deceptive political culture of recent decades and the fact the bridge is still standing, as good as the day it was built 150 years ago. The Piata Mica is home to the city's trendiest bars and restaurants, as well as some beautifully restored arcaded storefronts and, naturally, those smiling rooftop "eyelids" overlooking it all.

A 10-minute walk to the periphery in nearly any direction brings you to what's left of the medieval town walls and towers that served the townspeople so well in their struggles against the marauders from the east. The defense plan called for building concentric circles that in the end
proved impregnable. Much of this original fortification system is still in surprisingly good shape.

Six kilometers south of Sibiu stands a unique open-air museum, the Astra Museum of Traditional Folk Culture, dedicated to the country's rural heritage. Here you'll find kilometers of handsomely laid-out wooded paths among lakes, streams and rolling hills, dotted here and there with exhibitions showing the skill and industriousness of the country's villagers. Come for the education or simply for a few hours respite from the crowded core.

In the end, cultural capitals are about, well, culture. And anyone who braves Romania's dilapidated rail network -- or worse, its roads -- to make the journey here to Sibiu (see accompanying article for tips on how to get here) will be rewarded by an uncommonly rich program. In addition to the city's already well-known international theater and jazz festivals, there will be classical music, live theater, performance art and film throughout the year. A complete listing can be found at the main event Web site: www.sibiu2007.ro.


Things to do in Old Sibiu

How to Get There

Tarom (www.tarom.ro1), Romania's national carrier, now flies directly to Sibiu from Munich and Vienna, and the number of flights to Sibiu is expected to grow as budget carriers, like Romania's Carpatair (www.carpatair.com2), continue to expand. For most travelers the easiest way to get here is still to fly to Bucharest and catch a connecting flight to Sibiu or continue onward with the bus or train (figure on five to six hours by train) or a rental car (about four hours depending on traffic and weather). Tarom operates regular air service to Bucharest's main Otopeni airport from many European cities, with several-times-weekly connections to Sibiu. Romania-based Blue Air (www.blueair-web.com3) flies from Madrid, Paris, Rome and several other European cities to Bucharest's Baneasa airport. Similarly, Bratislava-based SkyEurope (www.skyeurope.com4) offers regular service to Baneasa from many European cities, usually with a stopover in the Slovak
capital. Check rail timetables at the Romanian national railroad's Web site, www.cfr.ro5 (note the departing train station is Bucuresti Nord). Train and bus prices are cheap at about $25 each way. Expect to pay about $50 to $60 a day for a rental car.

Where to Stay

No less than three four- and five-star projects are in the works, including a new Ramada Inn and a luxury renovation involving the Hilton Hotel group. At press time, all were promising a mid-2007 opening but still looked a long way from completion. For the moment, that leaves two decent hotel options and a bunch of smaller, pension-style properties that usually book up quickly once warm weather comes. The Continental is a Communist-era high-rise that has been retrofitted with better plumbing and thicker mattresses and is decent value for money. Doubles start at about $120 a night (40-269-218-100, www.continentalhotels.ro6). A classier option is the Imparatul Romanilor (the "Roman Emperor's" hotel), a renovated 18th-century inn down the street from the main square, the Piata Mare, with quirky two-floor rooms filled with period furnishings. Doubles run $130 a night and up (40- 269-216-500).

Where to Eat

Sibiu is a coffee town, and you'll have no problem finding places with excellent espresso. There are fewer choices, though, for more adventurous appetites. Crama Sibiul Vechi, just off a side street near the main Piata Mare, is an absolute must. It's a Transylvanian-themed cellar restaurant with inventive traditional dishes, such as Shepherd's Bag -- a grilled chicken breast stuffed with spicy sausage and a tart dollop of sheep's cheese (40-269210-461). Reservations recommended. Expect to pay about $15 per person without wine. La Piazzetta, an authentic pizzeria just off the Small Square, the Piata Mica, may have the best pizza in Romania. That's a bold claim, given that there appears to be a pizzeria in every village, town and city in this country. But rarely do you find ingredients like fresh arugula and real mozzarella, and all served with friendly, family-style Italian flair. Reservations recommended. Expect to pay $10 to $15 per person without wine (40-269-230-879).

What to See

Don't miss the three main squares, the Piata Mare, Piata Mica and Piata Huet; the Evangelical Cathedral; the Brukenthal Museum; Liar's Bridge; the remaining town walls; and if you get good weather, the Astra open-air museum. Sibiu has two decent tourist offices. The municipal-run Tourist Information Center (Str. Samuel Brukenthal 2, 40-269-208-913, www.sibiu.ro7) hands out a great free map, and can suggest accommodation options if you turn up without a bed. Kultours (Piata Mica 16, 40-269-216-854, www.kultours.ro8) is an energetic private travel agency that can also find rooms, and is a good source of info on more adventurous pursuits like hiking and biking.

Strung out on consumer culture a.k.a GORGING ON WASTE (NY Times)

Far Away, Super Bowl’s Losers Will Be Champs

By LEE JENKINS
February 4, 2007

MIAMI, Feb. 3 — In some parts of the world, the Seattle Seahawks are the reigning Super Bowl champions, the Buffalo Bills are the last great football dynasty and Tom Brady is some frustrated quarterback from New England who can never win it all.

So say the T-shirts and the caps worn in Niger, Uganda and Sierra Leone.

The Super Bowl will end about 10 p.m. Sunday, and by 10:01 every player on the winning team — along with coaches, executives, family members and ball boys — could be outfitted in colorful T-shirts and caps proclaiming them champions.

The other set of championship gear — the 288 T-shirts and caps made for the team that did not win — will be hidden behind a locked door at Dolphin Stadium. By order of the National Football League, those items are never to appear on television or on eBay. They are never even to be seen on American soil.

They will be shipped Monday morning to a warehouse in Sewickley, Pa., near Pittsburgh, where they will become property of World Vision, a relief organization that will package the clothing in wooden boxes and send it to a developing nation, usually in Africa.

This way, the N.F.L. can help one of its charities and avoid traumatizing one of its teams.

“Where these items go, the people don’t have electricity or running water,” said Jeff Fields, a corporate relations officer for World Vision. “They wouldn’t know who won the Super Bowl. They wouldn’t even know about football.”

The gear is flown, along with school and medical supplies, into a major city. It is then driven to one of the villages where World Vision staff members work. They distribute the shirts and caps at a community center, about two per family.

Beth Colleton, the N.F.L.’s director for community ventures, worked for a month at a World Vision service area in Ethiopia. One day, she saw a boy in the village wearing a Green Bay Packers 1998 Super Bowl champions T-shirt.

Ms. Colleton might have been the only person in the village to do a double take. The Denver Broncos were the 1998 Super Bowl champions.

After she returned home, she watched a documentary about Romanian orphans. One of them was wearing a Buffalo Bills Super Bowl champions T-shirt. “I almost fell out of my chair,” she said.

The Bills, losers of four consecutive Super Bowls in the 1990s, at least have a following in Romania. Some of their Super Bowl champions T-shirts were relegated to a trash heap in Tampa, Fla.

In the final seconds of the 1991 Super Bowl at Tampa Stadium, Buffalo place-kicker Scott Norwood lined up for a potential 47-yard game-winning field goal against the Giants. Eddie White, a Reebok vice president, ran onto the field with an armful of Bills championship shirts.

He had to position himself to get a shirt to Buffalo’s best players after the field goal was converted. But Norwood’s kick drifted right, and Mr. White did a 180-degree turn, sprinting from the field and tossing the shirts in the closest trash bin.

He talked about such moments as if he were a coach deconstructing a memorable fourth-down play. “We need to have a game plan just like the teams do,” he said.

Ten days ago, Reebok printed 288 championship T-shirts and caps each for the Indianapolis Colts and for the Chicago Bears, participants in this year’s Super Bowl. The gear was driven by van to Dolphin Stadium on Monday and presented to the N.F.L.

“Don’t worry,” Mr. White said. “It’s protected as well as Elizabeth Taylor’s diamonds.”

He is referring, of course, to $20 T-shirts and $30 caps. But to players and coaches, these are cotton-and-polyester trophies, the first of many tangible rewards they receive upon winning the Super Bowl.

When Green Bay beat New England in the 1997 Super Bowl, and the defensive coordinator Fritz Shurmur saw his shirt and cap for the first time, he started to cry. “I’ve waited my whole life for that shirt and that hat,” he said.

Distribution is a science. Twelve employees from Reebok and the N.F.L. huddle midway through the fourth quarter and handicap the game. If the score is lopsided, they stalk the sideline of the winning team, keeping the boxes out of sight.

But if the game is close, half the group goes to one side and half goes to the other. Each employee is assigned a star player to outfit. If the Colts win, for instance, someone immediately has to get a shirt and cap to quarterback Peyton Manning. If the Bears win, someone has to find linebacker Brian Urlacher.

This can be a difficult job, dodging joyous 300-pound linemen. But the advertising potential is priceless. Once the scoreboard clock hits 00:00, clothing manufacturers around the country start churning out championship merchandise. If Manning is seen wearing a T-shirt Sunday night, it will be flying off shelves in Indianapolis by Monday.

For the past 20 years, the shirts and caps have become as much a part of championship games as the coaches’ Gatorade showers. At the end of the World Series, the N.B.A. finals and the Final Four, all the winners get to celebrate in fresh threads.

The losers, meanwhile, trudge back to their locker room in sweaty jerseys. Major League Baseball destroys the clothing that was made for its runners-up. The N.B.A. donates it to an overseas charity. And the N.F.L. sends it to a place far away.

There, and only there, the losers get to be winners.

A gustative adventure (NY Times)

Sharing Romanian Under a Sphinx

By PETER MEEHAN
January 31, 2007

MARIGOLD walls, goldenrod tablecloths, egg yolks spilling into moist corn-colored mamaliga: yellow, yellow, yellow at Acasa in Sunnyside, Queens.

Acasa is a new Romanian place on a stretch of Skillman Avenue that’s not poor in the Romanian department. The dining room is dominated by a massive photo mural that struck me as being sci-fi: a solar eclipse in a red sky on one end; a rocky, Martian outcropping on the other. That’s what too much goulash will get you into, I thought.

Wrong, I was. Marian Golea, the restaurant’s effusive owner, explained that it was a photograph of the Romanian Sphinx, a rocky outcropping on the Bucegi Platform, taken during a total solar eclipse. As soon as Mr. Golea suggested it, the rock looked exactly like the profile of its more recently constructed and more internationally famous Egyptian brother.

Who knew you could argue that the Great Sphinx of Giza was a knockoff? You learn something new every night in this town.

One evening I learned that desserts at Acasa are very, very good, particularly papanasi cu smantana ($4), which the menu translates as “Fried Cheese Donuts with sweet vanilla creamy sauce.” I offer this nugget of discovery up front because anyone who does not budget his appetite will not have room for this.

For something a little less filling, go for the clatite cu gem ($4), crepes stuffed with jam. A friend of mine with a Romanian grandmother did, and devoured them, evoking her good name and good cooking.

He did the same with an order of red peppers stuffed with meat and rice. Mr. Golea linked the goulash and the mushroom stew with white sauce to Transylvania, the region of Romanian from which he hails. After moving to the United States, he spent 15 years working at different jobs — much of the time as a mechanical engineer at Kennedy Airport — before opening Acasa, his first restaurant.

While there may be the occasional Transylvanian accent on the menu, it’s not as strong as, say, Bela Lugosi’s. Mr. Golea said the Romanians who visit his restaurant come from all over Romania, so there are dishes to suit everyone.

A supremely creamy caviar spread, much like taramosalata, and other mezes with a Mediterranean accent, like a garlicky, light bean spread and a too-smoky eggplant dip, evince the Greek and Turkish influences on Romania’s cooking. Order a few ($4 each), and the kitchen will assemble a platter for the table.

A smoked pork knuckle — meager and sinewy but studded with enough meaty nuggets to merit inclusion on the list of house specialties — is served over melted cabbage ($11.99). It reflects the century Romania spent as a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

My favorite dishes at Acasa feature mamaliga, Romania’s answer to polenta. It’s a perfect foil to grilled lamb (erroneously billed as lamb pastrami) or braised pork. I liked it best with a fried egg, a huge dollop of sour cream and a side order of sour-and-sweet pickled red peppers.

There’s beer and wine, and the Romanian choices are affordable and acceptable. Ursus is a pilsner that goes back easy. I tried two white wines: the riesling is drier than the muscat.

One night, after ordering a bottle of the riesling ($12), my waitress asked me if I’d like seltzer, too. She was upselling me, I thought, but I opted for it anyway. Wrong again. The seltzer was for the wine, to make what from here on I will refer to as Transylvanian champagne.

It might have been too much of that Transylvanian champagne, or maybe it was a calorie-overloaded hallucination, but I swear the sphinx whispered to me one night. It told me that eating crispy carnaciori oltenesti ($4) — hot dog-like sausages paired with Windy City-style yellow mustard — in the shadow of an eclipse would trigger a slaughtering of favored colts by savage bears this coming Sunday. Who am I to argue with the Romanian Sphinx?

Acasa

48-06 Skillman Avenue (48th Street), Sunnyside, Queens; (718) 651-1364.

BEST DISHES Caviar spread; meatball appetizer; grilled lamb with mamaliga; mamaliga with egg and sour cream; pickled red peppers.

PRICE RANGE Small dishes, $4 to $6; main courses, $7.99 to $14.99; desserts, $4.

CREDIT CARDS Cash only.

HOURS Noon to 10 p.m. Monday to Thursday; to midnight Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Accessible.

More praise for the new Romanian cinema (BBC News)

Romanian film wins BBC Four award

BBC News | Last Updated: Thursday, 25 January 2007, 22:06 GMT

Romanian film "The Death of Mr Lazarescu" - a black comedy drama charting a man's slow demise in real time - has won BBC Four's fourth World Cinema award.

The prize was announced at a ceremony held at London's National Film Theatre, hosted by broadcaster Jonathan Ross.

Director Cristi Puiu, who flew in from Bucharest to pick up his award, called it "a very important prize".

He said he was "very glad" to receive an accolade "from one of the most famous broadcasters in the world".

The film was selected from a shortlist that included such acclaimed foreign-language titles as Pedro Almodovar's Volver and Austrian thriller Hidden.

'Diversity'

Puiu won the Un Certain Regard award at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for two European Film Awards.

Last year's award was won by the German film Downfall, which recreated Adolf Hitler's final hours in his Berlin bunker.

"The diversity of films shortlisted for this award demonstrates the incredibly high standard of world cinema today," said BBC Four controller Janice Hadlow.

The 2007 judging panel comprised actor Peter Capaldi, star of BBC Four's The Thick of It, and the critics Peter Bradshaw and Leslie Felperin.

Destination Romania (Boston Globe)

In a new light

Joining the European Union brings with it promise, demands -- and anxiety

By Tom Haines, Globe Staff | January 7, 2007

ARGINEA -- On a December night in the forested foothills of the Carpathian range, epic borderland that marks a new edge of modern Europe after Romania joined the European Union on Monday, darkness and fog conspired. Sight shrank to 10 feet, two. History dissolved, the future fled, the present hid.

Then, with a wash of midmorning sun, only faint wisps of white lingered above the village of Voronet and a stone church adorned with frescoes in rich red, gold, and blue. The Orthodox images of Adam plowing, of the Last Judgment, and more were not sheltered inside a sanctuary, but exposed, vulnerable, on outside walls.

When they were painted on wet plaster five centuries ago, a time when Turks attacked from the south, the murals on this and other churches nearby were meant to teach tales of Christian saints and soldiers to illiterate masses. In the centuries since, they have weathered not only sleet and snow, heat and sunlight, but also the strong hand of Austro-Hungarian rule, the chaos of World War II battles, and a forced silence that ended with the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu's conspiratorial communist regime in 1989.

During this winter of change, the open-air frescoes, unique in Europe, witness not the struggle of empires, but the uncertainty of individual lives.

Only a few dozen feet from Voronet's painted Church of St. George, breath blew hot as a white-haired man stooped in a cemetery to turn chunks of black earth, spade by spade, shovel by shovel.

A passing woman, her gray hair wrapped in a rust-colored scarf, sang out: "Watch the bones!"

"What will we find?" the grave-digger sang back. "There was a 5-month-old baby. So what bones will we find here?"

Vasile Lucaci , a soft-skinned man with short whiskers on his chin and few teeth in his mouth, climbed from the shallow pit to smoke a Saint George cigarette. When he is not digging graves, Lucaci, 60, butchers pigs, scythes hay in the fields, and chops timber in the hills.

"Whatever somebody asks me to do," he said, "for money."

He mocked the coming of the European Union and the busy bureaucrats he feared would dictate how much hay to harvest, how much milk to draw from a cow.

"In the old times, you could wash the udder a bit, drink, and not get sick," Lucaci said, describing a method his neighbors still use.

"Now, in Europe, you need a machine. And next year," he joked, "they will have regulations about how to drink the milk."

But what is a man like Lucaci to do?

He watched a concrete bridge replace the wooden one that connected his village to the world beyond the Voronet River. He has looked across a new chasm between poor and rich in capitalist Romania; how likely is it that billions of dollars in EU investment will trickle down to him?

So Lucaci shrugged and crossed the cemetery toward one grave he did not dig; it held the remains of his wife of 38 years, Georgeta . She died in June, 58 years old.

"She escaped UEFA ," Lucaci joked, referring to the EU by the acronym for the governing body of the continent's soccer leagues.

During Ceausescu's rule, soccer provided a rare link to Western Europe: In 1986, Steaua Bucuresti, a professional team from the capital, Bucharest, won Europe's Champions League title at a match in Seville, Spain.

Lucaci smiled and rested his thick hand, so used to wielding picks and axes, atop the wooden cross marking his wife's grave. Suddenly, though, it was all too much, this banter about life's changes, this pretending the stakes are really not that high. Lucaci's chin dropped toward his wool sweater. His hand lifted, as if to coax words from a silent mouth, then settled across his heart. Tears cleaned his cheeks.

He told of trips from his wooden home by the river to kneel beneath the cross.

"I light a candle," he said.

What is a flame but a symbol, an attempt to give light to a life, an idea?

Dozens of churches, symbols of the victories over Turks, rose 500 years ago in the hilly hamlets and wide valleys of southern Bucovina, as this region is known. Several -- including those in Voronet, Arbore , Vatra Moldovitei , and Sucevita -- are especially celebrated for their holiness and artistic beauty. Seven were named UNESCO World Heritage sites in 1993.

The churches are sheltered by fortified monastery walls. Two, three, or four stories high, they are capped with sloped wooden roofs. Yet the frescoes loom largest.

Consider the northern facade of the church in Sucevita, a village set beneath a mountain pass. The church is said to have been built in the 1580s by descendants of Stefan the Great, a 15th-century Moldovan ruler with a record of 34 and 2 in battles against Ottomans; he is still celebrated as one of Romania's greatest heroes. Two artists, Ioan and Sofronie , in 1596 applied paint onto a wet mixture of lime and hemp, locking colorful images onto the surface.

Outsiders who came during the reign of Austrians and Hungarians in Bucovina, which lasted for more than a century until World War I, scratched names and initials into frescoes. Russian soldiers pillaged the monastery, home to nuns, during World War II. The church's northern facade, though, is well preserved and considered a masterpiece of medieval painting. It shows an account in muted hues of the "Ladder of John Climax," inspired by a sixth-century saint who lived on Mount Sinai. Robed monks climb 32 flights toward the virtues of love, hope, and faith, and ascension to heaven. Above the monks wait orderly rows of winged angels, their heads shrouded in golden halos. Below the ladder, tempted, twisted monks fall toward hell.

On a Saturday morning, a few dozen villagers walked past the "Ladder" fresco and ducked beneath an arch into a small chapel in a monastery building. They crowded among black-robed nuns and a chanting priest. Bulbous loaves of coliva , a sweet bread of wheat, walnuts, and raisins, covered a table. Nuns sang sweetly as worshipers hoisted the table up and down, their words spilling forth in Romanian, a Latin-rooted language unique in a regional sea of Slavic tongues. They made promises to the dead: The living would continue to labor for virtue.

Only hours later, up and over the mountain pass and beyond the painted church in Vatra Moldovitei , where a lone nun knelt to polish ornately carved wooden chairs in a chapel, Gheorghe Dujac hunched over the lifeless body of a 400-pound pig.

Pigs were meeting the same fate in farmyards all along the banks of the shallow, stone-washed river that traced the village of Argel . The Lobiuc family, their home set at a bend near a lumber mill, would do the work themselves; a son, recently returned from migrant work in Italy, would help. The owner of a nearby shop would slaughter his father's pig. Another family would hire a butcher to cut loin, chops, intestines, and more from two pigs.

Butchers and villagers bantered in a mix of Romanian and an old Ukrainian dialect. After World War I, this section of Bucovina and more to the north united with the young Kingdom of Romania . In 1940, Soviet soldiers reclaimed the northern half, drawing a border 10 miles north of Argel that now divides Romania and Ukraine.

Dujac, who rose at 3 a.m. to butcher another pig in a neighboring village, had been hired by Ghiocel Hlosciuc to come to his farmyard. The lot was slick with mud and sloppy stacks of lumber. Thick-feathered chickens clucked in a coop. Three cows kept silent in their stalls.

On the crest of a nearby ridge, a farmhouse not yet reached by plumbing or electricity lingered as a reminder of life untouched, on the surface, at least, during communist years.

Below, Hlosciuc's homestead was a work in progress. Hlosciuc, 30, whose brother tended the cows, made his relative fortune where he could: trading lumber from the forests , shipping local mushrooms to markets in Italy , peddling Heineken from a small shop next to his cramped two-room home. He hoped an unfinished two-story house capped with a gleaming red metal roof would make a bustling bed-and-breakfast for tourists visiting the nearby painted church.

In the meantime, he stood with his two children, 5 and 3, and watched as Dujac plucked the pig, singed it with a blow torch, then hoisted it beneath a frame of tree trunks for gutting. A police officer, his lean face halved by a bushy mustache, stopped for plum brandy and conversation. He scoffed at speculation about tough EU requirements for butchering animals.

"Next year I won't be here to drink, but to fine them," he said. "Not even Ceausescu was able to stop this, so why now?"

Dujac hoped for a silver lining in a nation laced with corruption from local cops to corporate chiefs.

"We will see," he said, his hands slick with pig fat. "Maybe the thieves will disappear."

He tossed choice cuts of meat, taken from the pig's neck, into a pot with chunks of fat. Hlosciuc's wife, Simona , carted the pot to a kitchen in the couple's older two-room home. She set it on an iron range above a wood fire, and added an onion, then salt. Soon tochitura , a stew eaten after the slaughter of a pig, would be served alongside a thick potato polenta and home-pickled cucumbers.

Simona rushed tradition; she needed to prepare for a geography class the next morning, one step toward her goal of teaching at the village school. As she stirred and salted, Georgel , the 5-year-old, seemed oblivious. He had been mesmerized by Dujac's backyard butchery; now he sat before a small color television, watching cartoons.

Tensions of time seemed to dissolve the next morning, inside the wide monastery walls in Putna. Putna's church, though not painted on the exterior, is the burial place of Stefan the Great. A steady flow of hundreds of locals, dressed in urban black and peasant wool, passed Stefan's grave en route to priests leading prayers for health, family , and forgiveness.

Robed monks, men committed to the simple ways symbolized by their black caps and long beards, wandered the monastery grounds. Only one, Father Teofilact , nearly 80, had been at Putna during Ceausescu's time, when monks and nuns were chased from monasteries. Most at Putna were younger, and as Sunday worshipers returned to their homes, one told of today's dangers.

"Communism comes as an enemy you know," said the tall monk, his voice soft and steady. "Capitalism comes luring you. It comes with a whole set of temptations. Everybody who is weak can find comfort in those temptations."

The monk, 27, who preferred not to be known by name, criticized those corrupted by an economy that booms only for some.

"Pride is one of the ultimate sins," he said. "It is the sin that took Lucifer from heaven."

He stopped at the low wooden doorway leading outside the monastery. He said he would minister to all who come seeking God's love. But few people are drawn to righteous living in the face of worldly reward.

"To spread the Orthodox message now," the monk said, "is tough."

By twilight, on the main street of the neighboring village of Vicovu de Sus , teenage girls in tight pants walked arm-in-arm past many-sweatered grandmothers. A Mercedes sedan careered past a plodding horse cart. Wet wind lifted the elusive arc of a broken rainbow until, with the quickly fallen night, it was gone.

1984 Olympic Games (Gazeta Sporturilor)

Olimpiadă confiscată

Viorel Tudorache
Gazeta Sporturilor
7 ianuarie 2007

Partidul Comunist Român a interzis selecţionatei de fotbal a României să participe la JO din 1984 de la Los Angeles.Ultima prezenţă a fotbalului românesc la Olimpiadă s-a consemnat la ediţia din 1966, de la Tokyo. De atunci, selecţionata olimpică a României şi-a mai cîştigat însă dreptul de a participa şi la Jocurile Olimpice de la Los Angeles din 1984, dar performanţa nu apare în statistici, pentru că partidul comunist nu i-a lăsat pe "tricolori" să meargă în America.

Reprezentativa noastră se calificase de pe locul doi în grupa preliminară, după Iugoslavia, dar înaintea redutabilelor "naţionale" ale Italiei şi Olandei.Antrenorul de atunci al selecţionatei olimpice, Gigi Staicu, povesteşte: "Cînd s-a făcut delegaţia pentru Olimpiadă, celebra Lina Ciobanu de la CC al PCR a tăiat din delegaţie echipa de fotbal, spunînd că preşedintele ţării, Nicolae Ceauşescu, nu e de acord ca statul român să cheltuiască bani pentru încă 25 de persoane. Era o mare minciună, fiindcă toate cheltuielile erau suportate de Comitetul Internaţional Olimpic. Astfel, în locul nostru a mers Italia, clasată după noi, care avea să joace finala mică cu Iugoslavia. Ni s-a făcut o mare nedreptate, mie şi jucătorilor”. Gigi Staicu şi-a amintit: "La întoarcerea delegaţiei din SUA, Ceauşescu a întrebat-o pe Lina Ciobanu de ce n-a fost şi fotbalul la Jocurile Olimpice. Aceasta a început să dea din colţ în colţ. El nu ştia. Generalul Ion Coman a intervenit: . Ciobanu a bălmăjit ceva, iar după acest episod a fost dată afară din CC al PCR şi pusă ministrul industriei de maşini".

Au bătut nume grele
Selecţionata olimpică a României avea în componenţă mai mulţi jucători care evoluau, în paralel, şi la prima reprezentativă, calificată la Euro '84 din Franţa. Din acel lot olimpic au făcut parte, printre alţii, Silviu Lung, Ion Manu, Andrei Speriatu, Paul Cazan, Ungureanu, Constantin Stancu, Ştefan Iovan, Bărbulescu, Mulţescu, Irimescu, Cîrţu, Coraş, Balint, Văetuş, Zare, Marian Dragnea, Lăcătuş, Mateuţ, Adrian Popescu. "Tricolorii" au întîlnit adversari celebri, precum olandezii Van Tiggelen, Louis van Gaal, Jan Wouters sau italienii Vierchowod, Baresi, Massaro, Tassotti şi Roberto Mancini.

România a încălcat embargoul
Olimpiada de la Los Angeles a fost boicotată de majoritatea ţărilor din fostul bloc comunist, cu excepţia României şi a Iugoslaviei. Statele est-europene au reacţionat astfel după ce SUA şi alte cîteva ţări occidentale au refuzat, la rîndul lor, participarea la Olimpiada din 1980 de la Moscova, în semn de protest faţă de intervenţia militară în Afghanistan a fostei Uniuni Sovietice.

Stepping backward (The Economist)

The new kids on the block

Jan 4th 2007 | BUCHAREST AND SOFIA
From The Economist print edition

The European Union's two newest members, Bulgaria and Romania, are both economically and politically backward

WILL it work again? It is tempting to join the revellers in Bucharest and Sofia who seem to believe that European Union membership promises untold riches. The eight ex-communist states that joined in 2004 have done pretty well. Bulgaria and Romania are already growing strongly; EU money will help.

Yet the Balkan pair differ from their predecessors. Bulgaria's GDP per head in 2005 was only $3,480 and Romania's $4,490—against $9,240 for the eight entrants in 2004, and an EU-wide average of $29,330. And they are backward in many other ways. Infrastructure and public services are worse than in the rest of eastern Europe; corruption is more entrenched, and the political culture more fragile.

Although united by weak institutions and their poverty, Bulgaria and Romania differ in size, history, politics and economic structure. Romania, with some 22m people, is the second-biggest eastern European country after Poland. Bulgaria is just over a third as big. This could be a plus, as small countries' elites often work better. But Romania's political class has recently outscored Bulgaria's. Big countries also matter more to foreign investors.

Both countries are on the edge of the EU, but whereas Bulgarians feel out of the mainstream, Romanians do not. They see themselves as a Latin outpost in a sea of Slavs. Their language is linked to Italian and French. Bulgarian is a Slavic tongue, as close to Russian as Danish is to Swedish.

Each has a sizeable ethnic minority from a neighbour. In Romania some 7% of the population are ethnic Hungarians. The Hungarian minority's party, the HDUR, is a fixture in coalition governments, which has blunted its reforming edge. About 9% of Bulgaria's population are ethnic Turks, poorer and less educated than their fellow citizens. Their party, led by Ahmed Dogan, is a frequent target of complaints by anti-corruption campaigners. Both countries also have big Roma (gypsy) populations, often living in abominable conditions, worse than under communism.

The Balkan pair view Russia differently. Bulgarians thanked Tsarist Russia for liberating them from the Ottomans, and many recall communist rule as a time of modernisation. To Romanians, Russia is a predator. It took an eastern province from them in 1812. Romania regained it in 1918 and lost it again to the Soviet Union in 1940-41. This region, plus a strip of land bordering Ukraine, is now Moldova.

Romania, under its president, Traian Basescu, is a bastion of Atlanticism in the Black Sea region. Bulgaria is largely passive in foreign policy, though it has good relations with Russia. Bulgaria's prime minister, Sergei Stanishev, studied in Moscow; past Romanian leaders did so too, but to admit it now would spell political doom. Mr Basescu decries communism as criminal, but Bulgarian leaders only mumble.

In politics, Romania is noted for the recurrent conflict between Mr Basescu and his prime minister, Calin Popescu Tariceanu. Only the need to get into the EU has held Mr Basescu's Democratic Party together in government with Mr Tariceanu's National Liberal Party. In Bulgaria the prime minister and president come from the same party. But the coalition combines the Socialists (ex-communists), quasi-monarchists led by former King Simeon II and Mr Dogan's lot. Elections may take place in both countries this year.

Joining the EU has meant intense pressure to meet Brussels standards, which neither country yet does. The biggest worry is lawlessness. In Romania this takes the form of corruption; in Bulgaria, of organised crime. Criminal-justice systems are weak, and high-level sleaze widespread. Romania has made more progress: its non-party justice minister, Monica Macovei, is an effective administrator who has shaken up the structure and accountability of the judiciary and the prosecutor's office.

Bulgaria has moved more slowly. Some politicians still seem untouchable, as do some organised-crime groups. A recent OECD study rates Bulgaria higher for investment promotion, but Romania higher on anti-corruption and business integrity. Some senior Romanian officials and politicians have lost their jobs and even their freedom. The investigation of a former prime minister, Adrian Nastase, is a contrast to the immunity that Bulgaria's political class still enjoys.

Managers with experience in both countries say that Romanians are more individualistic than Bulgarians. “In Romania the problem is getting them to work in a team. In Bulgaria the problem is getting them to show any initiative,” says one. Higher education is bureaucratic and complacent. Infrastructure is dire; transport links between the two countries are awful, with just one road bridge across the Danube. A big road programme in Romania is bogged down in tendering scandals. Improvements will take EU cash, which may add 2% to GDP in 2007-13. It is hard to be confident that it will be well spent.

The main macroeconomic difference is that Romania's currency floats, whereas Bulgaria's is pegged to the euro. Both countries have huge current-account deficits: Bulgaria's was some 13.5% of GDP in 2006, Romania's 10.3%. Continuing inflation means that euro adoption is at least a decade away. Romania's demographic outlook is good by post-communist standards, with only a mild population decline that is expected to slow as income levels and health care improve. But Bulgaria's is one of the worst in eastern Europe: its population will fall below 7m by 2020.

Then there is emigration, encouraged by low pay, poor working conditions and bad public services. As many as 2m Romanians and 800,000 Bulgarians live abroad. Entry into the EU may stimulate emigration, though most existing members have slapped on temporary labour-market restrictions. That is partly because immigrants from Poland and other countries were more numerous than expected.

Both countries' borders are leaky. Moldovans can work easily (if not always legally) in Romania, as can Macedonians in Bulgaria. Although the two governments try to restrict the issue of passports to ethnic kinsfolk in these neighbours, they cannot stop them coming.

Romania has the advantage of size, demography and a newly confident elite that wants to put the country on the map of Europe. Bulgaria has a stronger industrial base. But given the political chaos that has taken hold in other eastern European countries, most of them much richer and stronger than the two newcomers, it is clear that the Balkan pair's road to EU prosperity and stability will be harder. The only question is how much.

Romania enters the E.U. (BBC News)

EU welcomes Romania and Bulgaria

BBC News | Last Updated: Monday, 1 January 2007, 13:59 GMT

Tens of thousands celebrated at midnight at concerts in the two capitals, Bucharest and Sofia.

The Romanian president said EU entry was an "enormous chance for future generations", while Bulgaria's leader said it was a "heavenly moment".

Their accession means the EU now has 27 members and half a billion people.

EU dignitaries attended the midnight celebrations in Bucharest and were flying on to Sofia on Monday for further ceremonies there.

EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said: "In welcoming two new members in the family, we know our culture, our heritage, will be richer, our mutual ties and our economy will be boosted."

Romanian President Traian Basescu said: "It was hard, but we arrived at the end of the road. It is the road of our future. It is the road of our joy."

"We arrived in Europe. Welcome to Europe," Mr Basescu said on stage in University Square.

Earlier, the EU flag was raised outside the government headquarters in Bucharest to the European anthem, Beethoven's Ode to Joy.

On Monday morning young boys welcomed the new year in traditional style, cracking whips to chase away the evils of the past and ringing in the new with their bells.

In Sofia, a pyramid of light illuminated the sky, and thousands of people in Battenberg Square cheered as midnight struck.

In an emotional address to the nation, Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov called the country's EU entry a "heavenly moment".

"The day we are welcoming - 1 January 2007 - will undoubtedly find its place among the most important dates in our national history," he said.

"But let's make it clear, our future success as a nation depends not on European funds and resources, but on our own work."

Border controls

On Monday morning everyday life appeared unchanged.

"I feel normally, like every other day. There is no difference, except may be the weather is fine today," said a passer-by in Sofia.

But Bulgaria has already had to make changes to comply with EU regulations.

Overnight it closed down part of its only nuclear power plant because of EU safety rules.

It also relaxed border controls at 15 crossings with EU members Greece and Romania, while strengthening them on its frontiers with Turkey, Serbia and Macedonia.

The EU's expansion means the bloc now stretches as far east as the Black Sea.

Romania and Bulgaria will now be subject to strict monitoring, to ensure they make more progress in the fight against corruption and organised crime.

They face export bans on certain foods, and Bulgaria has been warned that 55 of its aircraft could be grounded unless they reach EU safety standards.

Analysts say there is a risk that EU aid will be mis-spent, or just not taken up because the countries' institutions are too disorganised.

There are also fears that the countries' economies will fail to compete with the rest of the EU's once trade barriers come down.

Both Bulgaria and Romania are much poorer than the rest of the EU, with GDP per capita of about 33% of the EU average, compared with 50% in Poland.

Some Western European member states fear a flood of new immigrants, but officials in both countries say most of those who wanted to work abroad have already left.

Most of the 15 older EU member states have put in place restrictions on the free movement of workers from the two new members - though Finland and Sweden are two exceptions.