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Mar 26, 2019
3 min

Nicolae Titulescu: the Diplomat Who Fought War

Born in 1882 in the capital city of Oltenia, Nicolae Titulescu is undoubtedly that region’s most internationally influential native. The only twice-elected President of the League of Nations, he was the Romanian diplomat whom famous newspapers like British The Times and French Le Temps reverently commended for his “energy, devotion and skill” as a “brilliant defender of his country’s cause”, served with “unfailing distinction”, as well as for his “new conception of the societ

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Ilinca Stroe

Mar 13, 2019
4 min

One word at a time: “Ochi”

When it comes to phrases and idioms based on body parts, one such body part is especially prolific, the key word in many expressions: the eye. The essential organ of sight, which has accumulated impressive symbolic meanings especially in religion and spirituality, is called ochi in Romanian, it comes from Latin oc(u)lus and has generated around thirty phrases and idioms. Interestingly, it is also the base word in noun compounds with names of animals, referring to different ki

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A Star-Bound House: The Astronomical Observatory Admiral “Vasile Urseanu”

Ilinca Stroe

Feb 27, 2019
3 min

A Star-Bound House: The Astronomical Observatory Admiral “Vasile Urseanu”

Out of a love of sea a star-bound house was born: the Astronomical Observatory in Bucharest. It was 1908 when Admiral Vasile Urseanu was elected the President of the “Camille Flammarion” Romanian Astronomical Society (founded by Victor Anestin), and the new President pledged to finance the construction of a headquarters for the Society. The Admiral (1848-1926) was a man of his word. A graduate of the “Sfântul Sava” high school in Bucharest, he completed his military studies a

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Ana Pauker, the Iron Lady of Romanian Communism

Ilinca Stroe

Feb 13, 2019
5 min

Ana Pauker, the Iron Lady of Romanian Communism

“Stout, with unruly short greying hair, sharp blue eyes beneath the low eyebrows and a fascinating smile . . ., she made everyone feel that they were dealing with a true personality. I always felt when I was around her that she was like a boa constrictor which had just been fed, so it wasn’t going to eat you up on the spot! . . . My subsequent meetings with her showed me the cold and dehumanised brilliance thanks to which she had reached the powerful position she held now.”

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A People’s Masterpiece: Atheneul Român (the Romanian Athenaeum)

Ilinca Stroe

Jan 23, 2019
4 min

A People’s Masterpiece: Atheneul Român (the Romanian Athenaeum)

As you walk past the elegant statue of national poet Mihai Eminescu, located in the little park in front of it, as you climb up the flight of stairs, cross the peristyle with its six Ionic columns and five fine mosaic medallions depicting great Romanian rulers, as you enter the monumental ground floor circular lobby, with its 12 columns and four spiral staircases made of pink Carrara marble, and head towards the richly decorated concert hall on the first floor, you wouldn’t g

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Barbu Ştirbey, the Perfect Grey Eminence

Ilinca Stroe

Jan 16, 2019
3 min

Barbu Ştirbey, the Perfect Grey Eminence

They say he was the mastermind behind Romania’s Crown during the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Marie, the great unifiers of the country. They say he charmed the King and seduced the Queen. They say he was the Queen’s lifelong secret lover. They say he was the natural father of her youngest son, Mircea, who died of typhoid fever when he was 3, in 1916. They dubbed him “the White Prince” for his dignified beauty, impeccable reputation, elegant manners, aristocratic posture

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Ilinca Stroe

Dec 19, 2018
3 min

Christmas Wishes, Romanian Style

To a nation where people wish each other things on a wildly wide range of occasions, from having a haircut to getting down to work or wearing new shoes, the Christmas and New Year wishes are highly important. Whether made over the phone, in a text message, by email or handwritten in a classical Christmas card, the winter holidays wishes go in different tones and styles. Let’s review some of them. 1) Classical & common Standard wishes necessarily include a reference to good he

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Ilinca Stroe

Dec 12, 2018
3 min

One word at a time: „Sine”

If grammatical items could make a career just like humans do, this little word would become a superexecutive: sine. Based on the Latin 3rd person singular pronoun se and fashioned after mine and tine (the 1st and 2nd person singular pronouns), sine found a way to climb from the modest position of a pronoun to that of a noun. Not just any noun, but the one at the core of our very ontology and theory of being: the one which names the self – sinele. Philosophers and (Jungian) ps

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Moş Nicolae, the saintly “culprit” for surprises in your boots

Ilinca Stroe

Dec 5, 2018
2 min

Moş Nicolae, the saintly “culprit” for surprises in your boots

It’s winter. Unless you are the victim of Ionel, a spoilt brat who poured jam into his mother’s guest’s boots (in satirist Ion Luca Caragiale’s short story “Vizita”), you should have no good reason to have in your boots anything other than your own socks and feet. Or so you’d think. Well, not if it’s the 6th of December. On that day, early in the morning, here in Romania you’re likely to find sweets and fruit, or alternatively a rod in your boots. And the “culprit” for that w

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Romania’s Treasures: the Jewish Romanians

Ilinca Stroe

Nov 28, 2018
13 min

Romania’s Treasures: the Jewish Romanians

Romania’s Jewish community has dwindled dramatically over the past decades: while in 1930 more than 4% of the country’s population was Jewish, ranking third among the country’s minority ethnicities, only 0.02% of Romania’s population is Jewish at present, according to the 2011 census. The main causes for this loss were, on the one hand, the Holocaust of the 1940s, in which 340,000 people perished [1], including the 1941 pogrom organised by the far-right Iron Guard legionari,

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Romania’s Treasures: the Hungarian Romanians

Ilinca Stroe

Nov 21, 2018
11 min

Romania’s Treasures: the Hungarian Romanians

When talking about Hungarian ethnics in Romania, one encounters a problem of scope and of historical positioning. Most of Romania’s Hungarian ethnics come from Transylvania, where Hungarian tribes arrived from the east and settled in the 9th century, gradually organising the land into administrative units which in the 12th century came to be part of the Kingdom of Hungary. Transylvania was then, for centuries, up until the Great Union we are celebrating this year, either part

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Romania’s Treasures: the German Romanians

Ilinca Stroe

Nov 14, 2018
11 min

Romania’s Treasures: the German Romanians

“When the Germans came to the country . . . they built a city for the Romanians, they taught them professions, they gave them land when they were fighting . . . The Germans took the Romanians out of their huts, made light for them, taught them what a radio was, started shaping people of culture,” Roma jazzman Johnny Răducanu maintains. [1] Although he was referring mainly to Romania’s royal family (of German descent), positive general stereotypes about Romania’s German ethni

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Ilinca Stroe

Nov 7, 2018
12 min

Romania’s Treasures: the Roma Romanians

In her Memoirs, Zoe Cămărăşescu, a Romanian aristocrat whose mother had been a lady-in-waiting at the belle époque Court of King Carol I and Queen Elisabeth, refers repeatedly to the Roma protagonists of her childhood memories. One such man is Vasile the coachman of the boyar Golescu family, “a former slave on their estate who, when the slaves were freed, declared that he didn’t need his freedom and wished to stay on with the Golescus”; Vasile was the family patriarchs’ most

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Ilinca Stroe

Oct 31, 2018
12 min

Romania’s Treasures: the Romanianists

100 years of Romania. What Romanians have done for their country this past century in areas ranging from the humanities to science and sports has drawn a great deal of attention, commentary and analysis. But what non-Romanians have done for the country in this century of “Greater Romania” may tend to be overlooked or regarded as occasional foreign input. This post, while unable to comprise all of the non-Romanian contribution to the country’s development over the last 100 yea

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Ilinca Stroe

Oct 25, 2018
23 min

Romania’s Treasures: the Artists

There is little doubt that modern Romanian cultivated painting stemmed from religious painting done around and for monasteries by artists known as “masters” who were, oftentimes, either anonymous or little known. For example, a master painter Dobromir is recorded to have carried out the fresco painting work of the 16th-century Argeş Monastery in Wallachia, while master Toma of Suceava apparently made the frescoes of Moldavian monasteries Humor and Moldoviţa. But apart from th

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Romania’s Second Unifier: Alexandru Ioan Cuza

Ilinca Stroe

Oct 17, 2018
5 min

Romania’s Second Unifier: Alexandru Ioan Cuza

There’s a Romanian saying, “Tot ce-i trei e bun” (“Good things go in threes”). It means that you have to try something twice and then once more to succeed - or, in other words, success comes with the third attempt, the third time round. Indeed, that is the case with Romania’s Union: in 1918, when King Ferdinand and Queen Marie of Romania accomplished the unification of all the provinces inhabited by Romanians (i.e. Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania, Bucovina and Bessarabia),

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Romania’s First Unifier: Michael the Brave

Ilinca Stroe

Oct 10, 2018
4 min

Romania’s First Unifier: Michael the Brave

This year Romanians are celebrating 100 years since the Great Union. Back in 1918, King Ferdinand and Queen Marie of Romania saw their Old Kingdom, made up of the former principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, grow into greater Romania through the addition of the other provinces inhabited by Romanians: Bessarabia, Bucovina and Transylvania, which had been previously part of the Russian and Habsburg Empires, respectively. But Ferdinand and Marie were not the first unifiers o

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Ilinca Stroe

Sep 26, 2018
9 min

Romania’s Treasures: the Entrepreneurs

Looking into entrepreneurship in contemporary Romania can be a bit like entering perilous territory. As a recent documentary shows (Kapitalism: Our Improved Formula), business and politics have been far too close to each other since the 1989 Revolution, a “marriage” oftentimes wrought with suspicions of corruption. Hence let it be said from the very beginning that, in order to avoid exploring the slippery ground of allegedly corrupt business today, this article will focus on

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Ilinca Stroe

Sep 12, 2018
3 min

One word at a time: „Simţ”

How many senses are there? Realists would say that five, of course: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. Believers in the paranormal maintain that there’s a sixth and even a seventh sense. And how about, practical people might ask, common sense or the sense of humour? Natural and supernatural considerations aside, at the core of such debates lies a word which is as versatile in English as it is in Romanian: sense – in Romanian, simţ. Depending on the noun or adjective it c

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Showing Active Listening: One-Word Responses in Conversation

Ilinca Stroe

Sep 5, 2018
3 min

Showing Active Listening: One-Word Responses in Conversation

Recent language textbooks go beyond grammar and vocabulary, the regulars of standardised language learning, to encompass areas of language which pertain to pragmatics. Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics which has to do with language in context, in other words it looks at words from the point of view of their situational or contextual functions. For example, “I do” in the context of a wedding ceremony means something specific, different from “I do” in a short dialogue about

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