A comment piece on Bucharest’s northern district Baneasa, published in English and Romanian in Jug Before the financial crash of 2008, Bucharest’s northern zone of Baneasa wanted sex appeal. Real estate agents targeted citizens living with their parents in Communist high-rises with the dream of a home that could be secure, fashionable and seductive. Adding the […]
Category Archives: Comment
Opinion pieces with a satirical edge from 2012 onward
A comment piece published in Romanian on Contributors.ro In the Icoanei garden in Bucharest’s 19th century centre, there is a fountain which gushes out water and tumbles into a stream that winds to the other end of the park to meet a large pond. Children play here. They jump over the stream. Sometimes they kick […]
A comment piece published in The Black Sea in English and Contributors in Romanian. Western Europeans cannot get enough of Romanian poverty. In photos. In news. In features. In TV shows. The appetite is immense. It has become the biggest tourist attraction in the country. Foreigners now plan minibreaks here, hoping for three-day fix of extreme poverty – […]
A comment piece published in Romanian on contributors.ro As a father of a three year old son living in Bucharest, I am often asked: is this city a safe place to bring up children? Of course I answer: Yes. Why? It is full of lovely old women who will kiss and pick up my child, […]
Eight reasons why children are turning against online sharing – a text version of webshow the Red Couch Kids’ demand for online privacy will shake up the Internet in the next decade. The era of data sharing will be over and children are leading this revolution. Stats backs this up. Only 11 per cent of […]
The Day We Fight Back campaign against America’s surveillance of your email traffic and telephone has good intentions – but it’s not fun, people aren’t talking about it and it’s too techie. What can be done to make people take this issue seriously? An episode of webshow the Red Couch.
Breaking free of crime and opiate addiction in Moldova’s frozen conflict zone of Transnistria needed a cocktail of spiritual and psychological aid for ex-fighter Yuri – a feature published in The Black Sea A former amateur boxer and soldier, 42 year-old Yuri, is reminiscing about his veins. Once they were raised and prominent, like those of a […]
A comment piece in reaction to the hate and love against Romania in the British press, published in Romanian on contributors.ro If you believe The Daily Mail, all Romanians are benefit frauds, pickpockets and secret millionaires of a specific minority and Romania is a country of mud-huts, sick horses, starving dogs and gated palaces of […]
Injectable codeine-based drug Krokodil is raging across Georgia – an exclusive investigation and photo-gallery of users as they cook the killer mix at home, published in The Black Sea and in Business Insider (USA), Andrei Rylkov Foundation (Russia), Druglink (UK in February 2014) and Szuperblog (Hungary). Home-based chemistry: a DIY coffee-table fire for mixing Krokodil Trees are poised to blossom along rows of […]
Two nations, countless wars, two revolutions and three decades of drug addiction – recovering user Eka reveals her legacy of opiate abuse from the USSR to today – a story from Tbilisi. Georgia, published on The Black Sea website “Nobody could imagine a woman injecting drugs – that was the best mask for me,” says […]
Michael Bird Writer & Journalist 