3. Romania: Part of a series of three stories from east Europe revealing the complex lives of people with HIV, published in The Black Sea and TOTB. “I am not a victim,” says communication specialist Monica from Bucharest, “but a person was has survived and can have a normal and healthy life.” Visual by Andrei […]
Meeting the mothers with HIV who refuse doctors’ recommendations to abort their babies in Ukraine and Moldova. A feature published in The Black Sea and EU Observer I meet Svetlana in a cafe in central Kyiv. She is 38 years old and a month away from giving birth to her first child. “Finding I was pregnant […]
Shot in the Revolution, pimped out by her mother, lost to drugs and now homeless, Sanda is one of countless victims abandoned on the 25th anniversary of Romania’s uprising. A feature published in The Black Sea I am sitting in the attic office of the French-Italian charity Parada, which trains homeless people from Bucharest into circus performers. Alongside me is the […]
A short travel note published in The Black Sea and Moldova.org Chisinau is dark. In the subterranean walkways, lights are scarce, burnt out, flashing or dim. People walk in darkness. There are few lamps on the street. In the playgrounds in the evening, children sway on the swings and climb on plastic castles. They can’t see each other. Parents […]
A failure in Romania’s brutal architectural planning of the 1980s has transformed a massive hole in Bucharest into an anarchic expanse of natural and urban coexistence. A feature published in UK online magazine City Metric. Pictures copyright Helmut Ignat The communists wanted a reservoir. The capitalists wanted a casino. The city got something else entirely. “No one […]
Fornication has overtaken drug use as the main route of transmission for new cases of HIV in Moldova – The country needs a deep and meaningful conversation about sex – a feature published on The Black Sea and Moldova.org After losing his job as a barman in Moldova’s capital of Chisinau, 26 year-old Ivan found […]
At the entrance to the Republic of Moldova’s second-largest city Balti, huge Soviet mosaics celebrate a paradise for the proletariat and peasants. A travel blog published on The Black Sea and Moldova.org. Giant mosaics decorate residential blocks constructed in the Soviet era in the industrial city of Balti in north Moldova. These images combine traditional folklore with Socialist realism to promote hope in an industrial […]
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, […]
Bucharest’s pedestrianised old centre is filled with concrete tubes stuck to the ground and covered in pebble-dash. It is unclear what is the purpose of this urban furniture in the Romanian capital’s buzzing hub of beer, pizza and prostitution. But the public reacts to their presence by chucking trash inside them. The tubes […]
Bucharest’s State Jewish Theatre is a testament to the survival of the Yiddish culture through the Holocaust, Communism and Romania’s uneasy transition to democracy – yet now is threatened with collapse. A feature published in The Black Sea After the second world war, the theater was a lifeboat for Jewish performers, says Rudi Rosenfeld, actor […]
Michael Bird Writer & Journalist 