I worked for over a month as a volunteer trying to help Ukrainian refugees in Bucharest, and this is what I discovered, published in Scena9 I am talking with a friend of mine. She volunteers in a transit camp in Bucharest’s main railway station, Gara de Nord, for Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian attack. I […]
Tag Archives: Bucharest
After a childhood of drug addiction on the streets of Bucharest, a former addict finds an alternative solution for users to recover An English version of a confession published in DoR Interview and editing by Michael Bird, and Ionut Dulamita. Illustrations by Ionut Dulamita It is evening. I am in the room where every Monday […]
How the Romanian capital still kills me—a version/preview for an article in Vice I first came to Bucharest as an English teacher in the 1990s, subsequently visited several times as a tourist, returned as a journalist, and then started a family in the Romanian capital. This is what has changed: When I was here in […]
Today a cool March light is giving way to a humid afternoon, and I have just left the Anthony Frost English Bookshop in Bucharest, which has closed its doors. The reaction from the city’s passionate reading community has been shock and grief, as though a well-loved relative not seen for years has suddenly announced […]
A piece of invective published last year in the second issue of Jug magazine On the face of a ten-story 1980s block inspired by the architecture of Pyongyang, abseilers risk their lives to raise a giant poster of Marilyn Monroe sipping the metal lip of a Coke bottle, or Alicia Keys perfecting her skin with […]
A profile of Bucharest Mayoral candidate Nicusor Dan, published in CityMetric, part of the New Statesman group Standing behind 45 year-old doctor in maths Nicusor Dan is a wire shelf piled with hundreds of loose leaved files and cardboard folders. These are cases Dan and his team from NGO Save Bucharest! have brought against the […]
A feature published in The Black Sea and co-written with Zeynep Sentek Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is exporting his nation’s brand of Islam to over 30 multi-million mosque projects across five continents – but he risks creating monuments to a leadership in decline We map the mosque plans – from Havana to the Philippines, […]
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 […]
A version of a feature published in EU Observer Click here for an in-depth story and map of Turkey’s global mega-mosque building plan Resistance is gearing up in Bucharest against a giant mosque proposed for the city and financed by Turkey, as part of its push to build huge religious centres in major global cities. […]
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 […]
Michael Bird Writer & Journalist 