How kids from Romania were sexually abused by the Italian elite at Rome’s Termini station Text by Michael Bird, Cecilia Ferrara and Vlad Odobescu, published here in The Black Sea Illustrations by Sorina Vazelina Over 100,000 passengers pass through Rome’s Termini station every day. Its 33 platforms host high-speed trains that span Europe and […]
Tag Archives: Romania
With the help of a priest, we search for a new class of east European addicts who steal for heroin in Madrid’s Cañada Real by Michael Bird, Vlad Odobescu and Feliciano Tisera. Illustrations by Sorina Vazelina. Published in The Black Sea Madrid’s underground station of Embajadores is a crowded junction with a fountain gushing from […]
We shadow Romanian outreach worker Carmen Farauanu as she helps the international streetwalkers of Naples Text by Michael Bird, Vlad Odobescu and Cecilia Ferrara. Illustration by Sorina Vazelina Published here on The Black Sea Near the Garibaldi station in Naples, on the Via Galileo Ferraris, is a church with a cross illuminated in bright […]
Women trafficked from Romania to Spain for sex reveal the path from tragedy to recovery. Published here on The Black Sea Text by Feliciano Tisera, Vlad Odobescu and Michael Bird Illustrations by Sorina Vazelina “When they start to rape you, you stay quiet, as you don’t want to be killed. You stay completely paralyzed by fear, […]
A comment piece published in Scena9 During the negotiation process for Romania’s accession to the European Union in the early 2000s the question echoing through European capitals was: is Romania ready to join the EU? It was this word, repeated, again and again: ready. This was a subjective and emotive issue – there […]
A posting from The Black Sea, available here They are against the EU, the ‘Islamisation’ of Europe and open borders. They don’t like to be called extremists. They want to be called radicals. They can command up to a third of the votes in their countries. Last weekend they came to one of the […]
A comment piece in Romanian on Contributors.ro A petty argument in the British conservative party between supporters and enemies of the European Union has forced the UK into a disaster. If the country leaves the 28-member bloc, financial ruin will spread across the continent, far right groups will seize control and the peacetime success of 70 […]
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 […]
Stepping through the minefield of history to probe the prospect of unity between two countries at the choke point between the EU and Russia. A feature published in The Black Sea, EU Observer and Moldova.Org European empires have spent centuries carving up the territory of today’s Moldova, bartering pieces back and forth, stitching them together, attaching a […]
Michael Bird Writer & Journalist 