No Guns Allowed

No guns allowed! This sticker is to be found adorning the door to our local bank, the very friendly Volksbank. It struck me as quite strange. I find Bucharest to be a far less intimidating or violent city than London and we never had signs like that on any door in Hackney. It also seems ridiculous. Imagine i'm going to rob the local bank. I get to the door and a sticker informs me that no guns are allowed.

Do I
A: Go home
B: Go home and get a knife instead
C: Ignore it and rob the bank

The Romanian Way #001

Mira sitting pretty at Univesitate Metro Station

When you leave your homeland and go and live somewhere new you expect a few cultural differences. In Romania however I frequently stumble accross things that defy logic and sidestep common sense so much I just cannot explain them. So, welcome to chapter one of what will be known as THE ROMANIAN WAY. If any locals are reading this blog perhaps they can offer up some sort of explanation to these bizarre situations.

On the platforms in London Underground we have digital displays telling us how long it will take the train to arrive at the platform. This is useful information. In Romania they have a similar concept but instead of telling us how long we have to wait for the next train they tell us how long it has been since the last train left the platform! To make it worse the display only goes up to 09:55 so if the next train has not arrived ten minutes before the last train departed the display goes back to 00:00. This is completely useless information!!

Saying that underground travel on Bucharest's metro system is a joy to use compared to London. The trains were introduced in 1979 and at that time there were hardly any cars in the city, so everyone used the metro. Fast forward to 2006 and the roads of Bucharest are overrun with cars, intersections gridlocked, the sound of car horns filling the air. So the metro is relatively quiet, and at around 10 pence a journey its a bargain!

The Bukresh love their cars and where there used to be just Dacias, there are now mostly 4x4's which are required to drive over the trenches and holes found in the cheaply tarmaced roads. More about Romanians and their cars in a later post.

Roadkill & Revenge

Dead teddy and the pigeons revenge.

Rapp Shit

Possibly the feeblist piece of street art ever thrown up on a wall.

Bucharest Walls

This city is at best 'elegantly wasted'. Bucharest's once beatiful architecture has been dealt a series of severe blows throughout the last century. With communism came the characterless blocks, Ceaucescu flattened some of the CIties most beautiful areas without a thought, and generally the major earthquakes every 40 years or so don't help much either. We've come from Shoreditch in London, so we're already familiar with the grey and the blocks. Its home from home for us.



Don't let that put you of, you can find beauty here, some of it obvious, some you have to look a little harder for. It's a bit like being on a desert island where the only girl is a bit spotty, a touch too skinny, and walks with a slight limp. After looking at here for a few weeks, the imperfections fall away and the character becomes clearer. Welcome to Bucharest.

Filming In The Dusty Streets of Bucharest

Last week i spent writing and storyboarding my first movie! Don't get too excited, it's only one minute long! So on thursday night, abley assisted by MIra, from 6pm until 3am i took the role of director to my cast and crew of 12 and shot my debut. It's for an international one minute film festival which has been set up by a canadian who is living in Bucharest called John Ketchum.

It may be only one minute but i've managed to squeeze a beggar, a gangster, a pimp his hooker and an aristocrat into the story. Its about the journey of a banknote which travels through the hands of characters i've just named during one fun filled evening. I'm editing it with the help of my good friend Sarah Evans who is our first visitor from London. Well done Sarah!
Watch this space for the finished article.

The rest of the pictures are of the shoot. Thier are some picture of me
directing, the professional looking camera and its operator and some of
the local characters who were interested that there was filming taking
place in their slightly shoddy neighbourhood.


The car with the airbrush painting on the front was my "Limo" taking me to various locations, the dude with the hat and dungarees was a local as was the old lady flashing her tits! She exposed herself when i said she reminded me of a mature Michelle Pfiefer and i was going to take her to Hollywood and make her a star.

Fusion Party 2

Party flyer number two for the Fusion Party series. This time its beachwear mixed with school uniform. I can't stop thinking Britney Spears. This can't be a good thing.


Once again once night falls on friday, DJ Logan will step out from behind the blackboard and issue detention to anyone who doesn't dance their sports socks off, while Mira takes photos and intimidates the youth with her willowy cane.

Check fac ce vreau website for mp3 of my set from the last Fusion party. Look in the 'fusion' section.

Vama Veche - The Sequel

On our return visit to Vama Veche we are on a mission - a mission of music. Mira and I travel down with co-pilot Yann Le Blay to share our music with the masses at Stufstock Festival, a rock and alternative festival, now in its fourth year. 8-10,000 people are expected this year and i'm Djing on the friday night and Yann is playing sax with his band Endless Zone on a specially built stage on the beach (see above), for a gig to be played as the sun rises on sunday morning.

We arrive around midnight on the friday night, book into the same 'wendy houses' (see previous Vama post) and have just enough time to grab a quick pancake before I have to go off and DJ. It was only friday night and the weekend had only just begun but already it was evident that I was going to be playing records to the most pissed audience in the world ever!


I probably could have put The Magic Roundabout soundtrack on and everyone would have danced but the tunes of the night were Justice Vs Simian "We are your friends" remix and Daisy Daisy "Michelle Plays Ping Pong - remix". We didn't have the big camera with us, but Mira took some snapshots and danced with the locals. We befriended some young graffiti artists who were very proud to show us their empty spray cans!? At 4am our job was done and we escaped the carnage for the peace and tranquility of our wendy house.

On the saturday we left Vama and did a bit of exploring. About 20km up the coast are some old communist beach resorts called Neptune, Saturn and Venus. We couldn't find Uranus, which was strange as they were all shit holes. I guess back in the day families who lived in joyless blocks in the city would spend a week stuck in souless blocks by the sea. Night time activities were shared in the two discoteques in the resort, Kremlin Disco (where everybody was rushin' presumably), or the brilliantly named "Why Not - Disco".

I'm guessing the resorts didn't see any foreign holiday goers in communist times, so english translations of things like menus wouldn't have been necessay. Today however one or two restaurants are giving it a go. The example below is the strangest one we've come across. We were shown it when we stopped in Saturn for an ice cream, and the only explanation could be that it was translated by a free translation website or indeed someone from another planet.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mixed Salad
Here you will find hiding in the corner of the garden, dancing vegetables protected by an indian virgin dressed in a orange sari. The only way to stop them dancing is to throw them in a pan and smother them.

Pork Schnitzel
This is for a very lonely person.

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And so onto the Endless Zone gig. The band was playing at 5:30am for an hour, starting as the day breaks and finishing (hopefully) in glorious sunshine. What could possibly top that? Well, read on. The band had their soundcheck at 11pm, saturday night and even that drew a crowd, which was promising! The crowd i should point out were now mostly resembling stumbling, incoherent rocker zombies. Fast forward 6 hours and the beach was still swaying with blissed out festival goers as Endless Zone took to the stage. The performance was impressive. The silhouettes pumping out some solid funk-rock slowly took on character as the sun rose up from the sea behind them. The crowd were appreciating the spectacle, until a stranger took their gaze.

At the front of the audience, a trashed girlfriend of a guy in a pirate outfit was starting to get a bit over enthusiastic with the bogle dancing technique. I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story, but let's just say this behavior carried on for a good twenty minutes by which time most of the audience had had their photo taken with her, and her pirate boyfriend had been clapping and smoking fags as if was the most natural thing in the world.



Polite Note: Look away now if you're easily offended.
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Mine Your Own Business

I have been hired to create visual identity for New Bera Media, an outfit concentrating on producing cuting edge documentaries. Their latest is a film unearthing (see what i did there) the misguided activities of environmentalists. This documentary explores how these often middle class do-gooders have been ruining the lives of those less better off than themselves by opposing the openings of mines around the world and thus keeping the locals penniless and out of work. Of course it goes far beyond that... look out for the film and make up your own mind.

This is the initial idea i've come up with, which will be used for posters, dvd covers, press etc.

Thursday, 24th August, 2006 - The One Way Mirror

For the last few days i've been stuck behind a one way mirror spying (well, observing really) on groups of boys, girls and young adults in the name of research. We've set these focus groups up so we can really get an idea of what 'the youth' of Romania is thinking and how it differs from what i'm used to. Topics covered include - heroes, brands, the internet, music and film, what's cool..etc etc.

It was a fascinating experience which detached you from reality very quickly, as you were basically sat in a dark room with a translator from morning till night, munching on stale sandwiches and lukewarm coffee.

Here are some choice soundbites which do not fall into the 'valuable insight' bin.

The vast majority of boys and girls between the ages of 16 and 25 site Bill Gates as their hero. In the UK David Beckham or Johnny Depp would be more likely contenders, but here it's cooler to have made money from nothing, than to be a good looking sporting adonis or ice cool film actor.

In a discussion about brands;
"Sony is cool, yes yes, and Samsung"
No they are not, Philips is the coolest because they give a two year warranty on all their products."
(from the mouth of a very mature 17 year old girl!)

"Bill Gates is cool because he wants to build a giant mosquito net around the world, so we won't get bitten by a mosquito ever again. I hate mosquitos, they are the worst thing in the world."
(an 18 year old boy.)

Friday, 18th August, 2006 - Fusion Party 1

Studio Martin was packed with kids for the Fusion Party. They had to dress up in the summer clothes with at least one winter accessory, and throughout the night fake snow was dropped from above Studio Martin's huge disco ball. We are still finding bits of fake snow in our pockets, socks, camera and handbag weeks later. I played a storming set starting with hypnotic italo house influenced tracks before unleashing the techno bangers for the final hour. At 6.30am, after much dancing and one drunken fight it was all over.


As you can see EVERYONE wears sunglasses and aspires to look like a footballer / footballer's wife... a style we shall be exploring in more detail later in our blog. (Mira would like to point out that although she is pulling a classic littlewoods catalogue pose in the above photo, she has no aspirations to look like a footballer's wife.

Saturday, August 12th, 2006 - Tineretului Park

This is a huge park, south of the city centre. Before the park, the area was slum land inhabited by 700,00 people. Ceausescu decided he wanted a park, and so nearly three quarters of a million people were kicked out of their homes and replaced with one of the cities most unremarkable, vacuous spaces.

I think it was created in the late 70's/early 80's and it's very eastern bloc. Loads of metal rockets that look like rejects from Flash Gordon and some of the lamest robot creations ever seen. I mean if you're going to design a robot from the future don't make it look like you made it from an egg box head and washing up bottle arms. Ironically, to see these creations is probably the only reason to go there now. When I was there it was virtually empty, it's huge centrepiece lake void of activity and the communist blocks looming up over the trees.

Wednesday 9th August, 2006 - Fusion Party 1

The deadly design duo take on their first comission for Love Plus, Romania's leading manufacturers of condoms! These guys have a pretty cool approach to sexual awareness amongst teenagers and young adults. As part of their program they put on these Fusion parties and we're photgraphing and designing series of flyers for their upcoming parties. Here you can see the original photo and the final flyer.

Naturally I will be metamorphasising into DJ Logan for the night's entertainment at one of Bucharest's best night clubs (Studio Martin) for the party next thursday. What would they do without us, eh?

Tuesday, August 8th, 2006 - No more Disco

Mira is in mourning - we have returned to Bucharest after 10 days to find that our beloved Disco Cat has jumped out of the window and escaped! She obviously was missing us so much she decided to try and find us. Mira has been asking everyone if they've seen her and put up the obligatory "Lost Cat" posters but to no avail.

Disco Cat may you bring happiness to your new owners.xxx

ps. this was not the picture we put on the Lost Cat poster.

Saturday, August 5th, 2006 - Dickie & Grace's Wedding

What can I say? It's always beautiful to see two of your closest friends tying the knot and by God Dickie and Grace certainly did it in style. The pictures speak for themselves and we all had a fantastic time. It was an honour to be an usher, and it was great to be surrounded by our friends again in such an 'english' setting. Highlights included a 'wedding' dj set by Mr Andrew Weatherall who was fighting back the temptation to bang out some trademark electro instead of Chic's "I'm Lost in Music", and Jonny and Alan wearing Vivienne Westwood creations at any given opportunity.

Finally i must apologise to all the residents of The Sun Inn, Lancaster who were banging on the walls at 6am, trying in vain to stop the racket coming from a certain couples room (hello Foz and Al!).

Finally a word of warning - if you find yourself residing in a Holiday Inn, never ever eat any meals there as they are cooked with cardboard by a chef with as much culinary expertise as a retarded chimpanzee; and if you're going to spend a tenner on some porn in your room, don't choose "To The Manor Porn" - it's shit.

Monday, 31st August, 2006 - Sweden

Because we aren't Romanian residents we are obliged by law to leave the country every 90 days and get our visas stamped in another country. It's Mira's brothers 40th birthday at the weekend followed by our very good friends Dickie & Gracie's wedding the following weekend. So, we've packed our bags and booked our flights for 10 day holiday to Mira's beloved Sweden followed by a quick stop in London followed by a weekend wedding in Lancashire.

The picture above is of hot air balloons flying over Stockholm as we were sitting high up on a terrace overlooking the city. I had only been to Sweden in the winter before, and i'd always loved Stockholm, great culture and beautiful people living in a breathtaking city. In the summer however it is even more enchanting. As there are no shops with anything i'd spend money on in Bucharest, Stockholm provide some substantial retail therapy in the way of books, music and clothes.

The pictures below we took at Stockholm railway station while we were waiting for the last train back to Mira's hometown of Uppsala. (Click on them to enlarge)

Friday, 7th July, 2006 - D-I-S-C-O Cat

We have adopted a kitten who kept meowing at us on the street. Its a very friendly ball of fun who is no more than 8 weeks old and we've called her Disco.

In Bucharest and Romania in general there are thousands and thousands of stray dogs and to a lesser extent cats. Homeless dogs appeared during Ceausescu's regime, when houses and gardens were bulldozed and replaced with communist blocks with small rooms and no gardens. People could not afford to feed their pets and had no where to keep them so they were forced on the street. Adding to the problem was the fact that none of these dogs were neutered, and in a short amount of time the canine population was out of control.

On the whole the dogs are docile creatures and are largely scared of humans, so even though they look like deranged wirey haired wild animals they are harmless, sorry looking creatures.

Saturday, 1st July, 2006 - Vama Veche

I'm playing catch-up on our time here. In typical Romanian style it has taken two months to get the internet installed! On first impressions the Romanians make the Spaniards look like Germans - they are procrastinators of the highest order.



We've been here no more than 48 hours and we're off on our first weekend adventure. (30th July). Welcome to Vama Veche, the Goa of Romania. Vama is a seaside village on the Black Sea, near the border with Bulgaria. Even in communist time Vama Veche had a distinctly non-mainstream reputation to it which has grown since the '89 revolution. Although now, the intelectuals and bohemians have given way to gangs of pissed students, acid casualties and the odd bona fide rocker.

We were advised to get there on friday night as it is almost impossible to get accomodation during the summer weekends. We endured a 4 hour train journey, arrived before dark and bagged ourselves some chalets for 500,00 lei (£10) a night. As you can see from the picture "chalet" was a rather grand description for a couple of sheds at the bottom of the garden. But they had beds, a fridge and a telly in them and the washing facilities were clean and good, so it was all we needed.

We planned to have relatively quiet night as it was the England-Portugal game on the saturday, but as usual we peeked too early and had storming night on the beach with its camp fires and Goa dancing and in Vama's many makeshift bars which are built in a precarious way at the beginning of the season, then burnt ceremoniously in september.

Track of the day - Rekleiner "Somewhere" (sasse remix)

Saturday saw us on the beach and in the sea before grabbing a table in front of the big projector for the football match. It went a little like this - we got drunk, we got heckled by the locals who were all supporting Portugal, we turned into marauding english hooligans and heckled the locals, we lost the game, we all became best friends and danced on the beach till the sun poked its head up on the horizon.

<< The Evidence - Rylee finds a local who is also wearing a Mickey Mouse tee shirt, they become best mates, the end.

Tuesday, 27th June, 2006 - Petru Maior, Sector 1, Bucharest

First up is our humble abode.

Its a nice big airy flat which gets cleaned diligently by our maid "Elena" every week (6 hours for £6). She's a lovely lady in her late forties who on hearing Mira coughing one week, arrived with a bottle of cough medicine the following tuesday.


The bathroom is typically romanian, with one of those huge corner baths and some diy floral painting on the ceiling which you stare at in bemused wonder as you soak in the bubbles.

It has its idiosyncrasiess as does every romanian built house - light switches are positioned upside down, and in ridiculous places ie 3 inches from the ground. The electricity has gone off for half a day, twice, and now that its reaching 50 degrees (august is by far the hottest month in the year) the powers that be believe you can do without hot water for a day at every week!!

We've got to know most families and couples in the building as they congregate outside and sit on the steps smoking fags and playing backgammon. There are loads of stray cats that run around in the garden and a crazy dog that belongs to the gypsy administrator of the building who barks his head off whenever someone approaches.