Cotroceni scandal, seascapes and white wine – all in a Bucharest day’s work

Sun still striking 30 here in Bucharest at midday. A lazy morning determined a journey to the Cotroceni Palace to see the seascape exhibition put together by the famous collector and painter Parizescu; we knew that security was strict but were still annoyed with the injunction to remove the camera from the rucksack (signs clearly indicated that a personal camera could be used for 4 euros but I wasn’t sure that the collection would make this worthwhile).

In the event I was wrong - the room whose brick ceiling looked like a cathedral but which is in fact the original kitchen turned out to house the most amazing little collection of early 20^th century Romanian classics (Artachino, Pallady, Popescu, Ressu, Steriadi) and had me scurrying back to the gatehouse for the camera – having checked with 2 pleasant curators that this was OK. At which point the Romanian system clicked into action – a phone call was made to someone and I was denied permission to photo – although the notices clearly say that only the grounds and church are banned……

Furious, I returned and tried to get an explanation from the overbearing woman – who would only say that as the collection didn’t belong to the Palace, photos were not permitted…..She did agree to make a telephone call to the Director who apparently told her to have my camera brought up from the gatehouse……smiles all round……

Then, after a little picnic at the neighbouring Botanic Gardens, off to sample some white Romanian wines. The incredible price, range and quality of wines in neighbouring Bulgaria has meant that I am better informed of the wine scene there than here in Romania – good quality bottles of wine are 5-8 euros in Romania but 3-5 euros in Bulgaria.

Of course all Romanian cities are well endowed with wine "crameries” where you can get good regional wine from the barrel for just under 3 euros a litre. Hence my consumption of Romanian wines has tended to be restricted to the more common wines from Dealul Mare, Recas and Murfatlar – although I will buy bottles from the great Cotnari and Husi range in Moldova and I did find this week an excellent Riesling (in Lidl) for 4.5 euros (20 lei) from the Satu Mare vineyard of Ratesti  

I have attended 2 of the recent annual Sofia November wine weekends and frequently consult the great little Catalogue of Bulgarian Wine produced each year by T Tanovska and K Iontcheva. Significantly, despite its much larger population, Romania does not (a far as my researches indicate) have such a publication …the glossy coffee table book recently published purporting to be about Romanian wines is just a sloppy bit of PR work........Perhaps I'll learn more at the big wine fair in Bucharest 2-6 November this year. Big date - it will be my first such Romanian event - insallah!!

So it has been much more difficult for me to make an assessment of what the wine market offers here in Romania. I decided it was time to rectify that. The Dealul Mare vineyards are in the Carpathian foothills only an hour’s driving north of Bucharest – this site offers a nice introduction to what’s on offer - and this blog also gives some useful technical notes on some of the better wines  

But I wanted to see what was available here in Bucharest so chose Ethic Wine’s Tasting Room just 5 minutes drive away…...which is both a shop and wine bar. For 15 euros I had a taste of three great Romanian whites – Liliac Feteasca Alba (near Targu Mures); Bauer Sauvignon Blanc (near Craiova); and a Iacob white cuvee from the Davino vineyard at Ceptura (Dealul Mare), But, surprisingly no titbits were on offer to help sharpen the tastebuds - and only a few slices of bread were offered when I asked. A strange sort of "tasting room"!

Probably the most comprehensive guide to Romania’s wine and vineyards is the CrameRomania website which includes this list of about 130 romanian vineyards
And the Dionysus wine bar looks worth checking out

Seasonal Taste

Romanian wines seem at last – after almost 30 years - to be coming in from the cold. No fewer than three significant “events” occurred in this domain in the past few months. First the publication in the summer of a substantial book The Wines of Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova; by Caroline Gilby (2018) who has apparently been a wine connoisseuse for the past decade and is the first English-speaking specialist to produce a book about the local wines. (An expensive coffee-table The Wine Book of Romania was produced a couple of years ago by a Romanian)

Gilby's book came to my attention because of the wine blog of Mike Vesseth - who made his first visit to Romania this autumn; took part on some wine tasting at Iasi and posted about these experiences this month.

I had no sooner asked to see a copy of the Gilby book (50 euros!) than, a few days later, I alighted on a copy of the first ever Gault Millau Guide to Romanian Wines 2019 – which describes (all too briefly) 63 wineries and 152 wines. There’s a good summary of the Romanian wine varieties here

At the same time, the various Crama (bulk wine cellars) which are such a pleasant feature of life here have been giving us access to the dry white wines of Averesti (Iasi), Macin (Dobrogea), Jidvei (Alba Iulia), and Vissoara (Constanta) – for 2 euros a litre! The famous Obor market not far from us has the last two including a new grape for me, the Sarba, available from Girboiu - one of the many new vineyards which have developed in the country in the past decade or so

There’s a nice review of some Romanian wines here

Talking Past One Another

A casual conversation about wine on a flight between Bucharest and Vienna turned, sadly, into a cultural stand-off. The young man in the window seat turned out to be a Romanian sommelier working in Salzburg to whom Daniela, in the middle seat, introduced me – knowing how much I appreciate wines ...ever since a cycle trip in my teens to the south of France in 1960!

But what should have been a pleasurable, if not educational, conversation during the flight was soured by….prejudice….I dare say on both sides…..

I don’t pretend to know a great deal about Romanian wines but - after 10 years’ experience of drinking Bulgarian wines (not least at 3 of the massive annual weekend tastings which Sofia organises in November) and a winter of tutelage under a young Bulgarian sommelier – I do know that Bulgarian wines deserve more respect than this young whippersnapper was giving them…I mentioned the little Bulgarian wine Catalogue produced on the eve of the annual Sofia tasting and observed the absence of such a Romanian publication – only to be told that I was wrong. He said there is such a publication – but only for sommeliers. He didn’t seem to understand that ordinary drinkers might like to have access to such a compendium - and indeed that such a restriction effectively means exactly what I said - that no such publication exists.....

On my side I didn’t take kindly to his dismissal of the possibility of getting a useful experience from any bottle priced at 5 euros – “they cost more than 3 euros to produce” he expostulated….I didn't have the heart to tell him that one of my favourite Romanian whites - Jidvei Riesling - retails for exactly 3 euros!

But what did it for me was his mention of a bottle priced at 1000 euros – “Just stupid” I muttered – to which he took high offence. Quick end of our conversation - although Daniela continued to engage him in conversation during which he mentioned that he had started drinking wines only in 2009 (!!) and emphasized the intensity of his training – and, of course, my ignorance.

What lesson do I draw…something to do with the closed mind…sommeliers, by definition, deal with rich people and therefore, despite the world of tastes having being opened to them, develop the arrogance of experts. And young Romanians are notorious for such arrogance - as is well testified by Ronnie Smith on page 80 of my Mapping Romania.....

I’d like to see how Theodor Zeldin might have handled such a conversation to more mutual advantage! 

A Zeldin Resource

http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/book-conversation

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263330798_Zeldin_Theodore_1998_Conversation

http://www.oxfordmuse.com/media/muse-brochure[final].pdf

hidden pleasures of life http://www.anilgomes.com/uploads/2/3/9/7/23976281/gomes_tls.pdf

http://delarue.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/OLC-April-2011_DeLaRue_Art-of-Conversation.pdf

A wine resource

This list gives a good indication of some of the Bulgarian wineries who present their wines at the annual fair in Sofia. And this is the list of Romanian wineries for the Bucharest event (which is in May)

The one field in which Romania does seem to score higher (?!) is that of wine blogs eg

http://lucruribune.blogspot.ro/

https://vincarta.com/blog/premium-romanian-wine/

Postscript

I should have done my homework on Austrian wine-bars before hitting Austria…The white wines I could find were all boring variants of their Gruner Weltliners and Rieslings!

Far more interesting were those I found yesterday from a new Romanian vineyard (for me) in the Dobrogea area (near the Black Sea) - Macin vineyard. Superb Aligote, Muscat, Sauvigon Blanc and Feteasca Regeales – all for 2 euros a litre. 

pps this is a good article on the whole issue of wine tastes 

Things look up on the wine front

Things seem to be looking up on the Romanian wine front – if my experience yesterday afternoon is anything to go by. Had gone looking for the Dionysus wine bar which had excellent feedback on its Facebook – only to discover that the owner had sold up and that it was in the process of being refurbished. It is scheduled to open next week under the very unprepossessing name (the new owner told me) of “Industrial Winery” (??!!!)

So I wound my way instead to Abel’s Bar which I had noticed last week (open, as seem all such places in Bucharest, from 16.00 to 24.00) and was nicely received by young Anda who advised me on the wine list which contains about 20 Romanian wines, mainly from nearby “Dealul Mare” but also from Vrancea, Dragosani and Transylvania. 

I went first for the Basilescu GOLEM (a mix of Chardonnay and Feteasca from Dealul Mare) and was very impressed that she gave me a small sip for me to check before she filled up the glass. Indeed she did more – she poured me another white alongside the Golem to allow me to compare before I made the choice – the second taste was a GARBOIU (with Sarba/plavaie grapes) from Vrancea

And to help me decide on my second glass – which turned out to be GARBOIU Tectonic (Gewurztraminer) I was able (perhaps this explains the bar’s name??) to taste a sip of Avincis Cuvee Petit (actually a Sauvignon Blanc) from Dragasani (a bit too sweet for me) and a LICORNA Serafim Chardonnay from Dealul Mare – the last of which was very good. But I don’t often get the chance to taste Gezurztraminers so that's what I went for……

Presumably it's the higher prices of Romanian wines (5-8 euros for bottles - compared with 3-5 in Sofia) that make real wine bars feasible in Bucharest. Opportunities to taste by the glass are simply not to be found in Sofia -except at the special events held by CasaVino and Vina Orenda.   

While googling for these websites I found a serious Romanian wine blog – with the delightful name of Good Things. What really impressed is that he has more than 200 posts about wines under 20 lei (just over 4 euros)

keeping traditions alive

Had a nice time visiting the Carturesti bookshop yesterday – which spreads over about 7 floors and offers delightful varieties of tea and sweets. Emerged with about 12 books - many about Bucharest. It may be a city I profess to hate – but, amongst the aggression of the traffic and monstrosities of both Ceacescu and post-modernity, are so many glimpses of superb architecture from another world. Hats off to Arcub (the Arch association) which has produced a 3rd edition of their Bucharest – architecture and modernity, an annotated guide which offers a very friendly guide to the best of the buildings in the city. 344 of them to be precise! At another level, there is the flamboyant The Romanian National Style – produced with the support of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. It’s beautifully produced with glorious detail – often in full-page spreads. And all for less than 10 euros!
In Romanian language only is historian Adrian Majuru’s Bucuresti- diurn si nocturn – a collection of stories about people. He is one of the few who has tried to kick up a fuss about the neglect of the old buildings here.
Moving to modern times, Magda Carneci and Dan Hayon offer Bucuresti – a collection of smells – which captures, in whimsical black and white pictures, the sights a sharp-eyed walker can glimpse in the city. Amazingly, I also picked up Bucharest 2010 – survival guide for expats – which is a very useful collection of addresses and recommendations. I didn’t think the city was a place for ex-pats!
Romanian food also figured on the purchase list – I would recommend very highly the English version of Romanian dishes, wines and customs by Radu Anton Roman. A lovely collection of recipes, regional commentary and black and white pics of old Romania. A gem – worth every euro of its 15 euro price. More prosaic is A Taste of Transylvania produced by Maureen Carnell for the Hospice movement here.

My real finds I have kept to the last – first a small notebook for 2010 for craftsman and craftsmanship produced by a non-profit association dedicated to keeping alive the old building crafts. Exactly what I had been asking for while we were redoing our old house – and having the schite tiles put on the roof. Apart from the illustrations, there are lists of the masters of the various crafts (stove builders, blacksmiths etc) with their telephone numbers. Some of the names are amazing – mesteri de cuptoare; mesteri in impletituri; chirpicar; caramidar; stufar. The association website is www.ahiterra.ro
And, finally, a book about Italian cooking – but not any book – Beaneaters and bread soup – portraits and recipes from Tuscany by Lori de Mori and Jason Lowe. This must be one of the most beautiful books ever – both in its concept, language, pictures and layout. It is a real celebration not only of the simple, old cooking – but of the individual craftsmen in Tuscany who keep the tradition alive.

My thanks to Valentin Mandache and his great blog (Historic Houses of Romania) for the photograph which graces this entry. I didn't have such a picture and surfed to find one. I'm delighted to havefound such a blog.
http://historo.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/imposing-neo-romanian-style-house/

Snowy sunday in Sofia

So much for my theory about the warmer weather in the south – I awake at 05.00 Sunday to the sight of the streets and buildings suffused in the yellow glow of street lighting with snow which has followed me south. I count my lucky stars that I decided to make a break for it yesterday rather than delaying until today when the road conditions will be horrific. Good also that I have brought my mountain boots in the car which I’ll need to struggle to the galleries and Knigomania bookshop today. But first another trip to the detested Mall – arriving just before it opened at 09.00 and had the place to myself. One of the cleaners was very helpful in taking me to get the papers stuff – I shook his hand – such kindness is becaming rare. Perhaps my (collapsible) aluminium stick helps!
I try to avoid the wine section – but, after picking up rye bread and gorganzola cheese, am drawn like a moth to a flame to the section – of course just to check what new brands there might be a year or so since I had the leisure for such an aesthetic trip. Katarszynski wines had something new but its too pricey – so I buy a Chardonnay from the Magret range I found a couple of years ago produced in the gangster lands at the Greek and Macedonian borders (3 .50 euros a bottle) and what purports to be a 2006 Brestovitza merlot reserve which I used to get from my wine cave on Macedonski Bvd (3 euros a bottle). The bottles are entirely for scientific purposes (!) – to test against the 2 euros a litre Romanian wines I have brought with me (the Romanian Recas white scores; and so does the Brestovitza which has a buttery finish) . Having dumped the produce in the flat, I found the ticket booth for the tram tickets open and was able to get a 22 tram to just beneath the lovely Alexander Nevsky Cathedral – few antique touts were braving the weather conditions in front – so I went on to the City Gallery which had just started an exhibition of Nikolay Boyadjiev (what’s the connection with Petar I wondered) – but it did not open until 11.00. Graffiti outside the empty little art kiosk just to the Gallery’s left tell me that „Danes are racists” What’s that about ??
So on to the Knigomania bookshop – near the British Embassy. Glad to see it’s (still) open – but slightly disappointed with the range (and prices). After an hour of browsing (and tempted only by Katharine Mansfield, Raymond Chandler and Ernest Hemingway) I emerge with a nice edition of Louis de Bernieres Birds without wings about the emptying of the Greek Anatolian villages a century ago - I had left my hardback copy in the library of the Azeri Civil Service Agency. My knees are beginning to ache – but I wanted to get back to see the City Gallery’s special exhibition – picking up a couple of discs to have for the music system (Cesar Franck; and Giuliani) and also an update of the great little guide of the Bulgarian Association for alternative tourism www.baatbg.org which gave me a couple of years fantastic prices (12 euros) for superb rural accomodation here. A must!! And prices are still very reasonable.
I was very taken with the N Boyadjiev exhibition – the first, it claimed, since his death in 1963. He was born in 1904 and, according to the publicity sheet, was kicked out of the Painters’ Association just before his death for refusing to toe the line on socialist realism (as so many of the younger PhD generation is now toeing the line on EU integration!!).

wine and the Commons

I discovered a stunning red wine yesterday – a 2008 Feteasca Regal – available from the barrel at 2 euros a litre in the Tohani wine shop on Una Maia. I don’t normally go there - it looks too posh compared with the places in the Matache market area which I frequent. Tohani is a commune in my favourite wine area here - Dealul Mare - the area east of Ploiesti running to Buzau but I have been diverted from its wines by the great Riesling-Pinot Gris I found recently in the Recas wine shop round the corner from the Dealul Mare one at the Matache market. The Tohani shop was offering a Riesling from the barrel – but lukewarm! However their (Merlot) rose was tasty and will bring me back to the place. I worry at the moment about our future wine supplies – because the Chinese are just beginning to discover European wines. Their wines are actually more like liquors so it will hopefully take some time before their palates adjust. At the moment the wines they buy are top of the range French and are bought as status symbols rather than for enjoyment.
Another discovery was the cultural magazine available online from the Romanian Cultural Foundation – although nothing has appeared in 2010. A 2006 issue focussed on Bucharest – and had quite a few articles bemoaning the destruction of the archiectural legacy.

When you actually look, it’s amazing what is actually available on the theme of alternatives to the monstrous economic path we stumbled down some decades back. And during the night I actually discovered an example of what my previous post had been asking for – someone who has retired and is now using his experience, time and other resources to try to develop a more appropriate system.

I’m a businessman. I believe society should reward successful initiative with profit. At the same time, I know that profit-seeking activities have unhealthy side effects. They cause pollution, waste, inequality, anxiety, and no small amount of confusion about the purpose of life.
I’m also a liberal, in the sense that I’m not averse to a role for government in society. Yet history has convinced me that representative government can’t adequately protect the interests of ordinary citizens. Even less can it protect the interests of future generations, ecosystems, and nonhuman species. The reason is that most—though not all—of the time, government puts the interests of private corporations first. This is a systemic problem of a capitalist democracy, not just a matter of electing new leaders.
If you identify with the preceding sentiments, then you might be confused and demoralized, as I have been lately. If capitalism as we know it is deeply flawed, and government is no savior, where lies hope? This strikes me as one of the great dilemmas of our time. For years the Right has been saying—nay, shouting—that government is flawed and that only privatization, deregulation, and tax cuts can save us. For just as long, the Left has been insisting that markets are flawed and that only government can save us. The trouble is that both sides are half-right and half-wrong. They’re both right that markets and state are flawed, and both wrong that salvation lies in either sphere. But if that’s the case, what are we to do? Is there, perhaps, a missing set of institutions that can help us? I began pondering this dilemma about ten years ago after retiring from Working Assets, a business I cofounded in 1982. (Working Assets offers telephone and credit card services which automatically donate to nonprofit groups working for a better world.) My initial ruminations focused on climate change caused by human emissions of heat-trapping gases. Some analysts saw this as a “tragedy of the commons,” a concept popularized forty years ago by biologist Garrett Hardin. According to Hardin, people will always overuse a commons because it’s in their self-interest to do so. I saw the problem instead as a pair of tragedies: first a tragedy of the market, which has no way of curbing its own excesses, and second a tragedy of government, which fails to protect the atmosphere because polluting corporations are powerful and future generations don’t vote.

Artists' Haven on the Danube

I spurned the easy option of a fast exit from Sofia via the Balkan Highway which has me at the top of the mountain range within half an hour of leaving the flat and chose the direct route due north, over what I remembered as a hill. But memory was deficient and it proved to be a tortuous mountain route - but the sight of ice-tipped branches and remote villages more than compensated

There was a smattering of snow on the ground at the final metres…as I headed for Montana, realising that my road may have been 40-50 kms shorter than the main highway from Sofia but is about an hour longer! Berkovitsa offered a gallery which was closed for lunch but I did see some marvellous wood carving artefacts (eg the pulpit) in its 11^th century (?) church….Memorials to the 1923 communist uprising are still to be seen in this isolated area which I had visited in 2012 on my way to workshops for municipal officials in Vratsa and Belogradchik (site of two great wines)….

The new bridge over the Danube at Vidin is only the second such link between the 2 countries (the first was built in 1956) and the container traffic already making a nuisance of itself. Noone, it seems, thought to anticipate its effects – although a pathetically small stretch of bypass is being built around Montana….      

I had forgotten how fascinating the Belogradchik crags and Serbian (?) mountain ranges are in the far distance and had to be careful both photographing on the straight stretches and negotiating the tight bends – a lorry had already come to grief and was causing a tailback…..There are no signs for the bridge as you reach Vidin – only for Belgrade and “Calafat” (a village on the Romanian side) but just follow the container traffic and you are soon on the new approach (clearly not much used by local traffic) and then on the white snake that is the long bridge…..

The Russe-Giurgiu entry to Romania is the one I know from the countless Danube crossings I have made these past eight years – and a soul-destroying entry it is with its garbage and dogs….Exiting from the Vidin bridge, by contrast, is a delight – with the villages being tidy and compact and a charming self-build idiosyncratic house style from of 1930s and before. Nowadays the only traffic are the barges which play up and down – and the odd cruise ship (eg this one which starts at Bucharest and ends at Budapest with some fascinating destinations organised en route)

Port Cetate (Port Fort) was a customs point in earlier centuries when River traffic helped connect towns such as Russe, Svishtov and Vidin to their Romanian and other neighbours further upstream  

The photograph shows the core of the complex as it has been restored in the last decade as a Writer’s House by poet and TV star Mircea Dinescu.

A warm welcome was much appreciated after what had been a 6 hour drive (but less than 250 kms) from Sofia – all the warmer with a glass of the estate-made rakiya (which it’s actually called in Oltanea). A gloriously clear liquid, it was one of the best rakias I’ve ever tasted – and I am now a bit of an expert!!

That was the start to a glorious bean soup produced by the kitchen staff (who seem well-used to people dropping in at odd hours) great home-produced bread, sausages and pickles…all with one of the white estate wines (a Pinot Gris) and good conversation. The sun was setting as we ate and talked and was nicely captured on film.

An hour or so in my room gave me the time to think more about what seem to be 2 projects – a modest “micro” one running with the first idea of bringing some of my Bulgarian artist friends together with some Romanian painters; the second the more ambitious one I hinted at in the previous post…. 

A second bottle of estate wine graced our next conversation in which we were joined amazingly by Mircea Dinescu himself who emerged out of the darkness and plumped down beside me. After some initial reserve, he was soon in great form (thanks to Sergiu’s skilful translation) but perhaps helped by realising how well I knew some of the figures of Romania’s recent past such as Josef Sava and Marin Sorescu….

The next morning I had the time to look at the material I had collected on Bulgarian strategies and projects in this part of the world; summarise them and distribute it to various friends for comment. Apparently the deadline for the next wave of bids for this Interreg programme is March which gives time for the collection of the necessary support from beneficiaries…..I duly left Port Cetate at midday heading through Craiova for Bucharest – a journey of more than four hours…… 

Some recommendations for those visiting Sofia

This has become the time of the year when my mind turns to the Carpathian house. Most of the last 7 winters have been spent here in Sofia (with forays to the small Bucharest flat and some sad weeks in a Belgrade winter) and I have been particularly happy with the latest attic flat (right in the old quarter, off Patriarch Eftemi Boulevard) with the 1927 date carved in the stone entrance.

It has the sort of stairhead I imagine Ilyia Beshkov using for one of his wry sketches….. and my small flat (which I;ve been renting for 16 months) has all the original wooden features and stained glass as well as a nice veranda onto a set of leafy courtyards. I thought I would have to give it up but my landlord has changed his mind and offered me an extended lease – which I am happy to take. Despite its centrality, there is no noise – except that of the bells of the old nearby Church on Ignatiev St   

I will miss (for the next few months) my home-made walnut, sesame and sunflower seed bread which I buy from the corner vegetarian restauarant – with superb fragrances wafting across just before I hit the shop itself.

I will also miss the Bulgarian Rakia and its incredible range of white wines - although I have been changing my allegiances in the lists of the last two.

Rakia is rather tasteless – compared to Romanian Tuica let alone Scottish or Irish whisky. But it is the spirit I have grown to prefer – although still insisting on the wine rather than plum or pear variety   For the past year or so, under the influence of my arty Bulgarian friends, my preferred  “poison” has been Yambolski ( a town in east-central Bulgaria). Half a litre for 4.5 euros! But I have now been introduced to Kailashka Rakia from Pleven, north central of the country. It has very good marketing – with a label reminding us of a Kentucky Bourbon and a 1922 date.

So I’m in mellow mood – having had a delightful afternoon cycling and picnicking with 2 young friends in the famous South Park with the quiet retro music one finds in Sofia’s parks – generally guitar or jazz.

I used to be a fan of reasonably-priced St Ilyia white wines in central Bulgaria (Stara Zagora area) – part of the Edward Miroglio group - but have now gravitated to the Black Sea Gold winery of Pomorie (Burgas) whose Soroko (Chardonnay) has the sort of “tickle” I love. And the nearby Ethno winery offers amazing tastes and prices.

And restaurants I will miss? 

• For sheer value for money and atmosphere, the atmospheric house nearby - at the corner of 6th September and Khan Krum Streets - is the greatest. Divaka is actually a chain of three with the more central (and cavernous) being just off Vitosha Bvd and Solunska St.  
•  The Club of the Architect is the classiest restaurant.
• The Rocket offers a great experience (with a retro decor and rakias a speciality) in the gardens at Bvd Dondukov right next door to the Vaska Emanouliva Art Gallery  
• Grape Central Tsar Samuel 45 is  a new addition to a small street which offers great art experiences. Nice brick décor and a fantastic selection of Bulgarian wines, grouped by Region – with modest eating to match the wine.
• Made in Home (Angel Knchev ul. 30A) is a small local restaurant (house wine only) with the best atmosphere (for me). Its just off Vitosha.

Beshkov drawings illustrate the text

Wine, figures and power

Magura is the name of a large cave 25 kms from Belogradchik – the end of the line here with no links to neighbouring countries. But it is also the name of a vineyard which produces excellent wines which I have now discovered. All due to the small kiosk they have at the entrance to the Belogradchik fortress; the two young people who manned it yesterday (as I arrived gasping from the steep climb) clearly knew nothing about wines but I did, after my tour of the fortress, buy a bottle of the attractively labelled Chardonnay (same price – 3 pounds - as the excellent Mezzek range which is currently my favourite). In the hotel last night, the Chardonnay tasted as good as the Mezzek – so today I returned and was lucky to find one of the vinoculturalists herself – with the highly appropriate name of Venelina! She was delighted with my comparison with Mezzek – and was able to tell me that they do have a shop in Sofia – Pushkin St 5. And also a nice website. I bought some other stuff – and will duly report on my tastings! The shop also stocks wine from a small place I passed through on my way here – Borovitsa (sounds Romanian) – which I hope to buy tomorrow and taste over the week-end. Watch this spot!

My readings in the last few days suggest that this blog should focus more strongly on the whole issue of managerialism which has popped up from time to time on this blog. See here and here
Until now this site has reported on other people’s interesting "takes” or "scoops”. So my discovery of a government nominee for the position of Chair of the UK Statistics Authority deciding to withdraw from the position after her cross-examination by the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee at the end of June is a first for my blog. With all the focus on the phone hacking of the Rupert Murdoch media empire, noone else seems to have noticed this. I’m still listening to the discussion (one third through the 2 hour intrerview) – and so far have noticed no reason why the MPs might feel she would not be a strong independent leader of the Statistics Agency. Apart from anything else, this is a rare and fascinating example of parliamentary power.
The photograph shows my faithful 14 year old steed resting while I photograph just outside Vrasets on the way to Belogradchik.

tourists in Brasov

First two weeks of August overcast and cool – but the cloudless blue skies now encircle the Carpathian mountain ranges again. Saturday we acted as Brasov tourists – catching the funicular up the mountain which (a bit like Sofia) towers over the city; and then taking an open-air bus for a city trip. Well worth the 7 euros the afternoon cost (3 for the first; 1 for second; and 3 for parking). Clocked an excellent wine shop en route – offering well-presented wines from various parts of the country – and finished the day with a moving organ and soprano performance at Ghimbav’s fortified church. I’m not a great fan of classical solo singing but Cristina Radu’s voice had me spell-bound. Next Saturday evening sees the last of the Musica Barcensis performances at the most easterly of the fortified Saxon churches - in Rasnov. Brasov has about ten such fortified churches within a short distance - four of them in our neighbourhood. 

A visit to the Carturesti bookshop netted Sach Sitwell’s 1938 Romanian Journey whose intro could have been written yesterday (apart from the references to the royal family)

For Roumania is still unspoilt. Perhaps there is no other country in Europe of which this is true to the same extent. More than this, under good rule, it has limitless possibilities from its untired human stock, who have come safely through the nineteenth century in their pristine state (ie without industrialisation). Let us hope that there will never be a town in Roumania with a million inhabitants. Bucarest must be getting near that mark. For there is always misery in very large towns; and the good fortune of Roumania lies in its mountains and its plains. And this must bring us back, once more, to our general contention. What is permanent and unforgettable in Roumania is the great plain of Transylvania, the woods of Oltenia, the swamps of the Danube Delta, the valleys of the Neamt, painted Sucevita and Voronet, and the wooden houses and gay costumes seen upon its roads. That is the permanent Roumania; while the modern Roumania of factories and model flats is only its amelioration into twentieth century conditions of civilization. We prefer the old. And it is that which will last, tempered by the new.

an attractive book on the secluded (and old-world) Bukovina region by one of the country’s best-known photographers (Florin Andreescu) was also bought; and some autobiographical musings by Norman Manea who got out of Romania in the 1980s and has an interesting foreward to this 2000 book Romania since 1989

3 DVDs of the magnificent old Romanian conductor Celibidache – playing Bruckner with whom he was great friends - completed the purchases. It's said that noone understood his music better.

Vegetable markets

Vegetable markets are always good at this time of year – but Bulgarian and Romanian ones particularly so with the richness of their produce shown at best in the sunny, blue skies. I’m just back from a trip to the new Obor market which lays the products out according to their county (Judet) of origin. The cauliflowers were particularly superb – and even brocoli so cheap. Bucharest markets, of course, are no match for the Tashkent ones – with their prestigious rows of nuts and spices - let alone the pickled delicacies offered by the Korean women whose families were stranded there (and in Kyrgyzstan) decades ago by Stalin. And it is Bulgarian vegetables which are, rightly, famed here for their superiority (with the plain between Georgiu and Bucharest being populated by Bulgarian vegetable growers). The year I spent in Sofia I lost all my bad cholestorol thanks to the vegetable regime I had – if it was too early for their superb large tomatoes (threatened, I’m told, by EU regulations) and leeks, then Turkish and Greek vegetables rolled up easily from over the borders).
Sofia, in my view, should be one of the pin-ups of the slow food movement. The modest grid-iron system which is its centre developed after the 2nd WW bombing; has kept cars in their place; and created small spaces which old and young alike have been able to use to pursue their dreams – whether shops where they sell the clothes they design themselves, micro art galleries, tobacco, wine cellars . Only in Sofia and Tashkent could I boast my own wine merchant – in Sofia a tiny step-down cellar on Bvd Stambouslska which had a few barrels and cases of select wine at such reasonable prices (in Tashkent a medical doctor who was experimenting in Pashkent – an hour’s drive from Tashkent – with mountain herbs and wines and brought bottles of the latter to me weekly to taste). Perhaps, however, I have now at last found one here in Romania. Although the area around the Bucuresti Gara de Nord has various wine shops with wine from the barrel, none compares with the small wine cellar I found recently in Rasnov (between Brasov and Fundata). They offer wines from my favourite area – Dealul Mare – just north of Ploiesti – and the dry whites and reds are quite spectacular at less than 2 euros a litre)
The open market in central Sofia (down from the mosque and synagogue) is in a really down-at-heel area which I feel will soon spring up again like the some of the old Viennese market squares I saw 20 years ago. Unlike Bucharest, it has quite a few Arab shops where incredible ingredients can be bought. One of the other (many) delights of Sofia are the serious coffee-drinking cafes (particularly the smoking one behind the National Art Gallery) – or of the sight of people carrying their coffee in the street. I have never been a smoker – but I feel that the anti-smoking drive has gone too far!
One final comment about vegetables. I remember very vividly from my childhood my mother’s jam-making. It is something which I therefore respect – and which I am so pleased to see continued here in Romania. At this time of the year it is something which Daniela (who normally leaves the cooking to me) spends time on. As she says, it is one of the ways her parents kept the family alive in winter. It reminds me of one of the jokes I read in the Ben Lewis book on Hammer and Tickle I am now reading – “why was Ceaucescu particularly keen on the first May celebrations?” Because he wanted to see how many Romanians had survived the winter!
And, while we're on the subject of agriculture, here is an excellent post

Living without the luxuries

Monday early saw me at the Military hospital again – this time to a floor so munificent it must have been designed for the Generals and Admirals! High uric acid was confirmed and I was referred to a specialist colleague who has put me on a diet for a few weeks which excludes alcohol and meat. What a torture to be in Bulgaria and denied access to its superb wines and rakias! Particulary after rediscovering the shop which supplies Karlovo wines straight from the barrel! And ironic that the post from a year ago reproduced the text from a gravestone which celebrated someone's skills in producing drink
Reminds me of the refrain in my favourite Romanian poem – "cut out the wine!”.
The post from the 21st is also worth looking at again - it traced the writing over the past 50 years which has tried (unsuccessfully it seems) to persuade us to live a simpler and more social life
The New Yorker has a good piece of background reporting on one of the key figures behind the Occupy Wall St movement.

And a UK Think Tank has issued a report on some of the elements of the "good society” which has become an important theme in one strand of social democratic re-thinking in Europe.

It’s nice to be able to report on one celebrity figure actually helping to create a more sustainable form of housing.

Finally, it's the time of the year when Vihra of the Astry Gallery here delights us with her 30by30 annual exhibition The sketch is an Ilyia Beshkov - very appropriate!

Mushroom soup and insitutional insulation

Nice run down to Bucharest yesterday – with a stop in Ploiesti to have lunch with Daniela. Nicolae Iorga - a great Romanian historian and politician - said 100 years of Ploiesti It's an ugly city - which begins beautifully - referring to its lovely Boulevard (of chestnut trees) which runs from the central station and was in colourful spring bloom yesterday. Previously known as Romania’s oil centre, the city is now clean. We went to the recently restored Boulevard Restaurant beside the Clock museum. It is roomy; aesthetically pleasing; gives a sense of the old Romania - and is a place to linger. The mushroom soup was the best I’ve ever tasted; and its Romanian Winter platter also very tasty. It draws on the great fish market just a few minutes away; cooks only to order; has a good range of wines (including half a litre house wine for only 2 euros). A rare example here of customer attention (even if the waiter did forget about my main course!)

(by the way, these 2 photos are not of Ploiesti! They are by way of illustration to the themes which now follow

BBC World Service is always a good listen – particularly after an absence. And Peter Day’s Global Business is a model of good conversation in a field which is generally so boring. This morning I was soon hooked on the conversation he was having with Ranjay Gulati about the latter’s new book. The starting point was that the business rhetoric about the customer being the core of company’s thinking was not borne out in reality. The emphasis, he argued, given to reengineering and sheer survival meant that techniques and products were the foremost thing in managers’ minds. Even their much-vaunted customer consultations focussed on their product – rather than trying to understand the wider context in which the customer uses it. And the departmental silos just compounded their distance from the customer. How often have we heard this? Rosabeth Kanter talked about it 27 years ago (in her Change Masters – corporate giants at work). Shoshanna Zuboff’s The Support Economy: Why Corporations are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism made the same point 6 years ago in a more sustained critique. And Anthony Jay’s spoof article “Democracy, Bernard? It must be stopped!” suggests that structures are deliberately created to ensure that policy-makers are isolated from those they are supposed to serve (see key papers on my website). As Day put it wryly – “Big ideas – common sense!”
The book, by the way, has the rather awful title of “Reorganise for resilience – putting customer at the centre of your business" – available already on googlebooks - But you can read the basic idea in a shorter piece he wrote for Harvard Business review.
There are two reasons why I was hooked (apart from the style of the conversation). First it was the issue of departmental silos that first brought me into this field of politics and public administration – I could see that people in the various council departments were well-intentioned so what was it that prevented from (a) seeing things in a less perverse way and (b) cooperating with others? It started my interest in organisational structures.
The second reason is that my immersion in the field of government has made me so impatient of the smug rhetoric I hear both from insiders and those from outside who purport to have the answers to government problems – the think-tankers and consultants. So I am so happy to hear someone dare to say that the Emperor is naked!

The public sector these days needs no convincing of the need for change – it has indeed become the way to show virility and to make your reputation. But the techniques have become predominant – we need to return to the simplicities! We do need to have conversations, listen, think and act (or is to act and think??)

I had to turn BBC World off when they suddenly terminated a conversation which was beginning to explore the reasons for the uprising in Kyrgyzstan – and switched to golf news. Who makes the judgement that listener more interested in golf than Kyrgyzstan? Is this yet another example of producer interest? I noticed one reader of a Guardian “Comment is Free” article wanted some background reading on the country. Google for “Understanding Politics in Kyrgyzstan” by Askat Dukenbaev and William W. Hansen; and go on the website of International Crisis Group – and get their December 2005 report on the Failing State of KR.

ps a note for posterity - the first photo is of a small window in the superb Queen Mary complex in Balcik, Bulgaria. I took the second photo from my car as I was returning to Tashkent from a wine tasting at Pashkent, Uzbekistan. It gives a good sense of the reality for most people in these central asia states

Missing history of administrative reform

Worked non-stop all Saturday on this briefing paper on Chinese administrative reform (Friday’s draft is here). Two developments got the creative juices flowing - first I discovered a method for giving my website papers higher visibility on the internet - I simply choose a title for a blog posting which is the same as one already on the first page of google search and then ensure there is a link in the blog post to my paper! So, as I scribble (or whatever word now captures the key tapping we all do now) I can imagine my phrases and insights hitting a spellbound global audience. Dream on!
Then, as I was grappling with the question of the lessons from 40 years of reform efforts in Western Europe, I was suddenly reminded of my 1999 book - in which I had tried to explain west european public admin reform to a central european audience. I was amazed to find that the argument and text still stands up pretty well eleven years on – and have duly uploaded it to the website - In Transit - notes on Good Governance Part I. What I had tried to do in chapter Four of that book was to emphasise how varied were the „explanations” we had in the 1970s about the sort of problem which required „reform”; and, therefore, how differently (despite the talk of New Public Management - NPM) reform programmes developed in different countries. I had also explained how, in the 1970s, the new breed of policy analysts had almost given up on the hope of getting the bureaucracy to operate in the interests of the public - „disjointed incrementalism” was the best that could be hoped for. And how public choice theory came along to give an ideological explanation and justification for what came to be called NPM. I was fighting bureaucracy in the 1970s and 1980s with a different (and simpler) theory – what I called the „pincer approach”- a combination of community action and strategic management led by politicians and explained in paper 50 of my website – Organisational Learning and Political Amnesia. In the 1980s, I was using the pamphlets of the Institute of Economic Affairs (on issue like road-pricing) with my students to show the practical applications to which economics could be put – never imagining that such neo-liberal thinking would soon dominate government policies. But in the mid 1980s I remember reading a long article by a neo-liberal American academic in The Economist about the need to introduce a split between purchasers and providers into the health system – and sending it with a warning note to the (Labour) Opposition spokesman in Parliament.
The technocratic fix of (young) consultants misses completely this politico-historical side of things – and I realise that my personal history (and extensive reading and international experience) gives me a fairly unique perspective on this issue of administrative reform. Anyway it encourages me to think I have!

And that is a good opening for a bit of trumpet-blowing. I got a very nice note a few weeks back from Tom Gallagher (author of Theft of a Nation – Romania since Communism and Illusion of Freedom; Scotland under nationalism and many other books) whom I had met up with for the first time in Bucharest in late November. He has kindly given me permission to reproduce his note which read -

“I came to Carpathian Musings fairly late in the day but I soon grew to appreciate the intellectual fire-power and also the aesthetic pleasures to be derived from following your thoughts and also your experiences in Romanian city and countryside. Indeed, I can't think of any other blog that works so well at very different levels; you are able to switch (seemingly effortlessly) from discussing the current deep politico-economic crisis, to appraising the books you are reading, casting a beedy eye on the delusional university world, to passing on your experiences as a bon vivant, sampling the cornucopia of seasonal foods, wines and your trophies from the fairs and antique market. You also explore your own life in an honest and constructive way. So you manage to be a cross between JK Galbraith, Fred Halliday, Egon Ronay and Dennis Healey - quite a feat”.

Praise indeed - particularly from such a writer! I have been trying to insert it as one of my list of quotes in the right-hand column of the site but have been foiled so far!

The Search for the Holy Grail

I’m proud  this last day of the year to present The Search for the Holy Grail – the 2018 posts – being the fourth annual collection of my blogposts but the first to emerge from a strenuous process of editing.

It was 2015 when I started the habit of publishing annual collections of these posts - although In Praise of Doubt – a blogger’s year cheated a bit by actually covering 15 months and therefore running it at 250 pages – a bit too much perhaps for the average reader. Most of the images I used for this first effort were from my collections of paintings and artefacts…

The Slaves’ Chorus was more manageable at 120 pages (including the Sceptic’s Glossary I had included the previous year) and it kept the focus of the images on my own collection.

Last year’s Common Endeavour covered 76 posts and 180 pages – with the images being – initially at any rate – more eclectic but, ultimately, petering out…

Why the title?

The very first little book I wrote (way back in 1977) was called The Search for Democracy; the first effort I made some 15 years ago to crystallise some of the key lessons from my organisational endeavours bore the title “The search for the Holy Grail”; and the visiting card I now use bears the epithet “explorer and aesthete” – so “searching and exploring – if not discovery” seem clearly to be part of who I am..….

What’s different

Until now, I have let the posts speak for themselves. I chose this year to start rereading and reflecting on them from about October and soon realised it might add a little coherence if I grouped posts with a common theme together. So some of the posts are not quite in the order in which they appeared….

This in turn inspired me to use, for the beginning of each section, the tables which I had started to use last year. The first column gives the title of the post – with the other compressing what I was trying to say into a few lines (a real challenge!)…… Most of my readership is not using English as their first language and such summaries seem therefore a useful endeavour 

What’s the same?

The blog is not a diary – it does not record what I do on a weekly basis – although events such as exhibitions, wine-tasting or trips do make the occasional appearance. I made two trips to Scotland this year – my first such visits since a wedding in 2012 – which didn’t feature in the posts but are covered here. The blog remains a record of more cerebral activities – of the thoughts sparked by books and general reading…

Key points

The year started with some advice for the Davos set; some deaths; and some Italian and German writers before returning to a subject which had occupied the blog in previous months – Reforming the State

Change, of one shape or form, was the dominant theme of this year’s posts – exactly half of them, not counting several posts on Brexit in the early part of the year.

But it was how ideas are conveyed that seemed to exercise me as much as the ideas themselves – with quite a few posts being devoted to examples of both good and bad writing as well as that of the future of the blog

This is the first year for a decade I have spent fully in Romania – so a few posts about the country figure in this year’s collection….

At one stage I thought the posts had dried up – for almost 3 months I lacked anything to spark inspiration. I realised some time ago that my mind/body was telling me something when this happened – but what exactly? When I was younger, I could blame stress – but this was high summer…..and in blessed Sirnea of the meadows and high peaks…

It’s true that I had just finished a challenging series of posts about “administrative reform” and the nature of the State – so I could be forgiven for being a bit alienated….And that I had spent most of the winter holed up in Ploiesti……but reasonably active with walking and swimming….

I knew, of course, that one of the curses of retirement is that time can hang heavily but I had, since at least 2012, managed to avoid this….I had discovered wines from both sides of the Lower Danube; written a little book about Romanian culture (see Mapping Romania - notes on an unfinished journey); and started a serious collection of Bulgarian painters - Bulgarian Realists – getting to know the Bulgarians through their art. And the morning discipline of a blogpost had seemed to keep me ticking over…..but suddenly vanished….Even the taste for reading disappeared…in what was to be a three-month hiaitus…

But late October saw the blog back with a bang – not just the posts but a flurry of the first book purchases (at Bucharest’s annual Book Fair) since the spring…  And November saw the reader numbers over the entire period of the blog hit the 300,000 mark. Quite a landmark ….

Once this year the monthly viewing hit the 10,000 mark and twice just missed but, generally, the monthly figure has been around 4,000

Another Danube Trip

Another trip north 2 weeks back – first to Port Cetate via Belogradchik and one of its vineyards and the Vidin bridge across the Danube. A huge shell of a synagogue at Vidin is left unexplained in the guidebook….

A nice website about Bulgarian public transport gives this experience of the Sofia-Vidin trip

A writer in residence at Port Cetate turned out to be a Schwabian from an old Danube family who is now producing wines in Hungary and writing a book on the different values represented by the Danube and Rhine rivers and the cultures around them….Claude Magris's Danube - a sentimental journey from the source to the Black Sea gave us an amazing take on that river (in 1989) but Ronnie Lessem's Global Management Principles (also 1989) not only identifies four very different clusters of values (north, south, east and west) but ascribes, to organisations and individuals alike, different life phases. There’s a nice summary here.   

A couple of decades ago, I used some fallow time I had to “bone up on” contemporary management writing (see chapter 6 of In Transit – notes on good governance) and have a continuing interest in the history of management thought (if that’s not a contradiction in terms!!). Lessem’s vignettes of the various figures in the management canon bring people and ideas alive in an exceptional manner.

Lessem, I am delighted to see, is still going strong and has moved from management into the wider field of economics – there’s a sadly rare video here of one of his presentations

He is one of these admirable people who challenge the narrowness of the intellectual boundaries which so constrain our thinking……  

After a couple of nights at Port Cetate, it was on to Craiova and a first visit to its superbly restored Art Gallery. Apart from great displays of the great work of Amman and Grigorescu, the visit was made worthwhile by a roomful of Brancusi sculptures and paintings by an artist so far unknown to me and who therefore doesn’t figure in my Introducing the Romanian Realists of the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries – Eustatie Stoinescu about whom little is known although I did find this little nugget. 

This is a wonderfully coy painting of his….