The initial motivation in starting this blog was telling a number of "origin" stories. Some I have already told, some I left for later, but for the most part, telling these stories is the main raison d'etre for this collection of characters (i.e., letters, numbers and strange people – the constituent parts of this blog). One of them is the story of my last year or so in Romania, a time when I lived on my own in my Drumul Taberei / Favorit apartment.
For instance, I used Google Maps to locate my street and I can zoom in to the point of seeing my building and the vegetation. But Google didn’t bother taking Street View photos because – who cares?
Luckily, I can find info about the building I grew up in (dt-tip):
Buildings of four levels with two and three bedroom apartments, type 1 comfort, plus one studio, detached without balcony on the first floor (cf Romanian “parter”). Two-bedroom apartments are detached and have no balcony, the three-bedroom ones are situated opposite on the floor, separated by the two-bedrooms, one detached and the other semi-detached with a total area of 67 sqm, in both the balcony being located on the large bedroom width. In conclusion, on each floor there are three apartments, one two-bedroom and two three-bedrooms, with a variable number of stairs in-between.
Here’s a quick glossary of relevant English and Romanian terms (as much as I can remember, this is not my business for the most part).
- detached/semidetached – comandata/semidecomandata. In English, a detached house is separated from others, while “semidetached” refers to a house that shares an exterior wall with another. In Romania, the term refers mostly to rooms in apartments and whether you need to go through another room or they have a separate entrance (usually via a hallway).
- bachelor/studio/loft/1BR – garsoniera/studio; Loft is a big open space with no wall partitions and high ceilings, usually resulting from converting old industrial / factory buildings to residential properties. A studio is one room with a small kitchen in a corner and a separate bathroom and it’s very small (usually 300-450 sq ft or less). A bachelor is a bit larger (500 sq ft), with a separate kitchen and bathroom. Fewer people consider a bachelor to be smaller than a studio, having a kitchenette instead of a full kitchen (aka “efficiencies”). A one bedroom apartment has a walled off bedroom, a living room as well as separate bathroom and kitchen.
- confort I/II/III; this indicates the surface range in sq m. The highest is “confort Lux”, followed by confort 1 (sometimes with a “confort 0” as an intermediary. Garsoniera: 33-36, 2-br 44-55, 3-br 61-79, 4-br 80-99, 5-br+ 80-109. In “confort 1”, the kitchen must have a minimum of 8 sq m and if there are more than 3 “rooms” there should be 2 bathrooms.
- bedrooms – camere; To be more accurate, “bedrooms” translates in “dormitoare” while “camere” means “rooms” (though not necessarily the kitchen or bathroom) and that’s because in English, the living room is not counted as a bedroom for the most part; keep that in mind when looking for a place and translate with +/- 1.
- Prices (in euro/sq m) vary a great deal with the economic situation, itself quite volatile over the past few decades. For Bucharest, expect to pay 900-1000, less in Rahova, and much more in Kiseleff-Aviatorilor (around 1500); most transactions occur for Titan. In Timisoara prices vary between Dambovita (700) to Odobescu (1000). In Brasov we have the cheapest in Triaj (750) to “Medieval Centre” (2000). Cluj-Napoca has Manastur for the low-end and Dorobantilor / Avram-Iancu for the high-end (1500). Constanta has cheap apartments in Poarta 6 (730), whereas Trocadero, Capitol or Faleza Nord go for 1100. Iasi finally has Podu Ros at the low end going as high as 1000 for Copou.
My apartment, for instance, was a 3-bedroom detached. If you find a mistake above, please feel free to correct me – it’s info I pieced together mostly online, so don’t consider it authoritative, just a good starting point.
Now that we’ve found the best sources of memories and localized everything, I can finally tell you the story. Which, depending on how intimate it comes out, will be either left here encrypted or posted in a separate article.
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