Shopping in the Old Town

Any outing to the city center where I live always turns into downtown shopping, if I'm accompanied by my wife... and I'm almost always accompanied by my wife.

The city is called Bucharest, it is the capital of Romania and has an old town which has, in turn, an old center. As you can see, "old" is the word that is most used here.

I'm old and I like old things but there are many young people who also appreciate old things... The proof is the large number of young people visiting the old town.

Bucharest is more than 500 years old, so it comes from the Middle Ages. Hundreds of years passed over it and different historical eras, different influences, and different orders have turned it into a jumble of different buildings and a lack of stylistic and architectural unity. The lack of rigor and discipline characteristic of the East and the Orient made it impossible for the city to compete with the great European capitals such as Paris, Vienna, or Budapest.

However, small parts and limited areas of the city resemble these cities mentioned above, especially Paris and because of this, in the interwar period, Bucharest had its glory and was called Little Paris!

I lived under communism (I mean when I started to understand something, not when I was born) for almost thirty years. At that time the old town was... still old but lackluster, both literally and figuratively. It was a shopping district, with lots of shops, bigger and smaller, but selling the same things. Few things! Shops housed in houses hundreds of years old, houses left in disrepair. The houses that weren't shops were populated by people with no education and no care for where they lived. Everything was slowly but surely being destroyed...

Since 1990 Romania has left communism and joined the group of democratic countries, to the joy of almost all the Romanian people, whether they knew what democracy meant or not... most of them. Almost ten years nothing has happened to the old town except that its degradation has continued.

Then something happened. Consolidation, repair, and renovation of buildings began. Repairing the streets. This went on for another ten years or so. Dozens of cafes, terraces, and restaurants were set up. Cheap drinks, good food, beautiful girls. A perfect recipe for success. More and more foreign tourists started visiting Romania, Bucharest and especially the Old Town!

This is the old town, on a rainy winter's day, where I set out on a gift hunt for a friend. That means I ignored both restaurants and cafes. Walking through the narrow streets I spotted a small art gallery that caught my eye...

My attention was drawn to what was happening across the street from the gallery at a place that I love and is a real attraction, a gorgeous bookstore. Proof that preparations for the winter holidays have begun!

The little moment of wandering quickly passed and we returned to the gallery. I must say I knew this place... from the outside. I had passed by many times, but for reasons I found out later when I befriended the lady inside, the gallery was always closed. This time the luck was ours!

Once inside the gallery, we discovered a place full of surprises...

Pretty small space full of objects, an eclectic place, as our friend @dswigle would say. The spaces are cramped here, set up in old houses. This forces the gallery owners to put the objects in all possible places, without being able to arrange the exhibits thematically.

It took us a little while to make friends with the gallery curator, it also helped that my wife had worked in an art gallery for many years and they found they shared common knowledge. This is how we found out that the gallery owners were artists in love with art, collectors who collected various objects from their travels around the world.

In addition to the objects collected from past trips, there are also paintings, ceramic vases, and various figurines made by contemporary Romanian artists.

It may seem too much and mixed but we should know that the target audience is tourists visiting the old town. Especially foreign tourists. They are of all ages and interests, so there must be something for everyone.

Even for us, who were looking for a gift for a friend. When I say "even for us" I mean that the prices are made more keeping in mind foreign tourists and their buying power... higher than ours. Consequently, the prices are quite high...

After much searching, and much giving up, we chose this couple, these gilded metal silhouettes that can sit on any shelf. The fact that they are two figurines that allow for different combinations and places to be placed I think our friend will love them. They cost almost $70. In other parts of the world I think it is a very good price but in Romania, people like me and my wife, who are retired, usually use this money for other, more practical purposes. Of course, to give pleasure and joy to a friend, we spend this amount with pleasure.

I tried to show in this presentation that there are other attractions besides coffee, beer, and food in the old town of Bucharest! Of the art galleries, of which there are many, I have now chosen one that tries to offer something for everyone. One last picture of this gallery, for easier recognition...

Looking for a gift or souvenir in the old town can be a pleasant indulgence. This post, inspired by #MarketFriday and @dswigle can be considered an invitation.

Traveler to the city where I live is what I've been doing for many years, that is, I try to show what is more interesting, more important, and not necessarily what is more beautiful in the city where I live. I don't bypass the ugly places or the sometimes uncivilized behavior that I try to explain through the history of these places but I focus especially on what I think a visitor would like to see when he arrives for the first time in Bucharest. Bucharest, the capital of Romania, a member country of the EU, is located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe. I'm going to use this tag #traveltomycity and then put these places on the Pinmapple map for those who want to discover them more easily!