Structure

This new training video demonstrates OUSA's post-Futures structure in a nutshell.

Me - how?

On being told by a cynic that the aim of OUSA Futures was to abolish all dissident units, especially European ones, this distant cousin of OUSA Belgium's most important member said that she found that really hard to believe.

No more theatre

Here is a wide (currently under renovation) plaza in Targu Mures - real 'place for the people' stuff, or at least that was my outsider's feeling. Fluid borders are here: not just in the Hungarian-Romanian dual identity and the clash between Communism and capitalism, but in the border between past and present, men and women and the tourist and its target. Borders are wet, permeable, and always handled by women who are adept with a hose.

Modes of address

Visitors to Conference 2011 found this type of signposting helpful when being assigned to working groups on key policy issues.

Conference fun

Delegates to Conference 2011 were pleased to be met at the station by a special bus, but were not sure whether the idea of Conference being fun instead of business-like needed closer inspection.

Feline hungry

It was very strange in Apold to see a distant cousin of OUSA Belgium's most important member giving afternoon tea to two copy-cats of the late, great Treacle.

Apold

This place is a 'Saxon' village in Romania. We went here to hunt for one of our biggest friend's roots (I don't mean a fat lady with hair-dying problems) and ended up talking to some Roma and climbing up a church tower to take this picture (it's in arty black and white mode - how louche).

If you click on it to blow the picture up you can see people on bikes!

If it fits....

The OUSA delegation to Romania were impressed by this helpful warning.

Room for the bite

When scouting possible future Conference venues, OUSA reps were duly impressed by the accommodation on offer this bid from Romania, although they were not sure about the vampire lurking between the windows.

This old house

AN OLD HOUSE IN SIBIU
Not for nothing does
one layer of brick grow thicker
carrying a need
not to budge at all.


Then another,
small, mouldy
slips into the frame.

The bastards who lived here;
elements - the hydrogen and helium,
iron and uranium of the human soul -
trace tourists' started eyes.

That rather poncey poem was written when I was musing on the relationship between poetry and science as conceived in Eastern Europe, which of course is not a poncey thing to think about at all.

The above house in Sibiu is four hundred years old and probably going to end up as a shop selling amber or mobile phones or something.

I have no doughnuts but I have dumplings

So said the waitress one night in Sinaia. In Sighisoara (hope I've spelt that right) all our dreams came true.

Sinaia sense of security?

ALPINE HOTEL

You can safely sleep here...
all is made of wood...
those dog-barks are far off.

PS - it's not really the Alps, but Transylvania

Bucharest fast food

This chicken outlet in the centre of Bucharest is fairly hard not to miss.

In identity terms, it testifies I suppose to Romanian humour (in the light of bird flu), which I also saw in an exhibition (can't put photos on here for fear of copyright) of cartoons, for example showing Romanians taking over Covent Garden with big stars on stages and Roma beggars at the door. We were talking in our tutorial the other day about whether minorities use humour as a kind of strategy - I think Romania isn't really a minority, but it maybe feels kind of on the edge or something (as far as one can generalise).

Two alternative takes on Killer Chicken - this one http://viapontica.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/hilarious-name-killer-chicken-bucharest-fast-food-outlet/ from an ex-LSE man turned property market analyst, contrasts with the more sybaritic http://therockmother.blogspot.com/2007/06/you-say-roumania-i-say-romania.html

Tourism tropes

We were talking about this in connection with my European Studies course - different views of countries as expressed through tourism literature.

This is a poster in Bucharest two and a half years ago - note how the concept of the grand tour is still with us, how more expensive the UK is, and how Tower Bridge is an enduring icon (also used in Eurovision 1999 by Israel).

As always, click on the picture to make it larger.