Explorer in your own city/City Explorer

ARCEN and InterestingTimes Bureau have been inviting us to discover Romanias capital city

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Corina Sabău, 13.09.2017, 13:29

ARCEN and InterestingTimes Bureau are the acronym and the name, respectively, of two cultural associations that for a few years now have been inviting us to discover Romania’s capital city, Bucharest, through guided tours that focus on the stories of inter-war Bucharest, of the urban-rural fringe, on the histories scribbled on the walls of the city or somewhere behind the blocks of flats built in the communist era. Edmond Niculuşcă, the president and founder of ARCEN (The Romanian Association for Culture, Education and Normality), believes that the people of Bucharest would be much more involved in civic, city-rescuing activities if they knew more about the stories of their city. Actually, this is how the ARCEN project took off way back when Edmond was a pupil of the Central School. They wanted to save the building of the high school, which, later on, was included in the circuit the European Nights of Museums, thanks to the very efforts of Edmond Niculuşcă.

Edmond Niculuşcă: ”ARCEN is trying to bring city dwellers closer to their own city, to the subjective city, the intimate city, to the personal city, just like Mircea Eliade would say, through a series of cultural routes.”

This year, jointly with the French Institute in Bucharest, ARCEN has organized a number of events part of the Eliade110 series, which is a new format of the cultural route themed “Walking through Mircea Eliade’s Bucharest”, a project that, in 2015 alone, gathered more than 5,000 people for the walking tours organized in several weekends. The tour takes people to the historical neighborhoods of Mântuleasa, Sfantul Stefan (Saint Stephen) and Sfintii Voievozi. ARCEN walking tours highlight the architecture and history of these old Bucharest suburbs, the stories dating from Mircea Eliade’s childhood as well as fragments from the fantastic literature Eliade wrote while in exile.

Here is Edmond Niculuşcă with details: ”Those interested are introduced into the history of these suburbs, they find out how they developed along the years until the present time. At the same time, we combine all these stories related to history, architecture and urban landscapes with fragments from Mircea Eliade’s fantastic literature. For instance, when we reach the Popa Soare street, we recall Eliade’s short story titled “In Dionysus’ Court” where, in the early 1920s, a female character, Leana, was singing in a restaurant. She appears in several short stories by Mircea Eliade.“

While ARCEN started from the idea of protecting the city’s heritage and spirit via cultural tours, InterestingTimes Bureau wants to promote urban culture and street art. And that cannot be achieved, says Doru Răduţă, in the absence of a cultivated audience that appreciates street-art: “The main reason for which we mostly have foreign tourists is that they come with the lesson already learned, they get information on time as to the street-art offer in a certain city and know exactly what they are looking for. That is why I believe I am right when saying that almost 90% of the tourists who take part in our tours are foreigners. We continue to organize street art tours for high school and university students, most of them free of charge, especially when they have the “Doing School Differently” week. However, our audience is mostly from abroad during most of the time. Of course, we would like more Romanians to be among the participants, but our purpose is to collect funds for as many street art works as possible. From this point of view the foreign audience is more informed.”

According to Doru Răduţă Bucharest offers tourists a different experience as compared to other European cities, due to the fact that it has not been promoted as much. Doru Răduţă tells us more: “This is about trying to change mentalities, all the more so as we refer to people who live in Romania, and, in our case, in Bucharest. It is also about changing the mentality of companies and local administration. We believe that through our actions we have contributed to that a little bit. I am very glad that in 2017 we managed to draw the support of some companies who wanted to help us and that we got the support of some local authorities. What we still need to do is work on changing the mentality of Bucharesters. It won’t be easy but I believe things will change for the better in the upcoming years.”