This website is an archive from 2016

This site was actively maintained from 2006 to 2016. Since then I have kept it online for historical interest, but have made no further updates. Much of the information in these pages is now incorrect or obsolete.

Bucharest Monopoly

05 April 2007

I visited the In Your Pocket site today looking for information about Macedonia, but found myself enjoyably distracted by the article Bucharest Monopoly - a tour of some of the less salubrious locations featured in the Romanian version of the board game.

It’s not unusual for disappointed travellers, misled by the city’s “Paris of the East” nickname, to comment that Bucharest is no Paris. Visitors with unrealistic expectations of architectural prettiness have also been heard to remark that Bucharest is no Prague. But it takes In Your Pocket’s keen eye for the Eastern European urban scene to come up with what must surely be the ultimate put-down: “Calea Rahova, while impressive from afar, is no Tirana”.