T S E R A H BUC
dventure uropean a E is h s in nia kaya beg l of Roma Cagri Can ue capita sq re tu ic with the p eroad.com
designer on the road
igneronth
www.des
On to Bucharest, the first city of my fourth and final route. I was welcomed by a beautiful field full of sunflowers! Unlike Asia and Latin America, I found communicating less of a problem here - almost everybody knows enough English to have simple daily conversations. Food also was not a problem; in Eastern Europe the food is quite similar to Turkish food. I found many influences from Turkish culture since the Ottoman Empire stretched to this region for a while in history. The first things to strike me were the super sexy girls, street dogs and cars! The car population is more than the human population here, and finding a place to park is a big deal. The street dogs look much more intelligent than in any other country - they wait for the green light when crossing the streets, and look like they are always sure about that they are doing or where they are going! The architecture is amazing here. I felt like an actor in an old movie set, or like I had traveled back into history. I worked at Think Digital, a PR and digital advertising agency. Interestingly, I was the only designer there! Most of their business is selling advertising and media planning for brands. When they need something to be designed they outsource the work to freelancers. My first meeting with my boss was quite interesting. We met at his place for a beer, and to discuss what projects I would be doing in the next two weeks. He kept telling me about projects that needed things to be designed, and I wondered how it was possible to do all that in just two weeks. To my mind, only one of them would take two weeks to do! However I eventually managed to complete most of the projects he told me about that first night, including two logo projects for different fashion brands, two different festival identities and posters, a print ad for the agency, an info-graphic about how the agency worked, and one logo for a blog.
Despite all the work, I had time to make some random notes about the city. Where local beers are concerned opt for Silva over Ursus. Laundry service is expensive compared to the other countries around the world. Old apartments are cool and not so expensive to rent – largely because they have many problems and need a lot of fixing! Most of them will not stand up to an earthquake, so rent at your own risk! Smoking indoors is allowed. Waitresses, taxi drivers, cashiers, and anyone in the service industry hate what they are doing, and they are often not polite. Taxi drivers don’t take you on short distances and they always ask for a tip. We all know that in this material world, money talks, but in Romania it’s a bit more hardcore. For example, you have to pay for ketchup and mayonnaise in restaurants - even in McDonald’s. At a fancy restaurant you order a meat dish from the main course menu, and discover that it comes with nothing else - no fries, no rice, not even bread is included. You have to pay extra. You have to pay for a bag to carry your purchases in the market. NOTHING is free here. That’s it, fellow travelers. More from Berlin next month. www.poolmagazine.in 63