A photographic tour of Bucharest; in today's issue: Lacul Morii

July 8, 2018 by Lucian Mogosanu

So this Wednesday I grabbed my fancy-schmancy DSLR and went to another not-quite-aimless stroll through town. Seeing that the weather finally took a break from the daily thunderstorms1, I headed off to the Western part of the town, in the Crângași neighbourhood, where a human construction called Lacul Morii is situated. The result was quite surprisingly ninety photos, of which I processed twenty, of which fifteen or so are posted below.

Speaking of below, above: the campus of University Politehnica of Bucharest, one of Romania's best schools, from which emerged well-known names such as Ion Iliescu, Ecaterina Andronescu, Petre Roman and Liviu Dragnea. Oh, and they also teach engineering there, or so they say. Anyway, just in case you're wondering, the UFO-shaped oddity in the background is the last level of the Rectorate building, and we2 are all waiting for the day when it takes off. When -- not if! occult Dacian technology and all that.

A bit to the north, the Dâmbovița river3 separates the academic campus, i.e. the place where students supposedly go to study, from the Regie neighbourhood and student campus4, where students go to get some sleep now and then, but primarily for eating, partying, fucking, camwhoring -- in other words, living. Too bad the place is also filled with massive amounts of huge cockroaches. Anyway, closing this particular parenthesis:

Below, a wide view of Lacul Morii. And this is where, predictably, I stop again to tell a story.

Back in the nineteenth century, when Bucharest was way more of a shithole than it is today, "nobody could have predicted" that the Dâmbovița river would frequently flood the town, not to mention the smelly smells and the general swamp atmosphere -- where somewhat unrelatedly, somewhere on the river one could find the Ciurel Watermill. Anyway, in the late twentieth century, an illiterate shoeman -- meanwhile shot by a bunch of other illiterate "people themselves" -- in his destructive march to redesign the city, rebuilt the riverbed on two levels, one for the river and one for water recirculation through the town's sewers, and built the foundation for the so-called "Mill Lake", connected to the river via a dam to control the flow5.

That aside, the lake is surrounded by a pier, where in the evenings the local fauna goes for a walk, running, fishing, the occasional wank in the bushes, and... well, what are these guys up to anyway:

In the northern part of the lake, an island:

Above, the Ducks come from the Trucks -- I heard that on TV, so it must be true! Below, a shot idly taken from under a tree, where the afternoon's blazing sun couldn't reach me.

At twenty meters' distance on the shore there was a guy trying to read a book, while being pestered by an old bum who yammered about some TV starlet or another, and complained about how young girls nowadays keep those fat cunts of theirs in their blue jeans all day long on this hot weather, letting them gather melted cheese, and why don't they let the pussy get some fresh air anyway? Poor idiot had plenty of decades to figure out why the social state sucks: it gives him all that money for nothing, but no chicks for free. And yet he didn't, and why would that be? Would you happen to know?

Above, a bunch of plants from (I can only guess) the Carduus genus, known around the place as "ciulini", widespread in this geographical region, ready to further spread their seeds by way of winds. Below, a willow tree shielding the lens from the sunlight; also, a pair of leftover plastic bottles on the ground, because what, Romanians around these places are orcs.

Above: look ma, I r arteest! Below: moar arteesteec geometry, followed by a coupla more lake shots.

Finally, that damn dam. The writing on that wall pre-dates 1989, which is easy to discern by the average Romanian for orthographic reasons. "River" is cognate with "rivus", which led to "râu", right? So then, why the fuck "â" and not "î"? Because a bunch of wretches known as "the Romanian Academy" imagined themselves the navel of Romanian speaking and writing, is why.

Post-finally, and further downstream: a night pic of a river; and a night pic of a road that leads to a river, crossed by a bridge that leads nowhere in particular. Bonne nuit, Paris d'Orclandie!


  1. Oh, by the way. This week there was a jazz festival organized in ye olde Bucharestian shithole, and on the taxpayer's money, no less. All this after on last Sunday, while taking a similar stroll through the Cișmigiu gardens, I stumbled upon an "international folklore festival", also organized by the local authorities, where one of the headliners were none other than the famous Romanian ethno-blues group Nightlosers. Who -- by the way, if you're still living under the delusion that "nations" are still a thing -- are formed of a German vocalist/guitarist, two Magyars (the violinist and the keyboardist) and two "Romanians": an Ardelean drummer from Cluj and... well, I don't know anything about the bassist to be honest.

    Anyway, this Saturday was the second-to-last day of a jazz festival where this pretty great Norwegian guy Jan Garbarek played the saxophone, and it rained like hell all the afternoon, because why the fuck not. And sure, I went to the concert anyway -- but if I hear anyone blaming this on "global warming" and whatnot, I promise to warm you up with this very nice baseball bat that I have. 

  2. UPB graduates, that is. 

  3. The very same, yes. 

  4. Its name coming from "Regia Monopolurilor Statului", i.e. something along the lines of "The Direction of State Monopolies", which, I'll venture a guess, was built there because the area was one of the more industrialised ones in town at the time. 

  5. So if you happen to live in Bucharest, you now know whom you have to thank for the fact that the town sucks a bit less -- lu' împușcatu', bă nene, bă. And yes, I'm pretty sure that much of the work involved in making this happen is now a lost art, given that "they don't use them for nuthin' anyway". So at some point your children will be forced to reap the fruits of your laziness, and they'll either be smart enough to reinvent the wheel, or they'll die of hunger, poverty, hallucinated options and all that. Yes-yes, all that because you're "tânăr, frumos și liber", because "you just wanted to" give your children a "nice place" to live, not stopping to think for even a moment that the only way to come to have a nice place to live is through sweat, blood and tears. Da, coaie, this is all on you. 

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  1. [...] time going there this decade and the first time I got closer to Istanbul, Antalya or Nicosia than Bucharest. I guess that has to count for something, so let's see how this first trip of mine [...]

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