Romania | London

I went last weekend to Saint Dunstans in the West - a church on Fleet Street - to take a photo of its statue of Elizabeth I. I've read that it is the oldest outdoor statue in London, which is pretty impressive.

While there, I looked inside and found some kind of baptism ceremony happening.

There were signs outside the church advertising Romanian church services, so I'm assuming it was a Romanian tradition.

Around 30 people were gathered in front of the altar, dressed up in bright colours: lots of green and yellow. Some of the women wore scarves as veils. One man carried a candle with a large lacy pink pompom attached.

Three priests recited prayers and hymns. One priest then cut some hair from the babies' heads after which the babies were presented  in front of religious paintings. Proud parents cooed, filmed and took photos.

After the short ceremony, a large silver baptism font and some religious icon paintings were taken away while everyone drank fizzy wine from paper cups.

During the ceremony, a man arrived - quite clearly a tourist. He took a photo of the ceremony. I hope he is a foreign tourist, and goes back home telling everyone that this is what happens in London, England. For it is. Behind doors - open and closed - there are communities coming together in so many fascinating ways.

Hand-drawn maps of Poland by Renata and Romania by Mario

I haven't asked people to draw maps for me for quite some time, but my project to re-draw a map of Europe is still definitely going.

I met Mario from Romania at a party a few weeks ago, and asked him to draw this map. I also told him that his country may win Eurovision this year. He was quite excited about this.



Several months ago, I asked my Austrian boyfriend to ask his Polish cousins to draw a map of Poland - so here's Renata's map of Poland.



I'm now more than half-way through my quest to collect a map for every country in Europe - but I still have great swathes of central and Eastern Europe to find.

Fotbal! Football with London's Romanian fans

Yet another team I'm supporting loses. Last night, it was the Romanians. I went to a Romanian restaurant at 32 Old Bailey. The restaurant carefully segregated eating customers and drinking customers.

Happily for me, I was drinking next to Gloria & Leonard (like Leonardo with no 'o'). Gloria was not best pleased about the price of the beer, so went out and bought cans to drink from.

Gloria was a hoot, with a racuous giggle. At first, she declared she didn't care about the match. 'Let the king be the king', she said (I don't know either). Then, it turned out that she was a decathlete champion and crazy about sport.

Both came from Transylvania, and told me stories about Dracula and his castle (it's fake). And how in the 1980s, 1 million Germans lived in that part of Romania.

The Romanian fans were happily supporting Romania, but with the first goal against them, became fatalistic and gave up. One man stormed out immediately after both goals, fag in hand, slamming the door both times. Leonard started talking about not finding something in a google search - it was like he was announcing a funeral.

Happily, just then, comedy moment of the evening happened: the dessert trolley was wheeled around. You don't get that at Old Trafford.


So, in the end, the Romanians were out, but Gloria went off laughing, and so did I as finally, finally a foreign fan talked to me!

Place Quote: Gypsies & Communism

'Most Gypsies liked communism because it gave them houses, paid them to have children,' adds Henry, who grew up in East Germany. 'They don't see the faults in the communist system as we do. Censorship never affected them as they had no desire to read Western literature or talk of politics. And when the revolution came Gypsies were the first to lose their jobs in the factories'.

• Garth Cartwright, Princes amongst men, p.209

Tokyo musicians, Swedish pastoral, Romanian river

This week, I saw three exhibitions:

• Marco Bohr's photographs of Tokyo riverside musicians at Mummery & Schnell
• Sigrid Holmwood's paintings of Swedish peasant life at Annely Juda
• Serban Savu's paintings of contemporary Romanian life at FA Projects

Marco Bohr's photographs of Tokyo show musicians on the banks of the Tamagawa river. The open spaces are the opposite of the modern, neon image of Tokyo. With usual Japanese respect, the musicians practise their music on the river banks, rather than disturb their neighbours who are so close due to Tokyo's density.


Sigrid Holwood's paintings shine with colour: neon yellows, fluorescent oranges and greens. The colour seems at odds with the subject: Swedish rural landscapes and scenes of peasant life. The paintings are alluring - my favourites were the landscapes. I saw them glowing with atmosphere. The colours express the joys of being in the landscape.

The paintings of humans, however, play with reality - many of them were painted in folk museums, so their inauthentic colours match the inauthentic nature of the scenes.

Most of Serban Savu's work saddened me: painted from a distance, and with dull, oppressive colours. They show people on the banks of a river in Romania. The painting above seems to sum this up: the scene looks very jolly, a family or group enjoying a day by the river, a holiday. But the colours have no fun. Perhaps this is to suggest that social life in Romania oppresse, but I found this to be sombre, sad, depressing.