The city of Bucharest just added a new hipster paradise, is a new Cărturești book store where one can just hang and feel cool. In the first days after its opening the place was swarming with the curious.

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This week the building for the National Library opened in Bucharest, it has a long story: the construction started back under the communist regime and it was supposed to be ready by 1990, but the 1989 revolution put a pause (or even a stop) on many of those Communist building plans, for a lot of reasons, some more legitimate, some less.
Time passed the the almost ready building started to degrade, there were rumours some greedy people got hold of it and will change its destination, the government lacks the money for for big investments, the country (and the world’s) economy is in really bad shape…
But at least the building is done, it was opened and is used, as initially intended, for the National Library. Is even better: it won’t be that ugly building that was originally projected, now it has steel, more glass and lights, is looking like a modern building.
This week was the official opening, a good opportunity to take a few pictures. Also a good time to learn is not all roses: they have a severe lack of funds, employ only about a quarter of needed people, so the working hours are severely affected, not all the halls are open yet, not all the archive was moved yet… they still have more work to do and an accute need for funding.

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