The Diplomat Bucharest

Ambassador Thanos Dendoulis welcomed fellow diplomats and leading businessmen to the National Opera to celebrate 186 years since the Greek revolution freed the Mediterranean country from Ottoman ruling. Guests were enchanted by a concert from leading figure in music, Yannis Markopoulos.

Dutch Ambassador Jaap Werner and secretary general at the Culture Ministry, Virgil Nitulescu, kicked off the bilateral cultural partnership between the Netherlands and Romania, promising dance, sound, vision and performance art extravaganzas.

With its nation firmly poised to take advantage of the Romanian real estate market, Ireland celebrated St Patrick’s Day at the Novotel on Calea Victoriei, with Ambassador Padraic Craddock presenting guests with as much Guinness and stew as they could handle.

More than 2,000 came to witness BMW’s local launch of new models at its Baneasa headquarters, including the 3 series cabriolet and the X5. Kicking off the event was Romania’s football deity Gica Hagi, who gave out autographs to the BMW fans.

With the United Nations shifting its focus to promote further equal rights for women, UN Ambassador Soknan Han Jung greeted guests such as Environment Minister Sulfina Barbu to celebrate women’s day at the ballet, where she paid tribute to veteran ballerina Ileana Iliescu.

Cypriots have made their way onto the Romanian banking market, with last month seeing the official launch of Bank of Cyprus operations locally. A connoisseur of Romania’s financial circles, Eleftherious Ioannou (who used to lead Alpha Bank operations in Romania) now returned as chairman of the board of directors of Bank of Cyprus.

Studying up: ABN Amro Romania announced during an official award ceremony the completion of the fourth edition of the ABN Amro European Values Program, promoting the banking institutional culture. During this event, 48 students of the Faculty of International Economic Relations received the Graduation Diploma for Banking Culture and the Business Conduct course.

“All that is in the world is love and knowledge is nothing but gossip,” said 16th century Azeri-Turk poet Muhammed Fuzuli. Spreading his word were Ambassadors of Turkey and Azerbaidjan, Ahmed Okcun and Edgar Hasanov, at the launch of the poet’s ‘Leyli and Mejnun’, now in Romanian.

Czech Ambassador Petr Dokladal kick-started the year with a special meeting of Czech business leaders at his residence in Bucharest. The get together prepared the visit of Premysl Sobotka, the president of the Czech Senate and the special seminar dubbed ‘Czech experience after EU entry’.