Bucharest In Your Pocket

Bucharest In Your Pocket, which has been guiding foreign tourists around the Romanian capital since May 1999, is celebrating its birthday this year with a collection of anniversary postcards, handwritten and mailed all around the world: #IGotAPostcardFromBucharest.

This May, Bucharest In Your Pocket (BIYP) will be on the city’s streets looking for people to write 100 postcards, complete with handwritten thoughts and an address, so that they can be sent all over the world. An anniversary campaign launched online and delivered by mail.

“Our guide was first published 19 years ago,” said Razvan Samosca, general manager of Bucharest In Your Pocket, who has been on board since the very first edition. “Since then, the more than 100 editions of Bucharest In Your Pocket which we have published have captured the development of the Romanian capital and guided both the foreign tourists and expats who have reached Bucharest.”

Bucharest of 1999 was an unknown destination, at the border of civilized Europe and it offered few options for travelers. Back then people were still sending postcards and the internet was an exotic concept for many of us. The idea of a guide that would reflect the urban realities of those times was brought to Romania by a local from from Brasov and his partner from London. It was well received by people living in Bucharest who were eager to welcome hordes of foreign tourists, although back at the beginning there were nothing like the numbers of visitors we see today. BIYP has since then been an objective witness to the evolution and metamorphosis of Bucharest into a unique, popular destination.