Conferences

On Sunday, May 19th, 2019, from 11.00 a.m., in the Tapestry Hall, Gheorghe Florescu shall hold the conference on Our DailyCoffee and Dissent.

About the conference

The great revolutions of mankind were born after coffee talks. The aromatic beverage puts the mind on the move, and progress is born from the ensuing conversations. History records countless examples in this respect.

How did a good cup of coffee (tediously procured) help the Romanians to withstand socialism and how does quality coffee benefit the consumer nowadays?

Gheorghe Florescu shall respond to all of this at a conference on May 19th, 2019, where spectators shall be able to savour one of the world's finest coffees, Kenya Top Peaberry.

About Gheorghe Florescu

Gheorghe Florescu was born on May 8th, 1944, during an Anglo-American bombing in Bucharest. At the age of eight, after the arrest of his father, a former state security detective, he began to work as a shop boy, then as the help of his uncle Olten who sold in Vitan Square. He graduated from high school, but he does not think he has the necessary conditions to follow the Faculty of History, as he would have liked. He marries and, after completing the military service, engages in state trade. From 1964 to 1971, he goes through all the operative functions of wholesale trade (receiver-distributor, dispatcher, head of department of the Pandu DelicatessenWarehouse within the Import Agency). In March 1971, he took over from his mentor, the Armenian cafe owner Avedis Carabelaian, the coffee and sweets shop from 10 Hristo Botev Blvd. Gradually, this place became a true landmark of the capital’s artistic bohemian society. Here, he hosted great personalities of the literary, artistic and medical life, as well as important figures from Justice, Militia and Security. On March 4th, 1977, the block of 10 Hristo Botev collapsed, but, by extraordinary luck, he escaped alive. In the 1980s, the struggle to supply his new store in 6 Sfintii Street was extremely risky. In April 1985, he was arrested and sentenced to 11 years in prison. Released on parole in 1988, he engaged again in commerce. He participated in the Romanian Revolution, then in the «University Square phenomenon» as a personal driver to American journalists. In October 1990, he suffered a stroke, which left him with a right side hemiparesis. He resurfaces to write with his left hand, and in 2007, after four years of intense work, he manages to finish the memorial book Confessions of a Coffee Lover. A volume in which the author amazes us with surprising revelations, shrouded in the flavour of coffee and centered on the reality of the last years of the Ceausescu regime, suffocatingly besieged by endless queues, speculation and all sorts of arrangements.

Translated by Simona Nichiteanu