One of the gypsy barons. The "King" of Romania Florian Cioaba himself.
Last year, the Romanian authorities allowed Florian Cioaba to establish a local gypsy court, where, according to his "laws", the cases of his subjects would be tried.
Fur coat, boots, frock coat, seals - everything is lovely. The muzzle of the face, however, is blackish, but it is washable.
Downright enviable. But that's not the problem. The problem is that I don't have enough faith. True Christian faith. There may be a lot inside, but if you look, you can't see it.
The capital of gypsy millionaires
In Romania, near Bucharest, there is one of the richest cities in the world - the gypsy Buzescu. It contains about 800 houses, each costing from 2 to 30 million dollars. This is Beverly Hills No. 2 - the capital of gypsy millionaires.
The "king" of the Romanian gypsies Florian Cioaba (he inherited the title from his father) has up to 50-80 million euros a year. About 300 families belong to his Koldash clan, and at least half of them have houses worth more than 3 million euros.
The total income of the "king" and his clan is approaching 300-400 million euros per year. It consists of donations from ordinary gypsies to the obshchak (deductions - up to 5-10% of criminal and semi-criminal income), cigarette smuggling from Romania to Western Europe, hotel business and trade.
A similar picture is observed among the gypsy "elite" and other countries of Eastern and Central Europe. Even in poverty-stricken Moldova, the gypsy "baron" Arthur Cerari and his clan have up to 20-40 million euros a year. And in Kosovo, the clan of "Baron" Nedzhmedin Neziri - up to 100 million euros per year (mostly Kosovo gypsies trade in Germany and Austria).
Like most of the rest of the "elite" of Eastern Europe, as well as former USSR, these gypsies deliberately demonstrate luxurious image life, literally bathed in gold (on interior decoration home of the gypsy "king" of Romania Florian Cioaba took up to 55 kg of gold). From their super-incomes, only crumbs fall to the "cattle", and even then - mainly for some dirty deeds. The super-luxury of the “elite” does not arouse indignation among the people subordinate to them: secretly, most of the lower classes dream that someday they will also be able to become the owners of a golden toilet bowl and the “right of the first night”.
The millionaire gypsies of Eastern Europe are the perfect example for libertarians. They achieved everything themselves, without the help of the state. They don't pay taxes, but they don't demand anything from the government either. They live in complete freedom - from the prejudices of marriage laws, with weapons, etc. “The Gypsy Shrugged” is what Ayn Rand would probably call her book about ideal life libertarian.
The October issue of National Geographic magazine tells about the life of millionaire gypsies in their world capital - the Romanian city of Buzescu. This locality located 80 km southwest of Bucharest. Its population is 5 thousand people. About 800 houses have been built in Buzescu, each costing between $2 million and $30 million. In general, the value of all this real estate of gypsy millionaires is estimated at 4 billion dollars.
Like their counterparts from the Russian Rublyovka, the Buzescu gypsies do not pay any taxes to the state, formally considered unemployed or owners of firms with a zero balance. There is, however, one exception - their villas are considered unfinished, and therefore are subject to a small property tax, usually 200-300 euros per year.
One of these gypsy millionaires named Parachiv tells how he became rich. After the establishment of capitalism in Romania in 1989, the main industry of enterprising gypsies was the purchase of ferrous and non-ferrous metals (it is interesting that the same accumulation of primary capital was noted in Russia). “You had to be a fool not to build yourself 5 villas after the 1989 Revolution!” says one of the millionaires named Nikolai Marin.
Well, then the gypsies who made their capital went into other businesses, for example, smuggling cigarettes to the rich countries of the European Union.
As in Russia, the first thing the nouveaux riches began was the over-consumption shown. Expensive cars, palaces, gold. But there is one difference between gypsy millionaires and Russian rich people - today they are pumping money not from their own country, but from rich European states. Gypsy-Romanian nouveaux riches make money in France, Italy, Spain. And these capitals are invested in their homeland - in Romania. While the Russian nouveau riche, on the contrary, prefer to pump money out of Russia and invest it in palaces in London or on the Cote d'Azur.
Gypsies-millionaires from the Romanian Buzesco work on a rotational basis: 3-4 months in Western Europe, then for a couple of weeks home (or forced return for weddings, funerals, christenings of relatives and friends). Therefore, most of the palaces in this town are filled with children, old people and women.
One more thing is interesting. Most of the relatives of the rich remain faithful traditional crafts. Many of them raise pigs, poultry and horses in the backyard of palaces, women sew patchwork quilts, old men are engaged in chasing and tinning copper utensils.
The Interpreter's Blog presents photos of the life of gypsy millionaires in Buzesco, Romania, not only from National Geographic, but also from photographer Sebastian Cuvelle:
Recently, I talked about how the poorest gypsies live in Romania - we visited on the outskirts of Bucharest, went into several entrances and apartments and saw open poverty - people live 7-8 people in one-window apartments with an area of 12-14 meters and do not see a gap in life, interrupted by episodic earnings.
However, far from all gypsies in Romania are so poor - among the gypsies there is a " middle class", as well as their millionaires. It so happened that gypsy millionaires like to settle in Buzescu - this is a small town 80 kilometers southwest of, the main street of which is built up with "palaces" of rich gypsies - by the way, the cost of each building is from 2 to 30 or more million dollars.
Gypsy palaces are not scattered around the city, but are concentrated on one street and several adjoining streets. The view of the street is amazing - on small plots of several acres in size, huge cottages are spread out, almost the size of an entire plot. Appearance At the same time, the palaces are very peculiar - it perfectly reflects what is commonly called the "gypsy style" - in one building a variety of architectural attacks can be combined, brought together with one goal - to show everyone how rich and influential the owner of the house is.
So, today we will walk around Buzesque and see what the palaces of gypsy millionaires look like.
02. We drive into the "gypsy quarter" Buzescu - already at the very beginning of the street we are met by such a palace - for some reason it is not finished, the construction is frozen. Also, there is no fence around the building - this indicates that the house is non-residential. Further we will still see non-residential buildings, but for now we just go further.
03. We are driving forward - quarters of inhabited palaces, built quite a long time ago, already begin here. In general, rich gypsies began to build more houses in Buzescu about 20 years ago, in the mid-nineties. Many rich people, having become even richer, demolished old cottages and built new houses, even bigger and more luxurious than before.
04. None of the "palaces" lends itself to a clear stylistic definition - most often in each building, from 2 to 10 are mixed architectural styles. On the principle of "richer, brighter, pretentious." However, all the buildings still have something in common - all the buildings are related by their gigantic size, and the gypsies are also very fond of turrets and open gallery balconies.
05. Turrets are the most common different forms and sizes. There are, for example, such faceted ones, very reminiscent of the Romanian architecture of a hundred years ago:
06. Most often, the "palace" occupies a whole site. If you look from above, the site will look like this - a fence, then a right-of-way 2-4 meters behind the fence (so that you can walk around the site), and the rest of the space is occupied by a building.
07. In some projects, even the fence itself is integrated directly into the building - so as not to lose "valuable space". Here, for example, is a house that literally occupies the entire site - the outer fence here is part of the first floor.
08. If the site itself is small and does not allow building a house of great length and width, then the house will be "stretched" in height, having built at least 4 floors and even with tall towers.
Let everyone see that the life of the owner of the house was a success.
09. Elements" rich life"in the sense that the gypsies imagine it can also be seen in the decoration / decoration. Here, for example, the terrace on the second floor is decorated with stars that most likely glow in dark time days:
10. And here, on the ceiling of the balcony, there is a whole luminous dollar sign, this is not for you!
11. And this house has railings made of stainless steel bent pipes, as well as light bulbs hanging on wires from balconies - the wires are mounted directly into the stove. How can a poor person afford such a thing?
12. The streets of the gypsy quarter in Buzescu look like this. Sometimes there are windows and doors only on those sides of the houses that face the street - this is done due to very dense buildings; some residents do not want to look out the windows to each other, preferring to isolate themselves from the neighbor's house with a blank wall.
13. And this is what the local fleet looks like.
14. Roads and others" public spaces"in the gypsy quarter they look very decent - there is good asphalt, normal sidewalks, benches along the road, there are high-quality and beautiful stormwater:
15. Cyclists ride on the roads)
16. However, good quality the road touches only the main street - it is worth moving away from main road literally a hundred meters into the depths of the block, as the carriage turns into a pumpkin, all the glamor and brilliance ends, revealing an unsightly primer and modest houses of local residents.
Well, this is already progress - here locals set up at least a few square meters around your home, the "comfort zone" ends just outside the apartment doors.
17. Apparently, the sites at the intersections are the most expensive - for some reason, it is on them that the largest and most expensive buildings are located:
18. Here is another intersection with a house in the entire area. Apparently, according to gypsy concepts - if the house is visible to as many people as possible (and at the intersection such a view is better than just on the street), then the plot should be more expensive. The richest and most influential are built at the crossroads. You may have doubts that this is the house of a rich person?
19. You ask how and what do the gypsies who built such huge houses earn? No one will give you an exact answer. Eat " official version", which says that the gypsies make very good money on the trade in non-ferrous metals, and the "classic" gold and silver are far from the first places in circulation.
20. Most of the gypsies in Buzescu belong to a group called "calderas", which translates as "coppers". In the eighties, these gypsies traded copper equipment for brandy factories, and also collected scrap metal.
21. After the Ceausescu regime fell in Romania, the Calderas families went all over Eastern Europe to collect non-ferrous metals from all abandoned plants and factories, making a lot of money on the resale of metal.
22. Closer to the mid-nineties, the first gypsy mansions began to appear in Buzescu. At first, these were rather modest houses by today's standards - some of them can still be seen on the streets:
23. And in the noughties, a full-scale "construction boom" began, as a result of which all these mansions appeared.
24. By the way, not all residents of Buzescu are rich. Around the "gypsy quarter" live ordinary locals doing ordinary rural work.
25. On the main street of the gypsy quarter, you can see the following signs prohibiting cattle driving:
26. Cows have to be driven along the side streets - at breakfast, gypsy millionaires can contemplate this picture:
27. More palaces:
29. Recreation area on the site:
30. Truck brought firewood:
31. This is how dreams come true!
32. There are also abandoned unfinished houses in Buzescu. They are adjacent to a completely inhabited building:
33. They stand in the form of a whole architectural cluster:
34. Pompous stairs lead inside. Why were the houses never completed? I don’t know, there can be a lot of reasons - from the banal ruin of the owner to moving to another country or death.
35. We go into one of the unfinished buildings. Do you know what strikes you the most here? Emptiness. Actually, most space is occupied by a huge "hall" extending to all floors.
36. There are several small rooms around the perimeter, but most of the building is empty. From the inside, the palace resembles a soap bubble.
37. Living rooms look like this:
38. Here, for some reason, they decided to lay a large arched window, leaving only a small opening.
39. And here was some kind of change house of builders. Bags of cement still hope for something, but my intuition tells me that the house will never be completed.
40. Here is a gypsy village.
41. Successful people live here.
For centuries, the attitude towards the gypsy people was very contradictory, and their way of life has always caused at least bewilderment and misunderstanding among everyone. While most people associate gypsies with thieves and beggars, the gypsy elite is literally immersed in gold and riches. To date, some gypsies continue to lead a nomadic lifestyle, constantly on the road, and some have chosen a settled, stable life, which, by the way, does not prevent them from staying in a separate group and in no way assimilate with the rest of society. TravelAsk presents 20 bright and eloquent photographs that fully demonstrate the features of the life, life and culture of the Roma people.
Scavenger City
gypsy quarter
When there is a lot of garbage, it is removed.
gypsy houses
The houses of rich gypsies have their own style.
Residence of a gypsy baron in Moldova
Local residents even build copies of the world famous monuments architecture.
Interior decoration of houses
The interior decoration of the palaces matches the appearance.
Housing...
But such housing can hardly be called a house. Author of the photo: Maxim Bespalov.
Golden BMW
The chic of gypsy majors.
Vehicle
And a simple gypsy needs one horsepower.
Gypsy baron
Gold from gypsy jewelry could feed hundreds of ordinary gypsies for a long time.
Gypsy "King" of Romania
The most influential and respected baron.
"Golden youth
Life is full of luxury surrounded by gold and jewels.
Roma
A gypsy family shovels sawdust, which they use to heat the house. Author of the photo: Maxim Bespalov.
Parents and children
Mom and children.
We live in mud and without roads
Miner
Sleepers are also firewood.
Baroness
Not every queen can afford so much gold. Author of the photo: Maxim Bespalov.
A typical representative of the gypsy "elite"
Clothing and jewelry should be as rich as possible.
Gypsy wedding
A gypsy wedding is a closed ceremony. Outsiders are not invited to the party.
gypsy gay wedding
The fun ended in a mass brawl, because of a drunken guest who wanted to know what the bride had under her skirt.
Bride's dress
A chic outfit due to the large amount of gold weighs more than ten kilograms.
Next, we want to show you the gypsy village of Buzescu, which is located 80 km from the capital of Romania, Bucharest. In this small town of only 5,000 people, you can meet a large number of luxurious houses, striking with their architecture and unusual solutions. Some houses surprise with their strangeness, what all this strangeness is, you will understand when you look at this post.
Here are the words of the author:
Have you seen a stainless steel fence? The one that glitters in the photo?
Gypsy,
who owned a "firm" for the robbery of copper extracted on European railways, also dreamed of such a thing and stole, it turns out, for the sake of a saint, namely,
home in their home country. The employees of his "firm", who received 50 euros for a sortie, were given a suspended sentence, and Dan Julien, as the leader, was sentenced to 4 years in prison and a fine of 70,000 euros. This very house should go to pay this fine.
This is the main street of the village.
There is a competition here - whoever has a taller and fancier house is cooler.
The architecture shows that the gypsies love the Belle Epoque style.
The people on the streets of the village are rare, since the majority of the population spends a lot of time in Western Europe on earnings.
But some residents prefer the antique style - with porticos.
Roofs upholstered in metal compete with the sophistication of forms.
Here is the forged roof of one of the houses in the previous photo close-up. Probably stainless steel too.
When the house stands on the outskirts of the village, that is, in a less prestigious place, its owner tries to take the number of storeys.
Where do you get a view of this type of fabulous town)))
There are many unfinished houses among these houses - their owners still earned enough to complete them.
Limousines - component braggadocio of the inhabitants of the village.
Of course, there is no dispute about tastes.
The owners of these houses declare their spiritual values in decorative decoration.
Some houses have fences that end with pins of pure silver!
At the same time, many members of the families living in these "villas" continue to do traditional work and ride a horse-drawn cart.
This house is modeled after the courthouse.
His owner is a drug dealer. When he was tried, he swore that if he was not convicted, he would build a house in Buzesco in the style of a courthouse.
As you can see, he got ripped off.
Gypsy children usually study little. Girls get married early, and boys get used to the real "business".
But the owners of pompous pitchforks do not follow the backyards of their village.
The same toilets on the streets.
And they also keep their old houses. Often their relatives simply do not want to move to "palaces" because they do not feel comfortable there.
The interior of one of the houses.
If we abstract from the ostentatious attributes of spiritual values, the interior of these houses, like their facades, also imitates villas from Hollywood films.
The richest gypsy weddings Now it doesn't sound like it used to. Modern Gypsies degenerate and shrink financially. Less and less often you will see a truly rich gypsy wedding in Russia. In Romania, Slovenia and some other countries of Eastern Europe there are still rich gypsy families left, and in our country they are literally dying out.
In the USSR, the gypsies felt at ease, in the 1990s they also found a place for themselves under the sun, and then the gypsies simply did not fit into the new economic realities. Now less and less often you meet a rich gypsy with a huge belly, respectively, weddings are becoming more modest. But I managed to visit the richest and most luxurious gypsy weddings of the 1990s. I was then quite a few years old, but this memory did not lose its brightness.
So, the richest gypsy weddings. Why do gypsies want to flaunt their wealth at all, and where does their love for gold come from?
Gypsies have long loved and valued gold, it has a sacred meaning for them. In addition, it so happened that it was very convenient for the gypsies to keep their savings in gold. Previously, many gypsies constantly traveled from city to village, from village to city, they traded in various trades, fortune-telling, theater and circus performances, fraud and theft.
With such a life, gold was the most convenient asset. Gold is easy to wear, easy to hide and bury, because gold is not afraid of rain, snow, cold and time. Therefore, they have different traditions associated with gold. For example, the son had to double the gold left to him by his father.
Gypsies wore a variety of items, sometimes wearing 3-5 gold chains, massive earrings,. At the same time, heavier items could be hidden under clothing. We all have repeatedly seen very fat gypsies with a big belly. Gypsies love to eat, they have a whole cult of food, but in addition to their own volumes, some gypsies wear a wide belt made of dense fabric under their clothes.
This belt plays the role of a bag, it has several fastened valves where you can hide gold. Gypsies stuff their belts with coins, gold chains, and sometimes gold orders. I know of a case where a gypsy woman wore about 8 kilograms of gold in her belt.
This is the reason for the love of gold. If we talk about vanity and flaunting wealth, we can note the following - gypsies could rarely boast of high cultural development, serious knowledge even education. Back in the 1990s, I met adult gypsies who had difficulty writing and reading!
The way of life of the gypsies and the environment did not require them to strive for science, real art and culture. Rare gypsies could show off their artistic talents and some skills in divination and magic. But human nature is such that most people have something to be proud of, and sometimes boast about. Therefore, they were proud of their wealth, which was primarily expressed in gold and other valuables.
It is from here that the richest gypsy weddings originate. Wealthy gypsy families strove to intermarry, they made very magnificent bright weddings. And the poorer gypsies were jealous and also sought to demonstrate their success.
During a gypsy wedding, it is customary to give rich gifts. Today it is difficult to surprise with golden decorations and a plentiful table, but earlier it made a vivid impression. I remember very well the richest gypsy wedding that I managed to attend.
The tables were full of various foods. Gypsies are very fond of whole-baked piglets, rabbits, smoked turkeys, jellied beluga meat and sturgeon, which is served in basins at a wedding. vegetable salads they do not respect, preferring fatter, more satisfying food.
An important component of a rich gypsy wedding is the cake. Gypsies are very fond of huge cakes, which can sometimes be one and a half meters in diameter and two meters high!
Now on the Internet there are stories about expensive wedding dresses of gypsy brides. Somewhere they even say that some brides choose a dress from ELIE SAAB. These are isolated cases. Basically, gypsies buy just a white wedding dress with a fluffy skirt and a richly decorated bodice - lace, pearls, sequins, beads.
The main luxury of a gypsy bride is jewelry. She is dressed up in diamond earrings, chains, necklaces and necklaces, sometimes all at once. In some cases, a golden crown with different gems is put on the bride's head. Gypsies do not really like platinum, because it resembles silver or even steel, and these metals are not respected by gypsies.
Sometimes to wedding dress large banknotes can be attached. This phenomenon clearly demonstrates that the gypsies do not particularly think about the style and aesthetic component of the wedding attire.
Bride covered in large bills, looks not rich at all, but strange and funny. If banknotes too much, they are somewhat reminiscent of torn pieces toilet paper, and it looks especially funny, given the large volumes of gypsy brides.
In some cases, the bride may change wedding dresses putting on the most official part of the celebration fluffy dress and then change into something lighter and more comfortable. But in any case, the beauty and wealth of the gypsy bride is made up of jewelry.
Gold jewelry, diamond jewelry and coins. Gypsies are very fond of gold coins, often counterfeit. They may not hide the fact that the coins are fake, especially if they know that you cannot be fooled. Coins are made from real gold, thus, they kind of legalize gold dust and gold nuggets. Some coins have a fineness of 900, but most often they are 750 or even lower.
The most favorite coin is the golden ducat. These coins are very beautiful and large in diameter, but thin, so they are easy to make. It is these coins that often fly under the feet of the bride and groom at the wedding.
A rain of gold coins and banknotes is an indispensable part of a rich gypsy wedding. A rain of coins is given a sacred meaning and they even believe that it will certainly help build prosperity in future family.
In general, a gypsy wedding is a celebration of vanity and a show of imaginary wealth. Even the very poor gypsy families go out of their way to demonstrate their wealth and large amounts of gold. Therefore, there is a lot of gold at gypsy weddings, sometimes in products of terrible quality, and sometimes completely fake.
The second and final side of the gypsy gold
In addition to the gypsy wedding, gold glitters and flies on another important event, at the funeral. It is there that the gypsy can shine to the fullest. If you give a completely fake gold jewelry during a wedding, it will probably quickly open up and be remembered over time.
At a funeral, everything is much simpler, there they give gold to the dead, throwing it into the coffin and grave. All gypsies, in addition to real gold, have gilded jewelry and coins that are made in such a way that they need to be seriously washed down and only then dripped with acid in order to understand the true essence of the metal.
It is precisely such “golden” chains and coins that are most often thrown into the grave, because the deceased is afterlife quite intangible values will be required. I know this from the gypsies themselves, as well as from one remarkable case.
In the early 2000s, they decided to earn extra money, they heard that the gypsies were buried with a lot of gold. The guys decided to dig up the grave of a very rich gypsy and went to the cemetery at night!
But not everything is so simple. Rich gypsies are not buried in a simple grave, they dig a large hole for them, line them with bricks, then put a coffin with jewelry and cover it with a concrete slab. A monument is placed on top, concrete is poured and everything is lined with marble or granite.
Gopniks dug a whole underground passage on the side of the grave in one night, thanks to which they were able to penetrate the tomb full of jewels. Then they tried to sell these treasures. In some places they were sent away, somewhere they managed to sell. But in the end, they were very quickly found for these things, and they were found not by representatives of the law, but by the gypsies themselves. According to the story of one gypsy, the fate of the gopniks turned out to be very sad.
Now you know the main reasons why gypsies love gold, and why they love to show off their wealth. That is why they have always strived to make the richest gypsy weddings. But the world is changing, now the life of the gypsies is much more difficult and they have less and less gold ...
