Once everything rezzed, the sim showed a variety of places. There were some generic-looking places that could be seen in many other places in Second Life, such as the photo studio, but among them stood some relaxing park and garden areas and some beautiful examples of architecture.
While looking the sim over, I ran into a lady: LaraCroft Akula, “I live very close to this square in real life, and almost every day pass through it. The fun part is that sometimes I feel like I am in Second Life while being there in real life.” She owned and built the sim, running it with the help of a team of volunteers, “This project had started as my personal idea, and with a very precise goal.” She had built the sim to both inform others about the city, “it can be considered a non-conventional country branding project,” and to serve as a meeting place for Second Life’s Romanian residents.Lara offered to show me around the sim, starting with a link to a film of how the real-life location of the place looked like: Piata Revolutei, or Revolution Square (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOx7MxZmWVE ), built around 1720 in real life. She took me to a nice artistically-designed building to the east part of the sim, “The Romanian Atheneum, from my point of view the most beautiful building in the old city center. It is a concert hall in real life. Here in Second Life, we turned it into an exhibit.” Going inside, there were numerous old black & white photographs up on display, the earliest from between the World Wars when Bucharest was called “Little Paris” by some, “What I very much like is the fact that you get three perspectives: 1, history - a real life building you see in pictures, how it looked in the past. 2, present - the real-life building in recent pictures. 3, all this in a virtual world. Standing actually inside the replica of the building in Second Life, it's an interesting way to look at things ... “ Besides the door was a book of Bucharest of which one could take a copy for free.
To the north was the Athene Palace hotel, “Now a Hilton hotel. This hotel was a very important place during the World Wars. ... here was the general place for journalists. They were gathering here and sending news about the war, in the so called ‘English bar.’ ... Now it is renovated - it's a Hilton Hotel and still has a very eclectic style. Inside there is still the English Bar. ... What we did in Second Life was to preserve the exterior and the look and feel of the buildings, but to use the internal spaces in such a way they would be relevant for the SL user. Therefore, the hotel in real life has restaurants and bars, we turned it into a shopping gallery in Second Life. ... restaurants and bars are not so much fun for the SL user.”To the south was the National Library, “It burned out during the Revolution in 1989 when we got rid of Communism, or at least we thought we got rid of it.” The building had a new purpose in the sim, “We decided to have in there tutorials for beginners, and a building school. The tutorials are in the Romanian language to help them a bit at the beginning. The building school (is) for new users and those who really want to learn.”
To the west is the National Museum of Art, “It was formerly The Royal Palace and turned into a museum some time after the Second World War.” Lara explained that the Museum’s virtual counterpart showed some of the more noteworthy paintings of Romanian artists, “and we are planning to feature also some Romanian artists that do various things in Second Life.” She went on to say they contacted the real museum and suggested some joint projects, “they refused, saying something like, ‘ we are not interested in such kind of promotion.’ They didn’t understand Second Life. ... they simply can't understand what we are doing here. I showed them pics and simulations.” Lara told me that the person she was talking to was hired for “Internet stuff,” which might not have been a good sign. The museum did have a variety of paintings from artists such as Ioan Andreescu and Stefan Luchian.Lara told me that there was an auditorium under construction for meetings later on. For now, the social area was a small club. She told me the sim’s music was that of Romania’s most popular radio station KISS FM, saying they had a partnership with then, and had done a contest with them during the summer months, “we do have a lot of partnerships with traditional media so we are getting a good exposure. ... we have with some magazines, for example we are now running a contest with Cosmopolitan magazine ... Another important thing is ... we got 2 international prizes for this project. Two Golden World Awards by IPRA, International Public Relations Association. And it was the only project that got two Golden awards this year in that competition.”
Running into a small group of Romanians at the small dance area, Lara introduced me, and talk turned to Romania’s history, from Dracula, to a German prince asked to take the Romanian throne who knew so little about the country he supposedly needed to be shown on a globe where the country was, to Communist rule and life after the 1989 Revolution, “Point is that for us history has changed a lot. We, some of the people you see here, we were born during communism times. ... Now, we crossed a period of change, when we theoretically passed from communism to so-called capitalism. And the disappointment is pretty big. That's mainly because, and please take this as a personal opinion, mainly because the former communists still remained. They are still leading the country, just that they changed appearance. Now they pretend to be capitalists.”
She thought the problem was more than the politicians, “What I see more of an actual problem rather than politics is the general way of thinking and attitude of average people. ... During communism we were always told - one for all, all for one.. that was the main principle of communism, right? We got so much fed with that ... we (thought we) were too much equal and we were dreaming (of) capitalism, to be able to choose what car you have, what clothes you wear, etc. ... after the fall of communism, people refused anymore to think ‘one for all,’ but each for his own. Now this can be okay ‘till a certain point. (But taken too far), we care too much of his/her own and don't care at all about us as a mass. And this is what politics is exploiting. We need to find a balance, to be able to react socially to certain things.”
“And you may laugh, but what we are trying to do here in a virtual world is exactly this. Learn to react. It's a practice that will eventually change these young people, if they play it like a game. It will have a resonance in real-life too. Reaction meaning, whenever you see a behaviour that is not okay, you should react. Don't turn your back and don't go away. Imagine this: you are 18-20 years old, little values, as what you see on TV is crap, what you learn at school is not interesting. You come to Second Life to have fun. And you have, playing (it) like a game.” Lara felt that after a little while, most would get the hint certain behaviors were not appreciated, and some actions were expected, “of course, some will never learn, and some don't need (to) because they already have those values.”
“What I saw in these months since opening this place, I saw an incredible amount of people proud of their own orgin. Something that you wont' see so often in real life. And I saw a lot of change too, as a matter of fact much sooner then I expected. Consider that this is a project dedicated to the community. The buildings are nice to see but, if there were no people the buildings don't (matter) much. The buildings are just to give a familiar environment. The most important (thing) is the community. And we bet on this, also we bet on a smaller but high quality community of people. Trying to create a better Romania here, together with the people.” Lara thought there were close to ten thousand Romanians with active Second Life accounts.
The entry point to the sim is at Virtual Bucharest (130, 180, 21).
“What we are doing here extensively is to have a community of good people, nice, honest, and most of all PROUD of their country.”
Bixyl Shuftan
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