I found this old picture made with a crappy camera… I may not look exactly like it now, but that’s how I feel inside, so here is a season greetings from the Evil Santa: “choke on your Festivus, have a bloody Xmas and a fucking New Year!”
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For a while we practically moved the headquarter of the FLOSS meetings at Curtea Berarilor (Brewer’s Court) in Bucharest and since then I wanted to take a photo with their most popular (and a modern Romanian tradition) menu: mici, fries, mustard, pickles and, of course, plenty of beer. Every time people were hungry and I missed the opportunity. Until now…
Or in other words: I am Mitica 🙂
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Leaving the tourism fair I felt a bit hungry and as I was hurrying to another fair (photos from the weddings fair to be posted later) I stopped and tried some sarmale maramureșene (sarmale from Maramures) with high hopes, it was quite a while since I had some sarmale I really liked.
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In addition to taking photos at the Marțișor Fair at the Peasant Museum (Muzeul Țăranului Român, MTR) I also dis a short, crappy, video:
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Even if I think Mărțișor if a shitty useless and overcommercialized tradition, every year I go shooting, as the opportunity is too good to pass. This year the Peasant Museum held again a big fair, but the weather today was really uncooperative: clouds, rain, cold. Still, people were on duty.
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Winter strikes back just when I though all is over: a lot of snow and so cold that even the stones are breaking (this morning the thermometer was showing -16°C, supposedly over night it was even colder). So I planned to take advantage of the winter while is still possible, with a week-end photoshot, no matter the cold.
Saturday it was a beautiful snow, with large and slow snowflakes and lacking the possibility to for a photoshot in a traditional countryside, I though the Village Museum from Herastrau Park is the best next replacement, the closest fake. Unfortunately, the Museum was close, dunno if it is closed all winter long or I was just unlucky, so all I could take was a few shots from across the lake:
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A short lived tradition (it was the second iteration), but is still a tradition, it was again the time of the year to shoot New Year’s Eve concerts and fireworks. Unlike the last year, when my choice was to boycott a communist mayor ans stay in PiaÈ›a RevoluÈ›iei, this year I headed to the main event, in PiaÈ›a ConstituÈ›iei.
However, I still passed trough Piața Revoluției, with a party organised by Pro TV and MTV, which was flooded with people wearing blue and red fedoras (I covered more about this elsewhere).
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Playing the Pan flute is pretty much a highlight of the local folklore (you know, titans like Zamfir) so when you encounter a Christmas concert in the park, even if the singer is pretty much a kid, what she’s playing is not bad at all (there is also a video with her solo play of O, brad frumos/O Tannenbaum).
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I complained a few days ago about our incompetent city mayor and the late firing-up of the city lights for Christmas, the city center is a major disappointment: for the first time they are using exactly the same lights as the last year, only fewer (some were probably broken).
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Suddenly, it seems the Kiseleff Parc became fashionable this year (I guess is close to the city mayor’s house or something like that) so a big Christmas Fair is held here for the first time. And it was a first time for me, when I went into shooting mode with my new pocket video camera (is my first, so forget the amateurish style, it was a learning experience).
Of course I also used the DSLR, taking a fer snapshots:
Not that is a Romanian Christmas: plenty of food (pork), plenty of drinks (wine and țuică), lot of people.
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From the “posted elsewhere” category, with a full HOWTO of the process on my other blog. Enjoy.
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One of the concerts I saw at Bucharest Days was “Balade din Carpati” (“Carpathian Ballads”) by K1 and Felicia Filip: not sure what was their target with such an interesting combination of modern, classic and traditional music, maybe they wanted to cash in on the Nightwish success, maybe they were awed by Therion or something else… the point is: it was interesting but to use a well known expression: “close, but no cigar”.
First of all, I should acknowledge the sound system in the street was total crap (it was crap also a night before when Mircea Baniciu performed together with Vladi Cnejevici, and that was folk music, where everyone knew the songs), so the experience was far from optimal.
First of all, the K1 band cannot hide its roots in a boy bad: they sing, move and dace like a boy band and this is ….bleah. They were the lowest point of the show, their dance stuff destroy all the symphonic metal stuff.
Then the “story teller”, Vlad Radescu, he can’t hold a candle to Christopher Lee in Symphony of Enchanted Lands II by Rhapsody of Fire. But, honestly, who can hold a candle to Saruman? He do not even tried: no cavernous voice, no magic, no nothing. I do not care about the joyful voice of a bald guy.
Felicia Filip did her best, she is a great soprano with an amazing voice, no complaint about her.
What I think was the highlight of the show was Cornelia Tihon, she is really great with the Pan flute (and other woodwind instruments, like regular flute or tulnic, she also has some extraordinary legs and is not afraid to show them on stage.
I will hold a final conclusion until I hear a show in better acoustic conditions (YouTube is full of recorded clips from various concerts, do a search and apply your own judgement), but my initial bias is not very positive, I was disappointed.
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I am pretty sure his name is not Larry, since Larry is not a Romanian name, but I thought the title has a nice ring. And he definitely was a potter
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This weekend is supposed to be the peak for the 550 anniversary of “Bucharest Days” and I plan to be there and take photos, still the weather will have the final word: the forecast for Sunday, the most important day, with fireworks and stuff is supposed to be rainy (showers, probability 60%) and Sunday is expected to be good.
The shooting opportunities must be plenty, as attested by this preview from last week-end when the festivities began
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After the big pop star Madonna was booed at a concert in Bucharest for giving an uniformed lecture about gipsies. Of course that created a cascade of equally uninformed reactions in the media all over the world and a storm of comments. But like any storms, it came and went away, people forgot about it.
Well, last week-end at ONGFest, the national festival for non-governmental organizations was a good opportunity for me to remember the Madonna incident: the most acclaimed artistic moment at the event (at least from what I have seen) was created by a gypsy organization, they danced, sang and people loved them. Yes, the same people who would have booed Madonna.
What’s the trick? They were bathed, wearing clean clothes, smelled good, had jobs, acted like people who attended school and their music was authentic, not manele. Is that too demanding?
Anyway, I enjoyed the moment and took a lot of photos.
At the end of their show, they started a “penguin dance” and everybody joined them. Is that racism? discrimination?
With this being said, I will reiterate: I have no sympathy for the smelly and dirty ones who refuse to get a job and instead send their children to beg and steal for them, milk the social security and use the school only as a source of food (the “corn cu lapte” program).
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