Crăciun fericit! … Some christmas-impressions from Bucharest, happy holidays!
Dezember 19th, 2010
Sightseeing Tour (Part 1)
Right before the first snow we went for a walk through Bucharest to present you the most famous sights. Some of them you should already know from the last videos because they appear every time in the intro, this episode features the the National Theater, Lipscani and the Palace of the Parliament. In a few days there will be the second part including parks and some more sights. But for now enjoy this one…
(We are deeply sorry for the bad sound quality and the wrong pronunciation of romanian names, subtitles can be added on request!)
Correction: The MNAC is not the National Gallery (you can find this one in Part 2) but the Museum of Contemporary Art (Muzeul Național de Artă Contemporană)!
Dezember 10th, 2010
Cluj & Maramures
We had a long weekend because of the holiday on the first of December. So, perfect time to go to Cluj. On Tuesday we left Bucharest for a long journey by train for 10 hours! Like always we tried to save money and didn’t buy the tickets for the sleeping wagons. This means sitting in a cabin together with 7 others! Conclusion – no sleep. When we arrived in Cluj we decided directly to go to bed again, no military parade or anything. But in the afternoon the day could start, with a great breakfast at an Indian restaurant. Finally we went into the city for the first sightseeing and checking out the bars.
Thursday, the day began better. After reserving two cars for the following day to go to Maramures we completed our sightseeing tour and found out that Cluj is a really nice city! Later in the night finally also Maks and Robin arrived in Cluj! Yeah! Party!
Having enjoyed just a few hours of sleep we had to stand up at 9 o’clock because our tour to Maramures started! With our cars we went at first to the supermarket to buy the food package for two days. After breakfast we finally started to go to Baia Mare. After a long and hard ride on a street with more wholes then asphalt we finally reached the city as starting point into Maramures.
It was raining so we didn’t stop but went directly to Surdesti to see the first wooden church. Here we have been lucky that there was a funeral at the moment so we couldn’t enter! Foarte bine! =) So going on to the next wooden church in Budesti. By reason that the bad weather didn’t change we preferred staying in the warm car and going to Sighetu Marmației, where we wanted to stay for the night in a hostel. Not the best idea without any reservation! December is not directly main travelling time, so the lady of the hostel was not really prepared for guests, but finally gave us a place to sleep and started to heat the house… After a nice dinner we finally went to bed even if it was still cold!
The next day’s program was the visit of the “memorial of the victims of communism & to the resistance” placed in a former prison for political prisoners. A very interesting museum with much information about Romania and its history! After so much culture we went to the Merry Cemetery in Sapanta with its colorful painted crosses as well as in the wooden village’s monastery.
For our journey back to Cluj we decided to take another way home to see some nice villages and monasteries on our way. This was a good decision. In Barsana we found a wonderful monastery – a great place for resting! Slowly the sun went down, time to go home… Back in Cluj we enjoyed the student night life with a concert of a reggae band! Awesome finishing!
Dezember 8th, 2010
Winterwonderland
Short message for our friends in Ilmenau, let’s say episode 4 1/2:
*we already know that it’s december 8th and not 7th..
Dezember 1st, 2010
1. December – Great Union Day
Today is the national holiday of Romania. This holiday was set after the 1989 Romanian Revolution and commemorate the Union of Transylvania with Romania, which was decided by the assembly of the delegates of ethnic Romanians in 1918.
To celebrate this occasion there is a military parade in Bucharest every year which is attended by many visitors… so we went there this morning to document for you the pride of the romanian armed forces. Unfortunately we were not good enough equipped for the sudden change in weather and got caught up in a rain-ice-storm. We found ourselves including the camcorder covered with ice which resulted in a frozen display and control unit (the zoom did not work anymore!?) as well as frozen hands, feet and hair/bald head… and because of these arctic weather conditions we have to confess that we were not able to produce a video for you today. We are deeply sorry for this failure and it won’t happen again!
The following video is from a former military parade in Bucharest and you can get an impression how the parade looks like (almost exactly the same, just less ice).
Again: this is not our work and it is not from 2010.