Here’s a few examples of what one can buy at the Easter fair. Of course I couldn’t help myself and bought some small cups that I have no need of.
Mar 312010
Mar 302010
The gazebo in Cişmigiu park has been decorated with the occasion of a spring fair titled “Traditions and flowers with the ocassion of (Easter) celebrations” (which in Romanian is shorter and it rhymes). Below you can see the fair’s banner hanging at the main entrance to the park.
Mar 292010
Mar 282010
Back to Bucharest. My journey home, a long one to begin with, ended up lasting almost two days because of the British Airways flight crew strike. It wasn’t a very bad experience as they gave us a hotel room for the night at Heathrow and covered dinner and breakfast but I was eager to get home. So I can say that I was pretty happy when I set eyes on the sign in today’s photograph even though it was a grey raining day in Bucharest.
Mar 272010
It’s been a while since I posted a photo showing the “other face of Bucharest” 🙂 respectively the tenement blocks of the communist times. The eight floors high ones, located on Calea Moşilor, which you can see in today’s photo, are pretty typical. Most of the citizens of Bucharest live in this kind of housing. The apartments inside can have 1, 2, 3 or 4 rooms and they are generally measuring from 30 to 70 square meters (322 to 753 square feet). The heating and hot water are in the vast majority centrally controlled and a perpetual source of problems. Despite their drab look, a four room apartment can go for more than 100.000 euros, because of the shortage of housing in Bucharest. The cheaper apartments are on the ground floor because of less lighting and fear of break ins and on the last floor because of the fears regarding the bad insulation of the terrace. The citizens of Bucharest also tend to favor buying apartments in newer buildings due to the fact that Bucharest lies in an seismic area and a newer building means less structural damage from the previous earthquakes. These days there’s a program to redo the outside insulation of the buildings with the state paying partially for the costs; the brightly striped buildings in the picture have probably just been re-insulated.
Mar 262010
Today’s photo shows an older stencil that can still be seen on some walls in downtown Bucharest. It reads “Happiness in monthly installments”. My interpretation is that it refers to the consumerist society that we live in, and how the only things that seem to make us happy in our modern society is to buy more stuff – usually on credit, because we always buy more than we can afford.
Mar 252010
The Central School is a school located in downtown Bucharest, one of the oldest schools in the city. The institution was established in March 1851 by Prince Barbu Ştirbei as a school for girls and the school opened in 1852. The building that houses the Central School was built in 1890 by Ion Mincu, who is considered one of the greatest Romanian architects which is why Bucharest’s University of Architecture bears his name. He was a promoter of the Neo-Romanian style of architecture and the Central School is the best example of a Neo-Romanian style building. It has a rectangular layout, similar to that of a monastery complex, with an inner courtyard surrounded by passageways.
Mar 242010
Mar 232010
On one of my strolls through the city I noticed this beautiful design on the side of a house on Vasile Părvan Street. I thought it must have something to do with arts and my guess was confirmed by a memorial plaque which mentioned that the house belonged to Maria Filotti (1883-1956) one of the greatest Romanian actresses of the 20th century. I’m so glad I started this blog, every day I discover new things about my city, things I wasn’t aware of before. The hunt for new photos to post brings me to areas of the city that I didn’t previously explore, despite living here for so many years.
The plaque reads: “This house was inhabited by People’s Artist Maria Filotti who devotedly served the Romanian theater for half a century”
Mar 222010
On the road and struggling with a slooow Internet connection so I’ll keep it short. Today’s photo shows the beautiful frescoes of the Kretzulescu church’s porch.