More Christmas decorations

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Dec 122009
 

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Believe it or not we used to celebrate Christmas during communism although not officially of course (for those who don’t know, the communists are atheists). Christmas came packaged with New Year Celebration and they were officially known as “The winter holidays”. We decorated the Christmas tree with whatever we were able to find and on December 24th, “Father Winter”, Santa Claus’ identical twin, arrived with presents. I remember when Father Winter (a colleague of my parents) came to bring me presents when I was about 5 years old. I was so nervous that I forgot the poem I was supposed to recite. However, he was nice and left me presents nonetheless. By and large I had a happy childhood during communism despite the lack of some basic needs. I realize now that it was thanks to my parents who tried to shelter me from life’s reality.

The picture above is from Romană Square. The next two are taken on Magheru Boulevard where the city hall reused some of last year’s decorations (cost cutting in the economic downturn I think). The last one is showing the University roundabout.

Christmas decorations

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Dec 112009
 

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This evening I took a stroll downtown to check out this year’s Christmas decoration. I snapped quite a few pictures and this presented me with a problem: I couldn’t decide which photo I like best. For this reason for today Bucharest daily photo will transform in Bucharest daily photos. I might also “bore” you with this theme for the next two or three days (maybe). Today’s photos were taken in and around Cişmigiu Park. The park was full of people curious to check out the decorations. Everybody was snapping pictures so this time I wasn’t the only one carrying a camera. The photo above is Bucharest’s City Hall located right across from Cişmigiu Park.

The entrance to the park:


The Christmas tree:


The gazebo:


The last two photos are showing customs that are not traditional Romanian, but were imported from Western Europe in the last years: the nativity scene and the Christmas market.

On street names

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Dec 082009
 

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We like to confuse tourists here in Bucharest. I’m kidding of course, we don’t aim to do that, but somehow that is the result 🙂 Take for example street names. In a 550 years old city like Bucharest, street names should be well established and shouldn’t change too often, right? Well, that’s not exactly true. Starting with the end of the 19th century the municipality of Bucharest started to pay attention to street naming in their attempt to make a more western city out of our capital. They did that by taking after the European habit of naming the streets after great personalities of the time or important figures in history. And so started the politics of street names. When a new government would gain power they would see it fit to rename some of the streets. When the communists came to power after WWII they transformed this “sport” into a form of art; they started a wide campaign of renaming the streets and giving them names that had some link with the regime, for example names of communist leaders – who would also change every few years when that particular communist hero would fall into disgrace. Historical personalities up to 1859 were also favored. When the communist regime was overthrown in 1990 another wide campaign of renaming the streets was started. This time the goal was to remove the names of the communist regime. One of the streets in the Old Town, which is the subject of today’s photo, was called over the years Işlicarilor, Franceză, Carol I, 30 Decembrie (under the communists), Iuliu Maniu and finally the name was changed back to Franceză. Nowadays most of the streets in Bucharest reverted to their inter-war names. Sometimes it happens that people still refer to a street by its former name having no idea that the name has changed; people in their 70s and 80s refer to the street by its between the wars name, people in their 50s and 40s call it by its communist name and the younger generation uses the name given after 1990. Today’s photo shows an old street name plate that can still be found on the above mentioned Franceză Street, from the time the street was called Iuliu Maniu.

Meet Mitică

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Dec 052009
 

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Who is Mitică? I was surprised to find out that there is wikipedia page dedicated to this fictional character who is supposed to portray the stereotype of the average citizen of Bucharest circa 1900. He appears in a series of stories by the Romanian writer I. L. Caragiale published in 1901. His specialty was delivering sarcastic catchphrases, some of which people still use today. The tall doll that you see in the picture was created by the “I love Bucharest” project; it is part of a set of 10 characters which were the objects of a cultural tresure hunt game that took place last September. The characters were displayed in the city center near Bucharest’s historical sights and they offered clues that would guide your itinerary and lead you to find Mitică. The dolls were created by artists with the help of children and high school students. Mitică can still be seen – I don’t know for how long though – in front of the Caru cu bere Restaurant in the Old Town.

Theme Day: Waiting

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Dec 012009
 

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First of all sorry for the late posting. It took me some time to decide on today’s photo. I will tell you why in a minute. Today is Theme Day at the City Daily Photo community, a monthly event that happens the first day of every month, when all participating blogs will post a picture that relates to the theme day’s description. Today’s theme is Waiting. Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

I have to say that today’s theme posed quite a dilemma for me, the reason for it being the fact that December 1st is also the national holiday of Romania. Which means I was faced with the question: should I post something about the national holiday or should I just go with the “waiting” theme? I also thought of somehow linking the two events but after thinking a lot about it I couldn’t come up with something interesting. December 1st 1918 marks the day of what we call the Great Union, when the provinces of Transylvania, Banat, Bessarabia and Bukovina joined the Romanian Kingdom. The Romanian government is always celebrating this event with a military parade which is not really my cup of tea (and as I’m traveling at the moment I can’t take pictures of the parade even if I wanted too). I already showed the Romanian flag (twice if I’m not mistaken) and posted a picture of the Triumphal Arch which was built to commemorate the creation of Greater Romania and couldn’t think of other national symbols that I could show in this context. I also thought of “waiting” in the context of contemporary Romania and I came up with something along the lines of “waiting for Romania to become a true democracy”, “waiting for corruption to end”, “waiting for my country to find its way to prosperity”, “waiting for the standard of living to grow and for the medical system to become better”. But these thoughts, true as they may be, seemed more like criticizing, and it seemed harsh to criticize with the occasion of a celebration. In the end I couldn’t decide, so for today I’m giving you three photos. The first is a simple “waiting” photo, which I would have posted if today was any other day of the year, showing people waiting for the subway at the Titan subway station. The second one is a graffiti which goes along the lines of “waiting for corruption to end” of contemporary Romania. And finally, the third one is the celebratory one, showing today’s front page at google.ro, marking the national holiday.

Elections 2009, part 2

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Nov 222009
 

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Election Day is here and I’ve just exercised my right to vote. Today’s photo shows you the back of my national ID. If you look in the upper right corner, you’ll see the sticker marked “Voted P2009” where P stands for presidential (elections). The turnout at my voting section wasn’t bad, there were quite a few people there. No lines though, as there were in the 1990’s when people were still enthusiastic about our new democracy. I’m quite curious to find out the official numbers for the turnout.

Bucharest’s traffic

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Nov 182009
 

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The traffic in Bucharest, especially during rush hours, can be a bit on the nightmarish side. I took this photo on Monday. Yesterday, Tuesday, the subway workers went on strike and everyone who normally took the subway to work took the bus or their personal car instead. If you can imagine a sea of cars, all honking (why? since there’s no space to advance to) and just looking like they were parked in the middle of the road, you got the right idea. Many times the traffic of Bucharest looks like that, even when there’s no subway strike.As you can see from the picture, a lot of the mess is brought on themselves by the Bucharest’s drivers who try to inch their way in intersections even when the light is red. The crisscrossed yellow lines that you see on the pavement are supposed the mark the “Do not block” area of the intersection. Not that anyone pays attention to that.

Autumn river walk

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Nov 172009
 

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November is not one of my favourite months. I’m not used to the cold yet, the grey skies make me want to sit in bed all day and the frequent raining does nothing to improve the situation. But there are two things that I like about November. The first is the approach of the winter holidays. The second are the fall colors, which can make even a mundane landscape like the one in today’s photo look interesting. I took the photo along Dâmboviţa River between Timpuri Noi and Mărăşeşti.

Elections graffiti

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Nov 152009
 

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Keeping with the elections theme, these are two stencil graffiti that I photographed on my last stroll through the Old Town. The first represents, according to its author, the portrait of the Romanian politician. The second one, which I don’t think I understand entirely, is of a sheep which has the message “Are you gonna vote again?” written on it. I’m not sure if the author has lost faith in the political system and is trying to say that no matter who you vote it won’t matter or is referring to the uninformed voters, the ones who go to vote because the village mayor or the local priest told them to do so and also told them who to vote with.

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