Metallica in Bucharest
We went to the Metallica concert last night. It seems that despite the lousy weather forecast the 25000 people who bought tickets showed up.
And the weather forecast came true. It rained.
It wasn't a deluge of any sort of epic proportions or anything but it was enough to be very, very annoying. As the highly comprehensive rule book for this concert said umbrellas were not allowed on the stadium, there were none. So, we stood there in our ponchos (I had one), raincoats, jackets and plastic trash bags and we got soaked.
I enjoyed the concert a lot and I'd like to thank Mag and the other guys for creating an appropriate Metallica concert atmosphere. Seriously, guys, it wouldn't have been as fun without you. I think some of the (numerous) female fans present were a bit disappointed as they were probably expecting more of the "Nothing Else Matters" Metallica and they got an overdose of the "Seek and Destroy" / "Kill 'Em All" style.
It was a great performance.
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| Christian Nasulea - 24.07.2008 | |
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Heat and Fluid
We've been experiencing some pretty drastic temperatures over the past few days in Bucharest. Of course, it had to happen on the one weekend this summer I decided to spend in Bucharest to rest and recover from my interminable cold.
Yesterday we had a top temperature of 36 degrees in the shade, according to the Baneasa weather station, as you can see in the attached graph (hourly temperatures at the Baneasa weather station between 18.07.2008 and 21.07.2008).
There's a close connection between air temperature and the amount of liquid people drink. With 36 degrees in the shade you can imagine the temperature inside our 6th floor, non-air-conditioned, south-facing, apartment was somewhere in the 40s. As I spent a lot of time in the apartment on Sunday (all day) I found myself drinking some 2 liters of water, 1 liter of apple juice and another liter or so of milk, coke and other liquids, for a grand total of 4 liters and change.
You just gotta love summer!
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| Christian Nasulea - 22.07.2008 | |
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Brick
I watched the 2005 movie "Brick" on TV last night. Leaving aside the peculiarity of me watching TV, the movie was really good.
It was captivating. The director did a great job conveying the various phases characters went through and the idea behind the whole thing was very interesting. It was like a cop flick applied to a highschool, where all the criminal elements were 16 to 20 years old and the self-concerned chief of police was the vice-principal of the school.
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| Christian Nasulea - 15.07.2008 | |
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The Long Way Home - Polovragi
Last night at 19:46 I finally arrived back home after a total trip of 1455 km.
Despite taking the, by now, usual return route through the Retezat Mountains we saw a couple of new things on our way back. As I do, I saw a sign saying Polovragi Monastery and some very rugged mountain landscape in the distance, somewhere along the way, so I took a hard left off the main road in order to investigate.
The 500 year old monastery was very pretty but didn't manage to impress, most likely due to the heavy restoration works underway on their main church.
The rugged mountain terrain, however, is a different story. It turned out the steep rock walls I could see from 20 km away were Cheile Oltetului (EN: the gorges of the Oltet river), home to the 10 km long Polovragi cave. I wasn't in the right company to visit the cave but the trip to the cave itself was worth the effort. Imagine a one lane dirt road closely following the rock face on one side of the gorge, above the river that's still calmly carving away at the rock 100 m down. I was able to descend a few meters towards the river just in front of the cave into a place where the 2 sides of the gorge were no more than 3 meters apart. Awesome!
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| Christian Nasulea - 13.07.2008 | |
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Family Research
Today, I'm roaming around Banat looking for information. I've decided it's high time I got down to understand the intricacies of our family tree in this part of the country.
So, here I go looking for the 3rd cousin of the 4th uncle from the 5th generation of some big unknown branch on the old tree. It's going to be a long day as I expect things to be more like a mangrove than like a pine tree.
LATER EDIT: Well, it has been a long day. I've been to a couple of cemeteries, a few villages, I've met more or less distant relatives, I've seen some amazing antique furniture and I shot about an hour of interview about family ties.
It's starting to pay off. I might make some of it public soon enough.
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| Christian Nasulea - 11.07.2008 | |
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A Better Travel Toothbrush
A couple of weeks ago before going to the seaside again I popped into Carrefour for a quick round of shopping. I got myself a few "summer threads" (clothing you wouldn't want to be caught dead in anywhere except for the beach) and a new toothbrush for my travelling bag. Unlike other times, I bought myself a really good toothbrush with no regard for cost.
The event probably wouldn't be worth mentioning except for the fact that philosophically I find it to be another clear sign that my life is moving more and more into a suitcase.
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| Christian Nasulea - 10.07.2008 | |
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530 km Home to Home
Today at 7:15 am I pulled out of the driveway in Comarnic. 10 hours and 530 km later I pulled up near my pretty little house near the Danube in Serbia.
It's a bit further than the 320 km I have to do to get to Constanta and it takes a lot more time but it was really nice this time because it felt a bit like I was leaving home and going home. And I'm not even spending a single night in my house. Talk about sense of ownership!
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| Christian Nasulea - 08.07.2008 | |
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50 Mountain Kilometers in One Day
This Saturday we decided to go hiking. Actually "mountaining" might be a better word as we just wanted to go to a mountain somewhere (anywhere) and do mountain stuff on it. To make things more clear and prevent you from getting the usual funny ideas by "mountain stuff" I mean hiking, camping, singing by the campfire.
Anyway...
We went by car to the Cuibu Dorului chalet. After some quick preparations we started hiking on the 18 km road leading up to the Bucegi Plateau and then onward to the Bolboci chalet (in Romanian Bolboci means "bubbles" or something like that). At a crossroad we were directed by a helpful fellow hiker to take a detour that took us through some pretty magnificent scenery but also extended the hike by 4-5 km.
After grabbing some 5 o'clock lunch at Bolboci we started back up towards the plateau, this time on the normal road, just 7-8 km long. At the crossroad atop the plateau Bogdan and my Mother were waiting for us with our bikes. Yes, we raced our way back down to Cuibu Dorului on our mountain bikes. It really was one of our most exciting descents and by far the most off-road of them all. In fact we liked it so much we didn't even stop at Cuibu Dorului and decided to descend on our bikes all the way down to Sinaia.
To sum things up what started from "let's go to the mountains" ended up becoming a 30 km walk followed by a 20 km downhill mountain bike race. Congratulations go to Red for stamina, endurance, bravery and the right amount of insanity. A big thanks to Bogdan and my Mother for actually following through with my crazy bike transportation plan.
And finally a big fat recommendation to all living breathing people on this planet: Go see the Bucegi Plateau and go look upon the Bolboci Lake from the plateau. If you're a lazy SOB at least drive up there but go see these places as they are some of the most beautiful on Earth.
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| Christian Nasulea - 06.07.2008 | |
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Roman Adventures
Last weekend we went on a long-awaited city break to Rome. City break
might not even be the best name for it as we just exchanged one city
for another.
We
planned our plane tickets so well that we actually had 4 full days in
Rome and the hotel we booked was very close to the city center. What
can I say, we had it lined up and we were very eager to visit
everything.
The first day we walked from one end of the city
center to the other ever-searching for the elusive "Bocca della verita"
(EN: "The mouth of truth" - famous sculpture allegedly biting the hand
off anyone who puts their hand into its mouth and tells a lie. It
doesn't work.). As we were searching the city we passed by many of the
famous landmarks of Rome like Piazza di Spagna, Via del Corso, Fontana
di Trevi, Piazza Venezia, Il Vittoriano, Forum, Colosseum, Circus
Maximus or the Palatino. If you go to Rome and you find yourself
thinking Circus Maximus is an interesting thing to visit DON'T! It's an
empty oval field.
On day two it was time to see the inside of
things so we visited the Forum, the Palatino and the Colosseum for a
few hours during the morning. We got some useful information from Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree
on how to get into the Colosseum easier. What I'd like to add to their
information is that if you go to the Colosseum at lunch (1:30pm) under
the scorching mid-day sun there will be no one else queuing to get in
anyway.
At lunch we had the best pizza of the four days in an Irish Pub.
In
the afternoon we went to the Vatican, following the Thorn Tree advice
once again. We visited the Vatican museums in about 1.5 hours. That's
fast, very fast, so fast, in fact, that I had a headache when we got
out from all the visual information I assimilated in such a short
amount of time. There would be too much to tell about the museums for a
blog so I'll leave it to the encyclopedias and the Vatican Museums website. Later we visited St. Peter's Basilica (IT: La Basilica di San Pietro) which was another astonishing highlight of the trip.
Bottom line, if you take the Palatino, Forum and the Colloseum and the
Vatican museums and the Basilica and compare the two you'll come to a
simple conclusion: Rome sucks / Vatican rules! You've got rocks and
ruins on one hand (Rome) and many of mankind's greatest works of art,
all assembled together in one place on the other hand (Vatican) - also
no ruins.
Later that evening we spent time at and around Piazza Navona and we went back to Fontana di Trevi for some "by night" photos.
After all I've described above, packed into some 36 hours, we got a bit
"visited out". Some of us probably wouldn't have been able to bare
seeing another battered down ruin without getting really sick.
So... on day 3 we went to the beach. We spent an entire day in Ostia on
a private beach, dividing our attention between the hot sand and the
blue waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
In the evening, back in Rome, we had dinner at a very nice restaurant on the Tiber Island
(IT: Isola Tiberina). Our Tunisian waiter, Alex, once again confirmed
that what you see on TV has little to do with reality. We expected
people in Rome to be somewhat negative towards Romanians after all the
events in Italy earlier this year. Instead, we found everyone had a
Romanian friend, colleague, girlfriend etc. and a very positive
attitude towards us as Romanians.
Day 4 was dedicated to shopping and to searching for the Porta di Roma
shopping center for 3 hours. We found it... and our minds and budgets
never were the same again.
The flight back was uneventful. Speaking of which, I really have to
hand it to the Wizz Air pilot of our flight to Rome who performed the
first landing in which I couldn't tell when the plane actually touched
the ground.
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| Christian Nasulea - 02.07.2008 | |
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Black Sea(side) Notes
I had a very fun extended weekend at the seaside, including a couple of days in Constanta and Mamaia and a full Monday in Bulgaria.
I really have to mention the incredibly poor services at La Scoica Land in Navodari. It took them 2.5 hours to put food on our table and we were no exception. The waiters' attitude also left much to be desired. On the other hand the services at the Ariciul restaurant in Balchik were exceptional. However, despite popular belief prices were slightly bigger
A very funny thing about Bulgaria was the Varna - Bourgas highway which ended suddently after only 7.5 km.
On our way back we stopped to visit the ancient fortified town of Kalyakra, situated on an elongated peninsula, with high cliffs on all sides, reaching out miles into the Black Sea. Unfortunately not much is left of the old city besides the walls but the landscape (or rather the seascape) was extraordinary, especially since we saw it at sunset.
To complete the picture as we were gazing out into the sunset from the cliffs of Kalyakra we saw a group of dolphins playing in the waters below. I had never seen dolphins in the wild in the Black Sea before but it was every bit as amazing as I imagined.
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| Christian Nasulea - 27.06.2008 | |
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