tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35219856553667210002024-03-13T01:05:19.895+02:00Fernando's guided toursLooking for fairy-tale vacations? Tired of crowded group tours and junk-food? In the heart of Bukovina, in the most picturesque region of Moldavia, we reveal you Friendly Romania. Or are you just passing through Bucharest? We can show you the best of this strange metropolis. Customized tours throughout Romania and surroundings.Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.comBlogger108125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-32152457321063794462011-08-19T23:58:00.000+03:002011-08-19T23:58:34.716+03:00Pernambuco in Bucharest<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia-V36kxAvDR7tMa-yMYMFRdCQJvTwllmpbYHC_WSJtXu1F4SzJ40n1c9s5UrEDv9KEdbaC5xhKI2a_5G5zK46lfrllSIcx8cYMeoo4siY8_pxdCEWYGhZLXqzij9qHpiNVnvpJ84JZkoD/s1600/foto+008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia-V36kxAvDR7tMa-yMYMFRdCQJvTwllmpbYHC_WSJtXu1F4SzJ40n1c9s5UrEDv9KEdbaC5xhKI2a_5G5zK46lfrllSIcx8cYMeoo4siY8_pxdCEWYGhZLXqzij9qHpiNVnvpJ84JZkoD/s320/foto+008.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I guided in Romania in the period 11-13 July 2011, for <a href="http://www.invitation-romania.ro/">Invitation Romania Travel</a>, a group of thirteen Brazilian tourists from Pernambuco who made a tour around Eastern Europe visiting Warsaw, the Baltic capitals, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Bucharest and Sofia. They were leaded by Stenia Raposo, from <a href="http://www.mirellaturismo.com.br/">Mirella Turismo</a> in Recife.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The tourists were happy to grasp the highlights of the Romanian capital during their brief passage through the city, and will certainly come back soon with more time in order to discover the rest of the country. On the last day of the visit I led them to the local railway station [picture], from where the group left towards Sofia.</div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-59228566967083752462011-07-28T13:17:00.002+03:002011-07-28T13:19:02.602+03:00First city tour bus in Bucharest<div style="text-align: justify;">The first double decker tourist bus line in Romanian capital Bucharest, called <i>Bucharest City Tour</i>, will be inaugurated today.</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHFBIXW198VBD_t7Lsd39YVNH4wRE1HokQvMV-r131rJhR33xTvYI_Ynh9DOkfyk1qiVtrNpqhHeYu5MN5zDgkQHIsigvxqjhGANuClVgW5hix8crhmgzaGPsaTj4THP3EIKxzxaCOx7LC/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHFBIXW198VBD_t7Lsd39YVNH4wRE1HokQvMV-r131rJhR33xTvYI_Ynh9DOkfyk1qiVtrNpqhHeYu5MN5zDgkQHIsigvxqjhGANuClVgW5hix8crhmgzaGPsaTj4THP3EIKxzxaCOx7LC/s400/1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">The bus will ride daily between 10AM and 10PM around downtown. Tourists will be able to see several landmarks in Bucharest while riding the double decker. The new route will be served by four double decker buses, each with 77 seats. The route is 15 km long and should take 50 minutes. Buses serving this new line will arrive every 15 minutes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The price of a ticket on this line is around 6 euros. It is valid for 24 hours and can be bought from the bus.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: <a href="http://www.romania-insider.com/">Romania Business Insider</a> and <a href="http://www.adevarul.ro/">Adevarul</a></div></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-90613448272648404222011-07-14T09:43:00.003+03:002011-07-14T09:44:41.352+03:00Baroque past in Romania<div style="text-align: justify;">A most interesting lot of old music notes has just been discovered in Transylvania, according to articles published in <b>Le Monde</b> and the<b> Guardian</b>. The British newspaper, in an article published on June 21 and signed by Mirel Bran, tells us:<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqn5c7jqm2dyly4nVZ79CgHHS2NwvFSbbR6QjcKVkjRF0N3vdUkD6hZa-EVAfBDfwfnHeeybsBc0R4UfUMDTJo6O4lIK_L7savjj_IHZAZ0YbghgB_YFZAn9jaWTB01zgixoOncfNi2Sp_/s1600/Biserica_Parohiala_Evanghelica_2007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqn5c7jqm2dyly4nVZ79CgHHS2NwvFSbbR6QjcKVkjRF0N3vdUkD6hZa-EVAfBDfwfnHeeybsBc0R4UfUMDTJo6O4lIK_L7savjj_IHZAZ0YbghgB_YFZAn9jaWTB01zgixoOncfNi2Sp_/s200/Biserica_Parohiala_Evanghelica_2007.jpg" width="165" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Several thousand of these recently discovered manuscripts are held at the National Archives in Sibiu, a pretty town in Transylvania, central Romania. Philippi, a music consultant to the Evangelical church and conductor of the Sibiu Bach choir, has set himself the task of saving this trove of baroque music. "After the end of the Communist dictatorship, a large part of Romania's German-speaking community emigrated to Germany and whole villages were deserted," he explains. "We decided to gather up all we could find among our church records. I had no idea of the treasures hidden here." His work has discovered a little known adaptation of the Pergolesi Stabat Mater, a Bach cantata arranged by the composer for the Lutheran church of Transylvania, works by Johann Sartorius, Knall, Corelli and a host of local composers.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the picture, the Lutheran church in Sibiu. Read the whole article <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/jun/21/classicalmusicandopera-romania">here</a>.</div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-32005175269826568182011-06-26T17:06:00.001+03:002011-06-26T17:06:50.607+03:00Oisiovici<div style="text-align: justify;">In February 2011 I had the pleasure to guide <b>Levi Oisiovici</b>, from Brazil [left], around the main Jewish sites in Bucharest before he travelled to Iasi, where he soon located the graves and the house of his ancestrals. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvPQLfQfCXA__wxa5zpZGSpxw7GLm0LQSPqZ0WdNS00YROKwI33vR6ELANctvQEtneimYne6VINUiiD0pjIl2J-IrISf5rgt9C__UsfjWHRFZjrLbdbEBaTTQaPyfK6BU3I__9Dyybih1S/s1600/levi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvPQLfQfCXA__wxa5zpZGSpxw7GLm0LQSPqZ0WdNS00YROKwI33vR6ELANctvQEtneimYne6VINUiiD0pjIl2J-IrISf5rgt9C__UsfjWHRFZjrLbdbEBaTTQaPyfK6BU3I__9Dyybih1S/s320/levi.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvPQLfQfCXA__wxa5zpZGSpxw7GLm0LQSPqZ0WdNS00YROKwI33vR6ELANctvQEtneimYne6VINUiiD0pjIl2J-IrISf5rgt9C__UsfjWHRFZjrLbdbEBaTTQaPyfK6BU3I__9Dyybih1S/s1600/levi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> </a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Bucharest he was also able to get together with the local Jewish community and meet a relative whose existence he found out few years ago. He had an overall very positive impression of Romania in his first moving and intimate travel to the land of his roots.</div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-73579651802484333112010-12-05T17:13:00.003+02:002010-12-05T17:22:31.173+02:00Bucharest Deli<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFMnIHlOXtPGwy97FCQo9SeYcVo84pnGvCwmO9wj7Il5Mc3echMJ3MTHdMlijuaXTSNHTlOwiHIW1bzm046yOUR8BdcTcn_U1U0ojzFbISOaNbhhEmNEmFzswUsLNCbJgMm2Ms73hgCuOx/s1600/GetResizeImage.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 163px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFMnIHlOXtPGwy97FCQo9SeYcVo84pnGvCwmO9wj7Il5Mc3echMJ3MTHdMlijuaXTSNHTlOwiHIW1bzm046yOUR8BdcTcn_U1U0ojzFbISOaNbhhEmNEmFzswUsLNCbJgMm2Ms73hgCuOx/s200/GetResizeImage.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547216974306939218" border="0" /></a>In the issue # 134 (December 2010) of the magazine <a href="http://www.saveur.com"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Saveur</span></a> it has been just published the article signed by David Sax, with photos by Landon Nordeman, under the title <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.saveur.com/article/Travels/Roots-of-the-Deli-splash">Roots of Deli</a> - in which the author seeks in Budapest and Bucharest the authentic origins of today's Jewish food.<br /><br />Fernando has also contributed to this work by guiding and supporting Sax and Nordeman through their gastronomical journey in Romania. Enjoy your meal!<br /></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-73017983715133356562010-11-12T10:20:00.001+02:002010-11-12T10:40:06.939+02:00Chiparus: Romanian Art Deco<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8xD3M0Pn7i80p82qEqP_5JyOnovYQ8qrEqY1nE9goqPSfFfKKL7n6Ffyylb0RGZcQ2Fpyy9XH0ivNNN1MNzoLknzPynnXJWr8iWK6Drg8c81c3Akpr9sLQlcOSDiI6lGY9XfU1o5TUv9U/s1600/Chiparus_pr_05.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 110px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8xD3M0Pn7i80p82qEqP_5JyOnovYQ8qrEqY1nE9goqPSfFfKKL7n6Ffyylb0RGZcQ2Fpyy9XH0ivNNN1MNzoLknzPynnXJWr8iWK6Drg8c81c3Akpr9sLQlcOSDiI6lGY9XfU1o5TUv9U/s200/Chiparus_pr_05.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5538580190679851218" border="0" /></a>Lovers of Art Deco style for sure have heard plenty of times the name of Chiparus. But few of them know that Dimitri, or Demetre Chiparus, worldwide appreciated sculptor, was born in the town of Dorohoi, northeastern Romania.<br /><br />Demetre Haralamb Chiparus (also known as <span style="font-weight: bold;">Dumitru Chipăruş</span>; 1886-1947) left Romania to Italy in 1909, where he attended the classes of the sculptor Raffaello Romanelli. In 1912 he traveled to Paris - where he finally settled - to attend the <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecole des Beaux Arts</span> to pursue his art at the classes of Antonin Mercie and Jean Boucher. Chiparus died in 1947 and was buried in Bagneux cemetery, south of Paris.<br /><br />The first sculptures of Chiparus were created in the realistic style and were exhibited at the Salon of 1914. He was the first to employ an original combination of bronze and ivory, called chryselephantine, to great effect. Most of his renowned works were made between 1914 and 1933.<br /><br />Sculptures of Chiparus represent the classical manifestation of Art Deco style in decorative bronze ivory sculpture. Collector interest in the work of Chiparus appeared in the 1970s and has flourished since the 1990s.<br /><br />Source: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demetre_Chiparus">Wikipedia</a></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-10579095224248363722010-11-09T21:48:00.003+02:002010-11-09T21:55:50.712+02:00Non-pasteurized Bucharest<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje-eFL7DGIIFZ5CazUGAiD2Qj4Ek9VD2WOQjOJDVqFK79HryUxagWECoqXNc4ibbs8p7k5DgTRu4uhPr-RGHLNRS_2EYsOtFvMhVIWrMvMIwmpOc0JAXyRGrBqVJRfMpiTHkn9__NpCGhQ/s1600/t-logo-190.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 158px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje-eFL7DGIIFZ5CazUGAiD2Qj4Ek9VD2WOQjOJDVqFK79HryUxagWECoqXNc4ibbs8p7k5DgTRu4uhPr-RGHLNRS_2EYsOtFvMhVIWrMvMIwmpOc0JAXyRGrBqVJRfMpiTHkn9__NpCGhQ/s200/t-logo-190.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5537640482916806434" border="0" /></a>The Travel Eurofile of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/pages/t-magazine/index.html">The New York Times T-Magazine</a> has just published an interesting article signed by Alexander Lobrano under the title <span style="font-style: italic;">Back to Bucharest</span>:<br /><br />"Disappointed to find that much of central Paris now serves up the same street-level visual refrain as most American cities — Gap, Zara, Starbucks, Subway — friends visiting from Boston yearned for an urban adventure. Where could they go for a long weekend that hadn’t yet been subjected to the centrifuge of globalization? 'Bucharest,' I replied, and they laughed out loud. 'Bucharest!? Is there anything to see there? And what about the hotels and the food?'<br /><br />'Trust me,' I told them, and wasn’t surprised when they returned three days later raving about the delicious strangeness of Europe’s sixth largest city (if you don’t count Istanbul and leave out Russia), which is a three-hour flight from most western European capitals. Vying for the title with Belgrade and Sofia, Bucharest is one of the last major European cities that hasn’t been pasteurized by gentrification or lost its soul to mass tourism. It’s an odd but lively mutt of a city — one that’s clearly seen better days but where something is also suddenly stirring. The locals love to have a good time, and the Romanian economy is chugging along pretty nicely."<br /><br />Read the whole article <a href="http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/eurofile-back-to-bucharest/">here</a>.<br /></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-1763826206588175412010-10-03T19:54:00.003+03:002010-10-03T20:05:23.944+03:00Exhibition on Romanian prehistorical civilization<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwhtKABGeAUfxHp4xVzKyXVM3tik6rWnOVZT43cmQCrm5Z9Mbs49yU6-mfliQpfO7Yu_RCh4uLTi0m6ZreGXpE0zpvjY7tfoxgQfBUbcFPByxYTZMrv9jvytsYtz81Ga959cy7CWfczq4T/s1600/isaw01.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 143px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwhtKABGeAUfxHp4xVzKyXVM3tik6rWnOVZT43cmQCrm5Z9Mbs49yU6-mfliQpfO7Yu_RCh4uLTi0m6ZreGXpE0zpvjY7tfoxgQfBUbcFPByxYTZMrv9jvytsYtz81Ga959cy7CWfczq4T/s200/isaw01.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5523866312950574242" border="0" /></a>Before the establishment of the first cities in Mesopotamia ca. 4500 BC, highly sophisticated societies with advanced technology and complex systems of symbolic representation had emerged in the southeastern part of Europe.<br /><br />The Neolithic people of the Balkans were the first in Europe to adopt of a new type of economy, based on agriculture and animal breeding. This happened in the 7th millennium BC and marked a radical shift in the way humans interacted with their environment. After a million of years of nomadic life – during which little had changed – people settled in permanent habitations and started developing new skills and modes of social interaction.<br /><br />By the 5th millennium BC, the thriving cultures of the Balkans were among the most advanced in the Old World – featuring densely populated settlements, a sophisticated system of social hierarchy, highly symbolic cult rituals, complex long-distance exchange networks, and an amazing copper- and gold-working industry.<br /><br />By the mid-4th millennium, however, this brilliant world came to an abrupt end. The reasons are not clear: Invasions? Climatic changes? Overexploitation of natural resources?<br /><br />The unknown world of “Old Europe” is revealed in this exhibition, which features more than 200 Neolithic objects from Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova.<br /><br />The exhibition <a href="http://www.nyu.edu/isaw/exhibitions/oldeurope/"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Lost World of Old Europe</span></a>, which is organized in Athens (October 2010 - January 2011) by the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, in collaboration with the National History Museum of Romania, Bucharest and with the participation of the Varna Regional Museum of History, Bulgaria, and the National Museum of Archaeology and History of Moldova, Chisinau, demonstrates that during the Neolithic the various regions of Southeastern Europe had more things in common than differences.<br /><br />Source: <a href="http://www.cycladic.gr/frontoffice/portal.asp?cpage=NODE&cnode=219">Cycladic Art Museum</a><br /></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-86032796551284693742010-09-16T18:23:00.004+03:002010-10-03T19:36:34.331+03:00Prince Charles in Transylvania<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGIOVx3W7Dizv7D0GHqsHNA97geDday6ouGsUq9fgWKZNM2ycP-sWEAbXVhj3Fpkkld6v-U5FVpp4VbWCC1CnjxXZe-hF9JGAUKOMLmCMqcEDJ6qzRvb8BU6Q96C6MbvoG8jSyTd5kQI-y/s1600/ftt.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 138px; height: 70px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGIOVx3W7Dizv7D0GHqsHNA97geDday6ouGsUq9fgWKZNM2ycP-sWEAbXVhj3Fpkkld6v-U5FVpp4VbWCC1CnjxXZe-hF9JGAUKOMLmCMqcEDJ6qzRvb8BU6Q96C6MbvoG8jSyTd5kQI-y/s200/ftt.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5523859515095474082" border="0" /></a><div style="text-align: justify;">The <span style="font-style: italic;">Travel </span>section of the <a href="http://www.ft.com/home/uk">Financial Times</a> published, on August 27th, 2010, an interesting article signed by William Blacker about Transylvania:<br /><br />"When in early 1990 I first went to Transylvania, leaving behind the bright lights of western Europe and adjusting my eyes to the more sober tones of its eastern reaches, I could hardly believe that such a place still existed. In deep winter I crossed the northern Carpathian Mountains and came down, through misty forests and snow-covered roads, into the Middle Ages – or something astonishingly like it. Horses or oxen pulling sleighs occupied the roads, and cows and geese wandered freely. The villagers were dressed in smocks, sheepskin coats and fur hats, and had rough leather strapped to their feet, with woollen cloth wrapped around their calves held in place by thongs; footwear truly from another age, as worn by peasants depicted in medieval illustrated manuscripts.<br /><br />I was just a few hours east of Vienna, but crossing the border into Romania was a journey back in time. I settled there, and for more than 10 years I was fortunate enough to be able to live a rural life that previously I had known only through the pages of a Hardy or Tolstoy novel."<br /><br />Read the whole article <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/6cabf0fa-b169-11df-b899-00144feabdc0.html">here</a>.<br /></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-83272604442481418502010-08-04T14:26:00.004+03:002010-08-06T00:47:25.620+03:00Happy birthday, Hedda!<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq1xLg92nhx_5kGK0GPakHHT5dirg14EN6X0DV2LzZc1SsU4n8USAq7GzRPGRxadFzfYfz9i1-KFVt6Bod71UI5PhOvRdvzNaY65l8noRLJ8Mf8EVCdb99HtLKphAGTCQAuw2MbllYpf1l/s1600/sterne.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 150px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq1xLg92nhx_5kGK0GPakHHT5dirg14EN6X0DV2LzZc1SsU4n8USAq7GzRPGRxadFzfYfz9i1-KFVt6Bod71UI5PhOvRdvzNaY65l8noRLJ8Mf8EVCdb99HtLKphAGTCQAuw2MbllYpf1l/s200/sterne.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5501516881082114850" border="0" /></a><b>Hedda Sterne</b> is celebrating today her <a href="http://artinthestudio.blogspot.com/2010/08/happy-100th-birthday-hedda-sterne.html">100th birthday</a>. Born on August 4, 1910 in Bucharest, she is an artist best remembered as the only woman in a group of Abstract Expressionists known as "The Irascibles" which consisted of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and others. In her artistic career, she is known for maintaining a stubborn independence from styles and trends, including Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, with which she is often associated.<br /><br />Hedda Sterne [portraited in the photo by Gjon Mili] was born as Hedwig Lindenberg, to Simon Lindenberg, a high school language teacher, and Eugenie Wexler. Sterne was raised with artistic values from a young age, most notably, her tie to Surrealism, which stemmed from a family friend, Victor Brauner. Sterne was homeschooled until age 11. Upon her high school graduation in 1927, she attended art classes in Vienna, then had a short attendance at the University of Bucharest studying philosophy and art history before she dropped out to pursue artistic training independently.<br /><br />Hedda married a childhood friend Frederick Sterne in 1932. In 1941 she escaped a certain death from Nazi encroachment during WWII when she fled to New York to be with her husband. In 1944 she remarried Saul Steinberg and became a U.S. citizen. She was involved in many shows and exhibits in New York and practiced her art up until she had a stroke that affected her vision and movement when she was 94.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Source</span>: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedda_Sterne">Wikipedia</a></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-56863276113524779082010-07-27T22:19:00.005+03:002010-07-27T23:11:13.713+03:00Save the Jewish food<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG7ZQPEY8y6gI1NNUvXP7FmBlYv05rP1VZCgn2OQu7A63PjmrIsS48qYeri4yZJCiv7kXfQWJK1CjPAuEB96LDnxQxDnvNO1g0NrML1Ajzx6EQpSHpEw94BrMPGgRuxzqNi9ZMGA94cDS-/s1600/sax+003.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG7ZQPEY8y6gI1NNUvXP7FmBlYv05rP1VZCgn2OQu7A63PjmrIsS48qYeri4yZJCiv7kXfQWJK1CjPAuEB96LDnxQxDnvNO1g0NrML1Ajzx6EQpSHpEw94BrMPGgRuxzqNi9ZMGA94cDS-/s200/sax+003.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498679872106585314" border="0" /></a>This weekend I had the pleasure to guide through Bucharest and surroundings the Canadian journalist <a href="http://www.davidsax.ca/">David Sax</a> (author of <a href="http://www.savethedeli.com/">Save the Deli</a>, right side) and the US photographer <a href="http://www.landonnordeman.com/">Landon Nordeman</a> (left side), who came to record Jewish Romania's gastronomic heritage.<br /><br />Besides having visited Jewish sites in the Romanian capital, we went to restaurants and popular markets, seeking traditional culinary phenomena which gave birth to alimentary habits deeply rooted within Jewish emigrants communities in the Americas.<br /><br />The main character of this gastronomic travel was the pastrami, a Romanian dish brought by Romanian Jews to the other shore of the Atlantic and transformed into a delicatessen that can be tasted in famous restaurants in New York.<br /><br />The highest moment was the Romanian Jewish meal we have organized for our guests at <span style="font-style: italic;">Fernando's Hideaway</span> in Fierbinti, 40km from Bucharest. Cooking was signed by Silvia Weiss, who offers catering services known as <span style="font-style: italic;">Silvita's Kitchen</span>.</div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-87788187979402123552010-07-08T18:32:00.004+03:002010-07-28T20:58:07.240+03:00Milestone from Chisinau<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlkK0WCGrhIxJmuttFtjF99_avjCrp4tKxroMwRvj7tAp7xW_dGrpbT7foPt6yPp-el1cLWaZFjJv-keqUaI5DvPmGanfBxU6gyiwLp-sDyIyiT0x_ItwHDoUG-Ns5Rq37JTm7BX2aNKRN/s1600/MilestoneRO.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 162px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlkK0WCGrhIxJmuttFtjF99_avjCrp4tKxroMwRvj7tAp7xW_dGrpbT7foPt6yPp-el1cLWaZFjJv-keqUaI5DvPmGanfBxU6gyiwLp-sDyIyiT0x_ItwHDoUG-Ns5Rq37JTm7BX2aNKRN/s200/MilestoneRO.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491559720781750866" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lewis Milestone</span> (born Lev Milstein, 1895 – 1980) was a motion picture director. Milestone was born in Kishinev, Bessarabia, Imperial Russia (now Chişinău, Moldova) to a family of Jewish heritage. He went to the US in 1912. Milestone held a number of odd jobs before enlisting in the US Signal Corps, where he worked as an assistant director on Army training films during the war. In 1919 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. After the war he went to Hollywood, where he first worked as a film cutter, and later as an assistant director. His work during the 1930s and 1940s was always easily identifiable by its lighting and imaginative use of fluid camera. He worked extensively in television from the mid 1950s.<br /><br />Source: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Milestone">Wikipedia</a><br /></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-54266480046326238862009-11-21T10:09:00.004+02:002009-11-21T10:19:25.912+02:00Bukovina in the NYT<div style="text-align: justify;">Read below part of the article <span style="font-style: italic;">Where Art and Faith Embrace in Gura Humorului, Romania</span>, written by Ruth Ellen Gruber and published on 07 Nov 2009 by <span style="font-weight: bold;">The New York Times</span>. You may read the whole article and watch the pictures following this <a href="http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/travel/07iht-GRUBER.html?ref=travel">link</a>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXiDJNlEShOT5dJz3PT56K0y_3wwZr-KD6sJxlO17sFtOtN57nhHFk8vwOUkun5b8V0RwJlHqY4IKHPtYmpb7BWG-GZKrKXBJug9p9lpzIo-w56zmYeNn0khCwpx3Q9mQrZEXYR938MGRj/s1600/nytlogo379x64.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 34px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXiDJNlEShOT5dJz3PT56K0y_3wwZr-KD6sJxlO17sFtOtN57nhHFk8vwOUkun5b8V0RwJlHqY4IKHPtYmpb7BWG-GZKrKXBJug9p9lpzIo-w56zmYeNn0khCwpx3Q9mQrZEXYR938MGRj/s200/nytlogo379x64.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406468111088407842" border="0" /></a>Once the easternmost province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bucovina (“land of beech trees”) today straddles the border between Romania and Ukraine: northern Bucovina was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 and the region’s historic capital, Chernivtsi (Czernowitz in German and Cernauti in Romanian) lies just 30 kilometers, or about 18 miles, north of the frontier.<br /><br />The southern part, on the Romanian side, is a world of rolling farmland and steep forested hills, where antique villages and peasant culture coexist with new industry and modern construction. Horses and carts (and the occasional herd of cows) share the roads with SUVs, and intricately carved wood and other ornamentation still decorate many village homes and farmsteads.<br /><br />Exceptional examples of a rich religious heritage form an important part of the mix.<br /><br />Here are Romania’s famous painted monasteries, built in the 15th and 16th centuries when the region, a stronghold of Orthodox Christianity, was threatened by Ottoman invaders.<br /><br />The vividly colored frescoes on their exterior walls, masterpieces of Byzantine painting, tell the tales of saints and heroes, and portray in epic imagery the cataclysmic struggle between good and evil at the end of days.<br /><br />The monasteries are among Romania’s most celebrated cultural treasures. Listed on Unesco’s roster of world heritage sites, they draw large numbers of visitors throughout the year.<br /><br />Here, too, however, are religious sites far less known and rarely visited that also form important components of the region’s deeply rooted spiritual patrimony. These are the centuries-old Jewish cemeteries, whose weathered tombstones bear extraordinary carvings that meld folk motifs and religious iconography into evocative examples of faith expressed through art.<br /><br />Bucovina was once home to a large and thriving Jewish community. Today, however, as throughout much of Eastern Europe, only a few dozen Jewish families live there.<br /><br />Most of the cemeteries are neglected, but several are fairly well maintained and easy to visit.<br /><br />Though there are many organized tours to the painted monasteries, a car is needed to see the full range of sites. The roads and overall infrastructure in Bucovina have been upgraded significantly since Romania joined the European Union in 2007.<br /></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-62377924521876678732009-10-14T21:23:00.002+03:002009-10-14T21:47:02.056+03:00Nobel prize for Literature 2009<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkjJhm884t8Ud7GcSSLwIjlpHtfZpilwuUKxyHqE4fQrGsNYzrd952Azdel59e6Tza8XVT-S1AC-FfJXDmcnDP3AT2QQZBG_wvVVk9gzdj76ZCeFO6NNDdR1p51vmgyRDFzHbFaRpAq7ZP/s1600-h/herta+muller+bw.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 158px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkjJhm884t8Ud7GcSSLwIjlpHtfZpilwuUKxyHqE4fQrGsNYzrd952Azdel59e6Tza8XVT-S1AC-FfJXDmcnDP3AT2QQZBG_wvVVk9gzdj76ZCeFO6NNDdR1p51vmgyRDFzHbFaRpAq7ZP/s200/herta+muller+bw.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392528902314390002" border="0" /></a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herta_M%C3%BCller">Herta Müller</a> is a Romanian-born German novelist, poet and essayist noted for her works depicting the harsh conditions of life in Communist Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceauşescu regime, the history of the Germans in the Banat (and more broadly, Transylvania), and the persecution of Romanian ethnic Germans by Stalinist Soviet occupying forces in Romania and the Soviet-imposed communist regime of Romania.<br /><br />In October 2009 she was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature.<br /><br />She was born in 1953 in Nitzkydorf, a historically German-speaking village in the Romanian Banat in western Romania. The daughter of Banat Swabian farmers, her family was part of Romania's German minority. She studied German studies and Romanian literature at the Timişoara University.<br /></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-18850024316326368242009-09-07T21:41:00.004+03:002009-09-07T21:55:06.123+03:00Bukovina monastery on Russian stamp<div style="text-align: justify;">Since June 2008 stamp collectors are able to include in their collections a beautiful (and probably first-time!) philatelic Romanian-Russian joint issue regarding monuments listed in the <a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/list">UNESCO World Heritage List</a>.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpZVe1BUbvTvsomvEIriiewNfg2PbleEnzacxm-_ZOKN9FXwOmCbQoipcR43ztMhTMN-9sTOaXKHPC9IHToTLkFUsieavl2eIKSLmHOtmnz6C29RDlHgQI4W06LDvo-tW8_W_hBPdNvQAE/s1600-h/2008_Image50.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 106px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpZVe1BUbvTvsomvEIriiewNfg2PbleEnzacxm-_ZOKN9FXwOmCbQoipcR43ztMhTMN-9sTOaXKHPC9IHToTLkFUsieavl2eIKSLmHOtmnz6C29RDlHgQI4W06LDvo-tW8_W_hBPdNvQAE/s320/2008_Image50.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378799684015514930" border="0" /></a>The Romanian monastery of Voronet (right side) in Bukovina, famous for its unique predominating blue color, is depicted in a Russian stamp of 12 rubles.</div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-57913769261586988882009-08-15T00:23:00.005+03:002009-08-15T00:40:42.986+03:00Ausländer<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTMr70BObmieaoCV0fWUFGZ71ZAoWu8Rzj6Mlt6nsC1cRsx7jqHefmtTILipSLlLNLkQRwfXV-OFMM5w4ZAeunmT0NcBxCWz1ht4GEoGLun241kfULdUpjjgMljeosUIqxAzqnUrze8a92/s1600-h/Rose_1914.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTMr70BObmieaoCV0fWUFGZ71ZAoWu8Rzj6Mlt6nsC1cRsx7jqHefmtTILipSLlLNLkQRwfXV-OFMM5w4ZAeunmT0NcBxCWz1ht4GEoGLun241kfULdUpjjgMljeosUIqxAzqnUrze8a92/s200/Rose_1914.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369933371542633890" border="0" /></a><b>Rose Ausländer</b> (1901-1988), maiden name Rosalie Beatrice Ruth Scherzer, was a German and English language poet, Jewess from Bukovina, who lived in the USA, Romania and Germany.<br /><br />She was born in Czernowitz, at that time the second most important university center of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Between 1907 and 1919, she received her education in Vienna and Czernowitz, which became part of Romania after 1918. In 1919, she began studying literature and philosophy. In 1921, together with her friend and future husband Ignaz Ausländer, she left Bukovina and migrated to the US. There, she began writing poems.<br /><br />In 1927, she returned home to take care of her sick mother. In 1931, she returned home again for the same reason. She left Czernowitz for Bucharest in 1936. In 1939, she emigrated again to the US but came back in the same year in order to take care of her sick mother. There in Czernowitz she published her first book; the greater part of the print run was destroyed by the Nazis in 1941, after they had occupied the city. As a Jew, she had to move into the ghetto. She remained there two years, plus another year in hiding so as not to be deported to the camps. In the ghetto, she got to know the poet <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Celan">Paul Celan</a>, under whose influence she modernised her style. In 1944, the city was occupied by the Red Army. She left the country again, returning to New York. In 1967, she went to West Germany. From then on, she lived in Düsseldorf, where she died in 1988.<br /><br />Source: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Ausl%C3%A4nder">Wikipedia</a><br /></div><p></p>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-37113592572539800652009-07-16T14:30:00.008+03:002009-08-15T00:19:31.612+03:00Modernist Ukrainian writer<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCwQENjasmHxyzHSxrTT0z507zYVf1JYXhxj9_yzo0ji6FavadRY5ETGVf5CtoPjBLVR8lggY1xmj_d9JUwKqB_Rjc0isfK6qJpx20eBBVdRQBFlJDACFV81ZqavfGb3wl6kuljPp-ZQWO/s1600-h/lha-kobylyanska.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 142px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCwQENjasmHxyzHSxrTT0z507zYVf1JYXhxj9_yzo0ji6FavadRY5ETGVf5CtoPjBLVR8lggY1xmj_d9JUwKqB_Rjc0isfK6qJpx20eBBVdRQBFlJDACFV81ZqavfGb3wl6kuljPp-ZQWO/s200/lha-kobylyanska.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5359021960050034194" border="0" /></a>Olga Kobylyanska (Ольга Кобиляньска) was a Ukrainian modernist writer, born in 1863 in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gura_Humorului">Gura Humorului</a> (Gurahumora), in today's Romanian county of Suceava, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Kronland of Bukovina. She was one of the first female writers to explore feminist topics in Ukrainian literature. She is also considered the most important Ukrainian writer to emerge from the region of Bukovina. From 1891 until her death in 1942 she lived in the city of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernivtsi">Chernivtsi</a> (Czernowitz). The only language she knew perfectly was German, which is the language of her first writings. Only when Olga was about 20 years old, she realized, supported by other Ukrainian intellectuals, that writing in Ukrainian is inevitable.<br /><br />Source: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olha_Kobylyanska">Wikipedia</a><br /></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-87544769958362630162009-07-14T23:12:00.006+03:002009-07-15T10:21:57.318+03:00Jewish families in Arad and Hunedoara<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXQsZEzEMYw3EHVu1wGtpld-BLTOIO8DCNIxD3mfoIrbd6aWMwKRTI_EOoTvjpeX078KPMaFjGYjppTkJHM9g3BEtotHYwxCthgbAn-Kb7AZ7sZPLrTnsu520z-xTAeeVptm5wZD92EZhe/s1600-h/pui5.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXQsZEzEMYw3EHVu1wGtpld-BLTOIO8DCNIxD3mfoIrbd6aWMwKRTI_EOoTvjpeX078KPMaFjGYjppTkJHM9g3BEtotHYwxCthgbAn-Kb7AZ7sZPLrTnsu520z-xTAeeVptm5wZD92EZhe/s320/pui5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5358417374894010994" border="0" /></a>Between 1-5 July, I guided Veronica Singer (US) through Transylvania, the land of her grandparents, searching - and finding! - records and graves related to her familiy (Roth, Grün etc.) at the Jewish Community and at the local branches of the Romanian National Archives in the towns of Arad and Deva. Our journey also included a visit to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunyad_Castle">Hunyad Castle</a> in the city of Hunedoara, the largest gothic construction of this type in Romania, and to the villages of Bârzava, Petris, Pui and Baru, where Veronica - in the photo, holding a chick at a family house in Pui - was warmly received by local people and was able to grasp the atmosphere in which her ancestrals once lived.<br /></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-69716162291768653002009-06-30T10:59:00.005+03:002009-06-30T11:16:31.068+03:00Jewish Bukovina: against forgetting<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_YYxibgB22kvcaXjkZ0BCsyg7gXdy6hhZCJEmOigeNx5KPOiIK35-YFa8RBWWMcbN0ht5Y7hcckiY42eZSau6eabrIwsUqvpo-kpsmVZCKcPAtV0U77aJQdxm9RdBU363k7V9hoaDfotZ/s1600-h/cimitire-cemeteries.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 142px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_YYxibgB22kvcaXjkZ0BCsyg7gXdy6hhZCJEmOigeNx5KPOiIK35-YFa8RBWWMcbN0ht5Y7hcckiY42eZSau6eabrIwsUqvpo-kpsmVZCKcPAtV0U77aJQdxm9RdBU363k7V9hoaDfotZ/s200/cimitire-cemeteries.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353031496876400626" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Jewish Cemeteries of the Bucovina</span>, a new guidebook-brochure to Jewish cemeteries in the Bukovina region of Romania and Ukraine, has just been published by <a href="http://www.nmp.ro/">NOI Media Print</a> and launched last week in Bucharest.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.simongeissbuhler.ch/">Simon Geissbühler</a>, a Swiss diplomat based in Bucharest, is the author of the text and most of the photos; Adrian Manafu is the editor of the book; most interesting forewords are signed by the author himself, by Aurel Vainer, current president of the <a href="http://www.romanianjewish.org/">Romanian Jewish Federation</a>, and by <a href="http://jewish-heritage-travel.blogspot.com/">Ruth Ellen Gruber</a>.<br /><br />The publication is available in English, German, French, Romanian or Ukrainian.</div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-47064273628020971402009-05-20T23:59:00.005+03:002009-08-15T01:06:11.314+03:00Lost shtetl in Bukovina<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1WuLoiriEpUwvbfdpk-5BWha4G7nTBorRr8E1HPpP4mCSIoAIbHEv4OBCjOkApBb-uQgBQyOpbNO3gcOih3Ww94GbDqS7-BGZlVyJkuesCyvxyf55AEy2BQAjulc6s01MOOKea8CENZKx/s1600-h/carlibaba_cemetery10.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1WuLoiriEpUwvbfdpk-5BWha4G7nTBorRr8E1HPpP4mCSIoAIbHEv4OBCjOkApBb-uQgBQyOpbNO3gcOih3Ww94GbDqS7-BGZlVyJkuesCyvxyf55AEy2BQAjulc6s01MOOKea8CENZKx/s320/carlibaba_cemetery10.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5338017063954435010" border="0" /></a>During this month I was twice in Cârlibaba in order to carry out a research about the families Jacob and Schapira. The small and picturesque town in today's Suceava county, also known as Kirlibaba under Austrian rule (1774-1918), when it stood at the border between Transylvania and Bukovina, was a prosperous <span style="font-style: italic;">shtetl</span> thanks to its activities in the field of manganese and wood extraction. After the end of WWII, most of the surviving Jews emigrated. Not a single Jew lives today in Cârlibaba. The synagogue was demolished, the ritual butchery is in ruins and the old cemetery (picture) can be hardly kept by a Christian neighbor who takes care of it out of pity.<br /></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-39314688142802212762009-05-04T14:08:00.007+03:002009-08-15T00:20:47.742+03:00"There is nothing on earth that can prevent a poet from writing, not even the fact that he's Jewish and German is the language of his poems"<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4O6tpaIWJ34vgRFDT2Cm-pwj2yDWfc3x9MYvxIaIJU007zHnqun3jVc5IWSsqEL4aO4LcmcMR-gixgDNi1bLEYbtC6TgKC_GAqub-bMNvTHW1gah-5i7eXLxbLFYEljJkz2j_N1G5MdKE/s1600-h/paul+celan.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 145px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4O6tpaIWJ34vgRFDT2Cm-pwj2yDWfc3x9MYvxIaIJU007zHnqun3jVc5IWSsqEL4aO4LcmcMR-gixgDNi1bLEYbtC6TgKC_GAqub-bMNvTHW1gah-5i7eXLxbLFYEljJkz2j_N1G5MdKE/s200/paul+celan.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334989719504588722" border="0" /></a>Paul Celan (1920–1970) was the most frequently used pseudonym of the Romanian Jew Paul Antschel, one of the major poets of the post-World War II era. Celan was born into a German-speaking Jewish family in Cernăuţi, Bukovina, then part of Romania (now Chernivtsi, in Ukraine). I<br /><br />n 1938, Celan travelled to Tours, France to study medicine, but returned to Cernăuţi in 1939 to study literature and Romance languages. The Soviet occupation in June 1940 deprived Celan of any illusions about Stalinism and Soviet Communism stemming from his earlier socialist engagements; the Soviets quickly imposed bureaucratic reforms on the university where he was studying Romance philology, and the Red Army brought deportations to Siberia, just as Nazi Germany and Romania brought ghettos, internment, and forced labour a year later.<br /><br />On arrival in July 1941 the German SS Einsatzkommando and their Romanian allies burned down the city's six-hundred-year-old Great Synagogue. In October, the Romanians deported a large number of Jews after forcing them into a ghetto, where Celan translated William Shakespeare's Sonnets and continued to write his own poetry. Celan remained in these labour camps until February 1944, when the Red Army's advance forced the Romanians to abandon them, whereupon he returned to Cernăuţi shortly before the Soviets returned to reassert their control.<br /><br />Considering emigration to Palestine and wary of widespread Soviet antisemitism, Celan left Soviet-occupied territory in 1945 for Bucharest, where he remained until 1947. As Romanian autonomy became increasingly tenuous in the course of that year, Celan fled Romania for Vienna. Facing a city divided between occupying powers, he moved to Paris in 1948, where he found a publisher for his first poetry collection.<br /><br />Source: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Celan">Wikipedia</a><br /></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-27842965646463776742009-04-01T00:00:00.004+03:002009-04-01T00:03:57.025+03:00"Guide people in such a way that they feel they are visiting their Romanian friends"<div style="text-align: justify;">Those are the kind comments our guests Katharine Vary-Belanger and James Belanger (US), whom we had the pleasure to guide and accommodate in the period November 24-30, 2008, wrote about their first trip to Romania:<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_CgWVuqQ3e6fzV7oWpEgDaRXpUxVH-aMbYQz_qnynr6p5p-Ok2GuHqj6stNT3u9Qn-B0YdgswjvK5zfPikHZqN8v9gE8CxvKk_nMpaqlpu0bGB_tf_qLPDTinIQMlk6IEUmPNJB0Aqh_R/s1600-h/DSCN0765_edited-1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 288px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_CgWVuqQ3e6fzV7oWpEgDaRXpUxVH-aMbYQz_qnynr6p5p-Ok2GuHqj6stNT3u9Qn-B0YdgswjvK5zfPikHZqN8v9gE8CxvKk_nMpaqlpu0bGB_tf_qLPDTinIQMlk6IEUmPNJB0Aqh_R/s320/DSCN0765_edited-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5319459789778945618" border="0" /></a>"My husband and I decided to go to Romania on a whim. We found excellent airfare, and <a href="http://sicilianodyssey.blogspot.com/2008/10/catania-bucharest-connection.html">a friend</a> had recently been there and spoke glowingly of a private guide she had found to help her to research her family's history there. Though neither of us has any genealogical ties to Romania, our sense of adventure drove us to contact this guide, Fernando, and arrange a trip. Fernando's philosophy is simple - guide people through the country in such a way that they feel they are visiting their Romanian friends. We saw many of the major sites, such as Bran Castle and the painted monasteries of Bucovina, but far more interesting and exciting was the insight we gained by getting to know Romanians. Fernando's wife, Elena, and her brother, Marinel, were our primary guides, and we had many wonderful moments of telling stories, trying new foods, getting drunk, and laughing. I can't tell all the stories which made this trip extraordinary: there was the emergency snow-boot purchase, the drinking of too much champagne and giggling like little girls in the back seat of the car with Elena, the visit to Elena's parents' house, being rude to the statue of Lenin... the list could go on for a much longer time than a one-week trip would normally merit. We were sad to find, at the end of our visit, that we had to return to our daily lives. Everything far exceeded our expectations, and the warmth and hospitality we experienced made this the best, most enjoyable, and most enlightening trip that my husband and I have taken together. I hope that, someday, we will be able to return to Romania; when we do, we will certainly contact Fernando and Elena, in the hopes that we may see more of their beautiful country."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Picture</span>: Bran Castle, Transylvania, by Katharine Vary-Belanger<br /></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-67596648909962616922009-03-26T14:33:00.005+02:002009-03-26T15:16:19.585+02:00Easter in Bukovina 2009<div style="text-align: justify;">On April 19th the Christian-Orthodox church will commemorate Easter this year. For this occasion, the Romanian <a href="http://www.turism.gov.ro/">Ministry of Tourism</a> has just launched the campaign "Easter in Bukovina", which will be developed in the period 10-23 April 2009 in Suceava county. The program includes several thematic manifestations as well as folk music shows throughout the county. During the same period, monasteries, churches, museums and memorial houses will be open according to a special schedule.<br /><br />You may watch below the spot made for the Ministry of Tourism in order to promote Easter in Bukovina:<br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwG6MWIwdOPzrkcSebXx0MuX-Wjxa5YrFHUNC3iqf5p5LEG4nsMm4J3pmr9sRPW6JMXriGzqYmQVNs1ip75RA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify; font-style: italic;">There is a place in Romania where tradition is kept with dignity, where people are inspired by the holy places' beauty, where the holiday's magic means goodwill, faith and family. Anyone can call this place "home". Easter in Bukovina. A project supported by the Ministry of Tourism.<br /></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-59245190056468042532009-03-01T20:02:00.005+02:002009-03-01T20:12:29.447+02:00Bucharest's Cool Underground<div style="text-align: justify;">Matt Gross, the <a href="http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/">Frugal Traveler</a>, seeks out high style on a low budget. Read below a fragment of his most interesting article <span style="font-style: italic;">Spying on Bucharest's Cool Underground</span>, published on 9 July 2008 by <span style="font-style: italic;">The New York Times</span> travel blogs section:<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDG5UmaM7pyuVNvnzY7nROqzqEPebpZXj3qrs6JfrW6lpPQfl9LDQ4O8W6pMq9K-2vpWfdrn7QFhtK_FIiApZTJhvAUsMQAdpEmMC5CjJ1Go7H_OScmopTY3inA6x55MZie6TP3ml_9IuQ/s1600-h/frugaltraveler_main.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 80px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDG5UmaM7pyuVNvnzY7nROqzqEPebpZXj3qrs6JfrW6lpPQfl9LDQ4O8W6pMq9K-2vpWfdrn7QFhtK_FIiApZTJhvAUsMQAdpEmMC5CjJ1Go7H_OScmopTY3inA6x55MZie6TP3ml_9IuQ/s320/frugaltraveler_main.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308283761181947122" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">About three years ago, Bucharest experienced a revolution that was entirely ignored by the international community. Granted, the coup was not as dramatic as Romania’s 1989 revolution, in which Nicolae Ceausescu, the Communist dictator who had brutally mismanaged this Black Sea nation for more than two decades, was deposed and executed. Nor was it as momentous as when the country joined the European Union in 2007, along with Bulgaria, its neighbor to the south.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">So subtle was the transformation, in fact, that most Bucharestians probably didn’t quite realize what was going on. </span><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />Read the entire article <a href="http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/spying-on-bucharests-cool-underground/?apage=2#comments">here</a>.<br /><br />Source: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/">The New York Times</a><br /></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521985655366721000.post-23500928731998968932009-02-19T22:18:00.004+02:002009-02-19T22:36:21.891+02:00Top places for a bargain holiday in Romania<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-style: italic;">The article <span style="font-weight: bold;">Where to holiday beyond the Eurozone</span>, by Annabelle Thorpe, published by <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Observer</span> on 18 Jan 2009, proposes that tourists, used to famous attractions which have just become too expensive, change their destinations towards cheaper ones but not of less quality. Two of the proposals points to Romania:</span><br /><br />The Spanish Cota de Donana national park in Andalucia is one of Europe's most spectacular wetlands, but twitchers and wildlife-spotters looking for a cheaper equivalent should head to Romania's <a href="http://www.ddbra.ro/en/index.php">Danube Delta</a>. More than 300 species of bird can be found in the delta - as many as in the Cota de Donana - along with foxes, wildcats, wolves and even boars. Best of all, there are places to stay within the park, meaning that watching the sun rise or set over the tranquil marshlands is as simple as falling out of bed.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUAicf4KawTvAXA2VQCSBnV60Qm-v741RhCZNbmm1RxsBNbHaBT35fsCWfhBUey_QpQn3OGtORCmzMtPWVKgiEV8Oe7szePh5WtRybka8cpuX9RIfXIKNCYlNpAEOx78q3ZGRzL_lIUpko/s1600-h/sibiu.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 221px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUAicf4KawTvAXA2VQCSBnV60Qm-v741RhCZNbmm1RxsBNbHaBT35fsCWfhBUey_QpQn3OGtORCmzMtPWVKgiEV8Oe7szePh5WtRybka8cpuX9RIfXIKNCYlNpAEOx78q3ZGRzL_lIUpko/s320/sibiu.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304609558553235266" border="0" /></a>It may not have the dramatic history of its French equivalent Carcassone, but the Romanian walled town of <a href="http://www.turism.sibiu.ro/index_en.php">Sibiu</a> has an equally stunning medieval centre and fortifications. It was European Capital of Culture in 2007, but prices have remained low and the cobbled streets and squares are filled with restaurants offering meals for around £10. Sibiu is a musical city, with jazz bars and small clubs tucked away.<br /><br />Source: <a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/">The Observer</a><br /></div>Fernando Klabinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16492369116911643664noreply@blogger.com0