Fernando's guided tours

Pernambuco in Bucharest

2011-08-19T23:58:00.000+03:00

I guided in Romania in the period 11-13 July 2011, for Invitation Romania Travel, 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 Mirella Turismo in Recife.

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.

First city tour bus in Bucharest

2011-07-28T13:17:00.002+03:00

The first double decker tourist bus line in Romanian capital Bucharest, called Bucharest City Tour, will be inaugurated today.

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.

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.

Source: Romania Business Insider and Adevarul

Baroque past in Romania

2011-07-14T09:43:00.003+03:00

A most interesting lot of old music notes has just been discovered in Transylvania, according to articles published in Le Monde and the Guardian. The British newspaper, in an article published on June 21 and signed by Mirel Bran, tells us:

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.

In the picture, the Lutheran church in Sibiu. Read the whole article here.

Oisiovici

2011-06-26T17:06:00.001+03:00

In February 2011 I had the pleasure to guide Levi Oisiovici, 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.

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.

Bucharest Deli

2010-12-05T17:13:00.003+02:00

In the issue # 134 (December 2010) of the magazine Saveur it has been just published the article signed by David Sax, with photos by Landon Nordeman, under the title Roots of Deli - in which the author seeks in Budapest and Bucharest the authentic origins of today's Jewish food.

Fernando has also contributed to this work by guiding and supporting Sax and Nordeman through their gastronomical journey in Romania. Enjoy your meal!

Chiparus: Romanian Art Deco

2010-11-12T10:20:00.001+02:00

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.

Demetre Haralamb Chiparus (also known as Dumitru Chipăruş; 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 Ecole des Beaux Arts 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.

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.

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.

Source: Wikipedia

Non-pasteurized Bucharest

2010-11-09T21:48:00.003+02:00

The Travel Eurofile of The New York Times T-Magazine has just published an interesting article signed by Alexander Lobrano under the title Back to Bucharest:

"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?'

'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."

Read the whole article here.

Exhibition on Romanian prehistorical civilization

2010-10-03T19:54:00.003+03:00

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.

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.

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.

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?

The unknown world of “Old Europe” is revealed in this exhibition, which features more than 200 Neolithic objects from Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova.

The exhibition The Lost World of Old Europe, 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.

Source: Cycladic Art Museum

Prince Charles in Transylvania

2010-09-16T18:23:00.004+03:00

The Travel section of the Financial Times published, on August 27th, 2010, an interesting article signed by William Blacker about Transylvania:

"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.

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."

Read the whole article here.

Happy birthday, Hedda!

2010-08-04T14:26:00.004+03:00

Hedda Sterne is celebrating today her 100th birthday. 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.

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.

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.

Source: Wikipedia

Save the Jewish food

2010-07-27T22:19:00.005+03:00

This weekend I had the pleasure to guide through Bucharest and surroundings the Canadian journalist David Sax (author of Save the Deli, right side) and the US photographer Landon Nordeman (left side), who came to record Jewish Romania's gastronomic heritage.

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.

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.

The highest moment was the Romanian Jewish meal we have organized for our guests at Fernando's Hideaway in Fierbinti, 40km from Bucharest. Cooking was signed by Silvia Weiss, who offers catering services known as Silvita's Kitchen.

Milestone from Chisinau

2010-07-08T18:32:00.004+03:00

Lewis Milestone (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.

Source: Wikipedia

Bukovina in the NYT

2009-11-21T10:09:00.004+02:00

Read below part of the article Where Art and Faith Embrace in Gura Humorului, Romania, written by Ruth Ellen Gruber and published on 07 Nov 2009 by The New York Times. You may read the whole article and watch the pictures following this link.

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.

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.

Exceptional examples of a rich religious heritage form an important part of the mix.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Most of the cemeteries are neglected, but several are fairly well maintained and easy to visit.

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.

Nobel prize for Literature 2009

2009-10-14T21:23:00.002+03:00

Herta Müller 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.

In October 2009 she was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature.

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.

Bukovina monastery on Russian stamp

2009-09-07T21:41:00.004+03:00

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 UNESCO World Heritage List.

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.

Ausländer

2009-08-15T00:23:00.005+03:00

Rose Ausländer (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.

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.

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 Paul Celan, 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.

Source: Wikipedia

Modernist Ukrainian writer

2009-07-16T14:30:00.008+03:00

Olga Kobylyanska (Ольга Кобиляньска) was a Ukrainian modernist writer, born in 1863 in Gura Humorului (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 Chernivtsi (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.

Source: Wikipedia

Jewish families in Arad and Hunedoara

2009-07-14T23:12:00.006+03:00

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 Hunyad Castle 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.

Jewish Bukovina: against forgetting

2009-06-30T10:59:00.005+03:00

Jewish Cemeteries of the Bucovina, a new guidebook-brochure to Jewish cemeteries in the Bukovina region of Romania and Ukraine, has just been published by NOI Media Print and launched last week in Bucharest.

Simon Geissbühler, 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 Romanian Jewish Federation, and by Ruth Ellen Gruber.

The publication is available in English, German, French, Romanian or Ukrainian.

Lost shtetl in Bukovina

2009-05-20T23:59:00.005+03:00

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 shtetl 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.

"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"

2009-05-04T14:08:00.007+03:00

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

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.

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.

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.

Source: Wikipedia

"Guide people in such a way that they feel they are visiting their Romanian friends"

2009-04-01T00:00:00.004+03:00

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:

"My husband and I decided to go to Romania on a whim. We found excellent airfare, and a friend 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."

Picture: Bran Castle, Transylvania, by Katharine Vary-Belanger

Easter in Bukovina 2009

2009-03-26T14:33:00.005+02:00

On April 19th the Christian-Orthodox church will commemorate Easter this year. For this occasion, the Romanian Ministry of Tourism 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.

You may watch below the spot made for the Ministry of Tourism in order to promote Easter in Bukovina:

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.

Bucharest's Cool Underground

2009-03-01T20:02:00.005+02:00

Matt Gross, the Frugal Traveler, seeks out high style on a low budget. Read below a fragment of his most interesting article Spying on Bucharest's Cool Underground, published on 9 July 2008 by The New York Times travel blogs section: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.

So subtle was the transformation, in fact, that most Bucharestians probably didn’t quite realize what was going on.

Read the entire article here.

Source: The New York Times

Top places for a bargain holiday in Romania

2009-02-19T22:18:00.004+02:00

The article Where to holiday beyond the Eurozone, by Annabelle Thorpe, published by The Observer 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:

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 Danube Delta. 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.

It may not have the dramatic history of its French equivalent Carcassone, but the Romanian walled town of Sibiu 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.

Source: The Observer

Romanian wine

2009-02-16T20:54:00.003+02:00

The Wine World has recently started to sit up and take notice of an emerging, dynamic region. But its location will almost certainly take you by surprise…

After decades of Communism and some twenty years of regeneration, a few Central and Eastern European countries are starting to produce some particularly interesting wine. Isabelle Legeron sets off on a wine journey from Budapest to the Black Sea to explore this silent revolution.

Watch TODAY Travel Channel's premiere of this journey in Romania on TC Europe 20:00/TC UK 21:00

Source: Travel Channel

Kerényi

2009-01-27T06:07:00.004+02:00

Károly Kerényi (1897-1973), born in Timişoara, now Romania, was one of the founders of modern studies in Greek mythology and one of the most important scholars on Mediterranean Mythology and History of Religions. At the University of Budapest he followed a program in classical philology with a doctorate on Plato and Longinus and aesthetic theory in Antiquity, and read widely. In the following years he taught in Hungary at the secondary school level, travelled in Greece and Italy. He became professor of classical philology and ancient history at Budapest, Pécs and Szeged, until he moved definitively to exile, in Switzerland, in 1943, where he remained for the rest of his life, marginal to any Academic engagement and enrollment. He explored consecutively and in detail, throughout his life, every classical site, known or unknown, of the entire Mediterranean.

Source: Wikipedia

Bran Castle: one of top 10

2009-01-19T17:27:00.003+02:00

The Bran Castle in Romania, in the middle of the Carpathian mountains, also known as Dracula's Castle, has just been chosen by CNN as one of the top 10 most beautiful castles in the world. Read below the brief description made in the article:

Both the keepers of Bran Castle and the Romanian Tourist Board are keen to emphasize links between Bran Castle and Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Count Dracula. The connections are tenuous, but there's no denying the spooky charm of this massive structure's many turrets and towers. Some of the furniture on display was owned by Marie of Romania, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria who turned down a proposal from the future King George V of England and married the king of Romania instead.

Source: article The world's most beautiful castles, signed by Stephen Whitlock from Budget Travel and published on 15 Jan 2009 by CNN Travel.

Romanian ski resort: most affordable in Europe

2009-01-17T20:44:00.007+02:00

A recent survey revealed that the pretty resort of Poiana Brasov is the most affordable ski resort in Europe for lessons and lift passes, bumping Borovets (in Bulgaria) off the top spot. Its well-groomed pistes suit beginners and intermediates, and a new eight-seater gondola has expanded the lift system.

Source: article Ski holidays the Euro can't spoil, written by Nicola Iseard and published on 4 January 2009 by The Observer

Béla Lugosi

2009-01-04T04:32:00.004+02:00

Béla Lugosi (1882–1956) was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen, well known for playing Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version. In the last years of his career he featured in several of Ed Wood's low budget films. Lugosi, the youngest of four children, was born as Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó in Lugoj, then part of Austria–Hungary, now in Romania, to Paula de Vojnich and István Blasko, a banker. Lugosi began acting on stage in several Shakespearean plays and in other major roles, and when appearing in Hungarian silent films he used the stage name Arisztid Olt. Visit Lugosi's official website.

Source: Wikipedia

Wiesel

2008-12-19T11:15:00.005+02:00

Elie Wiesel (born Eliezer Wiesel in 1928) is a Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of 57 books, the best known of which is Night, a memoir that describes his experiences during the Holocaust and his imprisonment in several concentration camps. Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

He was born in Sighetu Marmaţiei, Maramureş, Romania, to Shlomo and Sarah Wiesel. Sarah was the daughter of Dodye Feig, a Hasid and farmer from a nearby village. Shlomo was an Orthodox Jew of Hungarian descent, and a shopkeeper who ran his own grocery store. He was active and trusted within the community, and had spent a few months in jail for having helped Polish Jews who escaped and were hungry in the early years of his life. It was Shlomo who instilled a strong sense of humanism in his son, encouraging him to learn Modern Hebrew and to read literature, whereas his mother encouraged him to study Torah and Kabbalah. Wiesel has said his father represented reason, and his mother, faith. Visit the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.

Source: Wikipedia

Brassaï

2008-12-17T23:20:00.008+02:00

Brassaï, pseudonym of Gyula Halász (1899-1984), is considered one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century. Halász was born in the Transylvanian town of Braşov, Romania, to a Hungarian father and an Armenian mother. At age three, his family moved to live in Paris for a year, while his father, a Professor of Literature, taught at the Sorbonne. As a young man, Gyula Halász studied painting and sculpture in Budapest, before joining a cavalry regiment of the Austro-Hungarian army, where he served until the end of the I World War. In 1920 Halász went to Berlin, where he worked as a journalist and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1924 he moved to Paris where he would live the rest of his life. Living amongst the huge gathering of artists in the Montparnasse Quarter, he took a job as a journalist. Halász's job and his love of the city, whose streets he often wandered late at night, led to photography. He later wrote that photography allowed him to seize the Paris night and the beauty of the streets and gardens, in rain and mist. Using the name of his beloved birthplace, Gyula Halász went by the pseudonym Brassaï, which means from Braşov.

Source: Wikipedia

Palade: Romanian Nobel Prize

2008-12-16T15:42:00.007+02:00

George Emil Palade (1912-2008) was a highly regarded Romanian cell biologist. In 1974, he received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering the vacuole. Palade also received the US National Medal of Science in Biological Sciences in 1986, and was previously elected Member of the National Academy of Science in 1961.

Palade was born in Iaşi, Romania; his father was a Professor of Philosophy at the University and his mother was a high school teacher. Both parents strongly encouraged George to further develop his abilities through higher education at the university. Palade received his M.D. in 1940 from the School of Medicine of the University of Bucharest. He was a member of the faculty of that famous school until 1945 when he went to the USA for postdoctoral studies. There, he joined Prof. Albert Claude at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Read his autobiographical article here.

Source: Wikipedia

Martins

2008-11-29T13:36:00.004+02:00

On June 25th, 2004, we guided H. E. Gilberto Ferreira Martins, Ambassador of Brazil in Bucharest at that time (first from the right), together with his wife and a couple of Brazilian friends, in a one-day trip to the countryside area north of the Romanian capital. Based at Fernando's Hideaway in the village of Fierbinti-Târg, where we offered them a traditional Romanian lunch and showed the local peasants farms, we visited two important Christian-Orthodox monasteries of the area, dating back to the 17th century. In the picture, the group poses together with Elena Klabin (guide) and the monk Firmilian in front of the Saint Nicholas church within the monastery Balamuci.

Romanian modernist architect

2008-11-14T19:11:00.005+02:00

Marcel Iancu (1895-1984), also known as Marcel Janco, was a famous Israeli painter and architect. He was born to a Jewish family in Bucharest. A friend and compatriot of Tristan Tzara, he was among the founders of the Dadaist movement at Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich. In 1922, he returned to Romania and worked as an architect and painter, having conceived the first Modernist houses in Bucharest. In 1941, he left for Palestine to escape the Nazis. In 1953, Janco established the Ein Hod artists' village near Haifa, Israel. Towards the end of his life he helped found the Dada museum in Ein Hod which bears his name.

Contact us in order to follow, during your visit to Bucharest, the urban itinerary Marcel Iancu, the beginnings of modern architecture in Bucharest, 1929-1938, conceived by Ms Doina Anghel, from the National Museum of Art of Romania.

Source: Wikipedia

Blessing of the house

2008-11-12T15:21:00.004+02:00

On November 8th, the day of St. Michael and St. Gabriel according to the Christian-Orthodox calendar, we organized a religious ceremony among relatives and close Brazilian and Romanian friends in order to bless, with the local priest, the building that serves as the seat of Fernando's Hideaway in Draguseni, Suceava county. The guest of honor was H.E. Vitor Gobato, the Ambassador of Brazil in Bucharest, whom we afterwards guided to the towns of Târgu Neamt, Gura Humorului and the monastery of Voronet, part of the UNESCO world heritage.

Frankel

2008-11-03T22:42:00.005+02:00

On November 1st I guided the couple Gerardo Frankel and Margarida Reik de Frankel (Uruguay), who came from Montevideo to Bucharest in order to take a ship cruise through the Danube, starting on November 2nd at the Romanian harbor of Oltenita and crossing the Bulgarian, Serbian, Hungarian, Austrian and German borders till Nürnberg. They visited Bucharest's old town, the Jewish neighborhood and the royal palace of Mogosoaia (in the picture) besides some shopping in the malls and antique shops of the city.

Halloween in Romania

2008-10-30T22:03:00.004+02:00

Halloween in Romania is celebrated around the myth of "Dracula", on the 31st of October. In Transylvania and especially in the town of Sighisoara, there are many costume parties, for teenagers and adults, that are created from the US model. Also the spirit of Dracula lives there because the town was the site of many witch-trials that are recreated by actors today, on the night of Halloween.

Source: Wikipedia

Jewish cemetery in Bucharest desecrated

2008-10-26T08:59:00.003+02:00

Unknown vandals have knocked over and, in some cases, destroyed the headstones in the cemetery where at least 35,000 Jews are buried, including victims of the Holocaust. It took place during the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, on October 24th. The vandals also smashed windows in the administrative offices of the cemetery. No anti-Semitic slogans were discovered on the destroyed tombstones, according to police. Jewish leaders condemned the desecration and said the scale of the destruction suggested the activity was organized — rather than random acts by wayward youths. Paul Schwartz, spokesman for Romania's Jewish community, called the desecration "the worst act of vandalism in the nation in recent times."

Source: article by Maud Swinnen published on October 24th 2008 at European Jewish Press

Szprowski

2008-10-16T20:00:00.009+03:00

In the period October 10th-13th, we guided Maryellen Pienta and Michael Minning (US) through Romania. They were the first clients to stay at our Hideaway in Northern Moldavia. After 1250km by car, crossing Moldavia, Bukovina, the Carpathians and Transylvania, our guests had a wonderful time, learning a lot about this country and its people and getting to know some of the UNESCO world heritage painted monasteries: Probota, Sucevita and Humor. Maryellen's roots from around Gura Humorului - her grandfather Jakob Szprowski was an Austro-Hungarian officer's aide who emigrated to the US - will probably bring her here again for a genealogical trip. In the picture, Maryellen poses together with Sister Marcela, our guide Elena Klabin and Michael at the nun's cell in Agapia monastery. You may read Maryellen's impressions on the trip at her blog's article The Catania-Bucharest Connection and watch her travel pictures here.

Hegwer

2008-10-16T18:19:00.004+03:00

Between June 5th and June 12th 2008, Hal and Charlotte Hegwer (US) were guided by us from Timisoara to Bucharest, visiting also Craiova. In Craiova they met the head of the local Jewish community and carefully visited the synagogue and cemetery, looking for records of their ancestors. In Bucharest, besides a traditional sightseeing with the main attractions, the Hegwers visited the Jewish museum and had dinner with all of us at the Caru' cu Bere beerhouse (in the picture, from the left to the right: our guide/driver Marinel Sburlea, Mr & Mrs Hegwer, Fernando & Elena Klabin).

Romania: best break for autumn colours

2008-09-09T10:11:00.003+03:00

Read below part of the article Six of the best breaks for autumn colours - Poland, Spain, England, Italy, Romania or France - take your pick for the best blazing leaves, written by Annabelle Thorpe and published on September 6th 2008 by The Times:

The Carpathian mountains, which dominate Romania's mythical region, are carpeted in beech, oak, spruce and fir that melt into golds, russets and terracotta during autumn. Hikers are well catered for, with endless trails criss-crossing the slopes, and the bears, wolves and lynx that populate the forests make it a favourite destination for wildlife enthusiasts - there is an 80 per cent chance of seeing wild bears. The small towns - 13th-century Sighisoara and medieval Sibiu - are fascinating to explore, and even more attractive under a carpet of autumn leaves.

Read the whole article here.

Crema Leis

2008-08-31T22:36:00.006+03:00

On 25th and 26th August our team (left) Marinel Sburlea (driver) and Elena Klabin (guide) guided the couple Abadia Crema Leis and Silvio Leis (Brazil) in Bucharest and through the Carpathian mountains, visiting highlights of Romanian tourism within and near the capital: Dracula's castle, Rosenau fortress, Peles Palace, Parliament Palace and an abandoned huge statue of Lenin... The Brazilian couple left Romania full with new information on its culture and history, planning to come back for a longer trip.

Xenakis from Romania

2008-08-19T13:14:00.003+03:00

The modernist Greek composer and architect Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) was born in Brăila, Romania. At the age of ten he was sent to a boarding school on the Aegean island of Spetsai, Greece and later studied architecture and engineering in Athens. Xenakis's primary teachers of composition were Aristotelis Koundouroff, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, and Olivier Messiaen. Xenakis pioneered electronic and computer music, and used stochastic mathematical techniques in his compositions, including probability.

Source: Wikipedia

Synagogues of Southern Transylvania

2008-08-18T10:17:00.003+03:00

Photography exhibition
Photography: Christian Binder
Concept design: Julie Dawson
22 - 24 August 2008, 12:00 - 18:00
Synagogue of Sighisoara: Strada Tache Ionescu 13, Sighisoara

In the wake of the Holocaust and the subsequent mass migration of the vast majority of Romania's Jewish population, this country's countless synagogues have fallen into various stages of disrepair and decay over the years. This photo exhibition attempts to capture the interesting transitional stage in which Romania now finds itself – with the entrance of outside, foreign investors and NGOs, some synagogues have been or are being restored and turned into cultural centres or finding other alternative uses. Others remain abandoned, often assuming a central location in the town's centre, an evocative, stubborn reminder of recent past – and of today's reluctance to address Romania's troubled relationship with this history.

The questions are numerous – what will become of these buildings now that they can be used again? Will their respective towns take responsibility for their upkeep, how can they be integrated into a long-term plan for urban or rural renewal? And how can the countless still decrepit synagogues, many of significant historical and architectural value, be incorporated into a systematic and far-reaching plan for commemorating and celebrating a culture formerly a vibrant part of Romania's multi-cultural existence?

Fountain pen: Romanian invention

2008-07-16T10:10:00.002+03:00

Petrache Poenaru (1799-1875) was a famous Romanian inventor of the Enlightenment era.

Poenaru, who had studied in Paris and Vienna and, later, completed his specialized studies in England, was a mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, teacher and organizer of the educational system, as well as a politician, agronomist, and zootechnologist, founder of the Philharmonic Society, the Botanical Gardens and the National Museum of Antiquities in Bucharest.

While a student in Paris, Petrache Poenaru invented the world's first fountain pen, an invention for which the French Government issued a patent on May 25, 1827.

Source: Wikipedia

Insulin: Romanian discovery

2008-07-10T13:34:00.005+03:00

Nicolae Paulescu (1869-1931) was a Romanian physiologist, professor of medicine and the discoverer of insulin. In 1916, he succeeded in developing an aqueous pancreatic extract which, when injected into a diabetic dog, proved to have a normalizing effect on blood sugar levels. After a gap during World War I, he resumed his research and succeeded in isolating the antidiabetic pancreatic hormone (pancreine). An extensive paper on this subject - Research on the Role of the Pancreas in Food Assimilation - was submitted by Paulescu on June 22, 1921 to the Archives Internationales de Physiologie in Liège, Belgium, and was published in the August 1921 issue of this journal. Paulescu secured the patent rights for his method of manufacturing pancreine (his own term for insulin) on April 10, 1922 (patent no. 6254) from the Romanian Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Eight months after Paulescu's works were published, doctor Frederick Grant Banting and biochemist John James Richard Macleod from the University of Toronto, Canada, published their paper on the successful use of a pancreatic extract for normalizing blood sugar (glucose) levels (glycemia) in diabetic dogs. Their paper is a mere confirmatory paper, with direct references to Paulescu's article. However, they misquote that article. Surprisingly, Banting and Macleod received the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of insulin, while Paulescu's pioneering work was being completely ignored by the scientific and medical community. International recognition for Paulescu's merits as the true discoverer of insulin came only 50 years later.

Source: Wikipedia

Schonfeld

2008-07-06T14:52:00.004+03:00

Between June 27 and 29 we guided Louis Schonfeld (US) to Iasi and Northern Moldavia. He was able to visit old inns on the way and to research the Iasi Jewish cemetery, besides discovering Moldavian hospitality and gastronomy. Although his family roots come mainly from Salaj (Transylvania) and Zakarpattia (Ukraine), he is interested in any link to the Schonfeld family name. In the picture, a tombstone of the I World War Romanian soldier Moise Scheinfeld at Iasi Jewish cemetery.

Romania: vacation secret

2008-07-04T09:54:00.002+03:00

I reproduce, below, a fragment of the article Romania: A Well-Kept Vacation Secret for Celebrities, written by Jean Marquit and published on Dec 28, 2005 by Associated Content.

"The country of Romania remains the well-kept secret of the rich and famous. The secret is not just in the inexpensive filming costs, which are increasingly drawing movies and the celebrities that go with them; it is also in the luxuriously metropolitan amenities that live side-by-side with pristine virginity. And whenever one travels to Bucharest, Romania's capital, and from thence into the non-fiction countryside of Transylvania, one is often both uniquely alone and in good company.

The countryside surrounding Bucharest hosts numerous spas and resorts; Romania has long been renowned for its healing waters with dignitaries visiting since the time of the Roman Empire. Armand Assante, who recently shared the screen with Al Pacino and Matthew McConaughey in Two for the Money, enjoys the Olimp resort at the coast of the Black Sea. It is a getaway on the shores of a sea long famous for its qualities to heal the body and the spirit."

You can read the whole article by clicking here.

The Romanian fountain of youth

2008-06-24T23:55:00.004+03:00

Ana Aslan (1897-1988) was a Romanian biologist and physician. She is considered to be a founding figure of gerontology and geriatrics in Romania. In 1952, under her leadership, the Geriatric Institute in Bucharest was founded.

Aslan's Gerovital H3 concept was introduced for the first time in 1957, in Verona, Italy, on the occasion of the IV International Gerontology Congress. Many scientists from the USA, Germany, England, Japan, Italy, Austria and Romania have studied and confirmed the effects of the Gerovital H3 treatment.

Notables such as Charles De Gaulle, John F. Kennedy, Konrad Adenauer, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Tito, Khrushchev, Indira Gandhi and Imelda Marcos have traveled to Romania to benefit this anti-aging therapy. Other well-known people, including actresses Marlene Dietrich, Lillian Gish, the Gabor sisters, actors Charlie Chaplin and Kirk Douglas, and artist Salvador Dalí have also followed the same path. They traveled to Bucharest, where Dr. Aslan did her research with Gerovital H3.

Source: Wikipedia

Cruise on the Black Sea

2008-06-16T11:52:00.005+03:00

On June 13th it was inaugurated the first regular cruise line linking the Romanian harbor of Constanta to Odessa in Ukraine and Varna in Bulgaria.

The Ukrainian-flagged ship Krymskaya Strela normally takes 6 hours between Odessa and Constanta, and almost 4 hours between Constanta and Varna.

Detailed information can be found on Navlomar website.

Brazilian jazzman in Transylvania

2008-05-30T14:18:00.005+03:00

On May 20th-21st 2008 I guided the Brazilian musician Marcos Valente Jr. to the city of Reghin, in the core of Transylvania. In order to prepare his Romanian tournée next October, Marcos wanted to visit the most famous factory of musical instruments of the country - Hora - where he chose a special bass for himself. During the trip through the Carpathian mountains, he had several cultural and gastronomical experiences which gave him a general taste of Transylvania.

Easter 2007

2008-05-04T04:11:00.006+03:00

During the Christian-orthodox Easter holiday, we guided three ladies from Brazil - Barbara Spanoudis, Marcia Schubert and Oziris Costa - through deep Romania in order to experience the peasants life and their sincere religious feeling. Hosted in Northern Moldavia, they were able to visit several monasteries in Falticeni and Neamt area, as well as the world famous monasteries in Bukovina: Voronet, Moldovita and Humor. In the picture, Oziris and Barbara, in blue pullovers, together with their guides at a traditional family house in Rosiori, Suceava, get warm for Easter mass.

Stefan Hajdu

2008-04-22T17:55:00.005+03:00

Ştefan Hajdu (1907-1996), also known as István Hajdú or Étienne Hajdú, was a famous French sculptor of Jewish Hungarian origin, born in the Transylvanian town of Turda, Romania. He studied in Budapest and Vienna and, in 1927, established himself in Paris. His works show a certain influence of Brancusi's aspiration towards pure forms, specially after 1950, when Hajdu starts to develop a very personal style, based on the abstractionism that was already present in his sculptures since 1932. Some of his works can be seen at museums in Paris, Essen, New York, San Francisco, Washington, Bucharest, Budapest and Skopje.

Source: Wikipedia

Romanian "Brother Grimm"

2008-04-19T19:44:00.006+03:00

Josef Haltrich (1822-1886), a famous Transylvanian ethnograph, collected and published folk tales from the medieval German area called "Sachsenland", in today's Romania. He was born in Reghin, studied History, Theology and Philology in Leipzig and then lived in Sighisoara, Cluj and Bistrita. Compared to the Brothers Grimm, he is one of the most important folklorists of German culture.

Read here (in German) the folk tales collected by Haltrich.

Source: Wikipedia

Shining through a long, dark night

2008-04-02T14:19:00.003+03:00

Every now and then in film a tangible if invisible phenomenon, a “talent cloud,” descends upon a nation, and its filmmakers turn out impressive numbers of wonderful films that reinvigorate the medium. Such has been the case with the remarkable Romanian “new wave” of the past five or six years. After the crowning achievement of last year’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days — winner of both the Grand Prize at Cannes and Felix for Best Film — Romanian cinema has been, deservedly, the talk of critics and bloggers, as well as avid moviegoers.

Yet, few if any movements in film don’t have solid roots in the past. The great achievements of Romania’s emerging filmmakers such as Cristi Puiu, Cristian Mungiu, Ruxandra Zenide were foreshadowed by earlier generations — Liviu Ciulei, Lucian Pintilie, Dan Pita, Mircea Daneliuc, Alexandru Tatos, among others. With Shining Through a Long, Dark Night, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, in collaboration with the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, brings together many of the finest recent Romanian films with a selection of key films from the pre-1989 Romania cinema.

For a listing of the films that will be screened between April 16th and 27th, go to Program Overview.

Source: Film Society of Lincoln Center

Romanian artist promotes MoMA

2008-04-01T10:37:00.003+03:00

The Museum of Modern Art from New York hired Dan Perjovschi to create a page promoting the museum for the daily paper The New York Times

The March 12, 2008 edition of the American daily paper includes in the special "Museums" section a page of drawings by Dan Perjovschi. Selected by the Museum of Modern Art to present the image of the institution in this edition of The New York Times, Perjovschi started his work with a modern comment referring to contemporary art and to the manner it is presented today by the great museums (including the Museum of Modern art), a list including "Cubism, Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Modernism, Cafeteria, Shop." Last year, the Museum of Modern Art hosted the first individual exhibition by Dan Perjovschi in the United States, entitled "What Happened to US?" In front of the audience, for several days, Perjovschi sketched graphic comments on the relations between present social and political circumstances and art on one of the walls of the Donald B. & Catherine C. Marron Atrium.

Global warming, violence in schools, freedom of expression and even the role of the United States in the world – were themes of the exhibition presented by Perjovschi at the Museum of Modern Art from Manhattan. In a declaration for HotNews.ro, in April 2007, Dan Perjovschi mentioned:

"All my works are inspired by reality because I follow a line of graphic comment – a highly personal graphic comment. It is not a detached graphic comment, and it is definitely not a comment dedicated to the beautiful side of life or to the things most people consider as beautiful. It is a statement of commitment. I feel like a citizen, not like a bystander. I am a man of the city, and I care about the issues it is dealing with, regardless if this city is New York, Sibiu or Bucharest. Drawing is my personal manner to respond to the city."

Source: Article by George Grigoriu on Nine O'Clock

György Ligeti

2008-03-31T14:38:00.004+03:00

The famous Hungarian composer György Ligeti (1923-2006) was born in the Transylvanian town of Târnaveni, Romania, to a Hungarian Jewish family. Ligeti recalls that his first exposure to languages other than Hungarian came one day while listening to a conversation among the Romanian-speaking town police. Before that he hadn't known that other languages existed. He moved to the important Transylvanian city of Cluj with his family when he was 6 and he was not to return to his birth town until the 1990s. Ligeti received his initial musical training at the Cluj Conservatory. His education was interrupted in 1943 when, as a Jew, he was forced to labor by the Nazis. His brother, at the age of 16, was deported to Mauthausen; his parents were both sent to Auschwitz. Following the war, Ligeti returned to his studies in Budapest, graduating in 1949. In December of 1956, two months after the Hungarian revolution was put down by the Soviet Army, he fled first to Vienna and eventually took Austrian citizenship. Many of his works are well known in classical music circles, but to the general public, he is best known for the various pieces featured in the Stanley Kubrick films 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut.

Source: Wikipedia

Wirtzbaum

2008-03-29T19:07:00.005+02:00

In the period 6th-13th September 2001, we guided Albert Wirtzbaum (US) through several places in Romania, so that he could find information of his ancestrals, who used to live in different shtetls in the area of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and were called Wirtzbaum, Solomon, Blau, Friedman and Fried. The main places of his trip were Bucharest, Sighisoara, Cluj-Napoca (synagogue on the picture) and Oradea. In Transylvania he visited the shtetls Borod, Cornicel, Solduba and Saldabagiu de Munte, and was received as well by the Jewish genealogy specialist Peter Winter. Because of the 9/11 events, he got stuck in Bucharest and we've assisted him in his prolongated stay.

"Je préfère mon nouveau dégoût à l'ancien goût dégoûtant"

2008-03-22T10:48:00.004+02:00

Born into a Jewish family in Botosani, northeastern Romania, Isidore Isou (born Ioan Isidor Goldstein, 1925-2007) started his career as an avant-garde art journalist during World War II. With the future social psychologist Serge Moscovici, he founded the magazine Da, which was soon after closed down by the Romanian authorities. He then moved to Paris, having developed many concepts that intended as a total artistic renewing starting from their lower levels. He called himself a Lettriste, a movement of which he was initially the only member (at the age of 16 he had published the Manifesto in 1942) and published a system of Lettrist hypergraphics. Others soon joined him, and the movement continues to grow, albeit at times under a confusing number of different names.

Source: Wikipedia

Brancusi: the best artist of the 20th century

2008-03-20T18:15:00.002+02:00

On March 17th in the morning, Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi was on the leading position of the chart of the most significant 500 Artists of the 20th century, published on the site of the famous Saatchi Gallery from the

United Kingdom

, based on votes by internet users. On Monday, Constantin Brancusi totalized 27,099 votes, that set him on the first place, followed by Pablo Picasso (13,713 votes), Egon Schiele (13,572 votes), Paul Cezanne (13,568 votes), Claude Monet (13,088 votes), Gustav Klimt (13,016 votes), Paul Gauguin (12,957 votes), Henri Matisse (12,941 votes), Marcel Duchamp (12,925 votes) and Pier Mondrian (12,912 votes). Last week, Brancusi was on the 35th position of the chart, and the Austrian Egon Schiele, French Paul Cezanne and Pablo Picasso from

Spain

were on the leading positions. The same chart includes the Romanian painter of Jewish ethnicity Victor Brauner, currently on the 302 position, with 3,997 votes. Any visitor of the Saatchi Gallery website may cast only one vote for his favourite artist. The “Best 500 Artists of the 20th Century” Chart is inspired from “The 20th Century Art Book”, an album released by the Phaidon Publishing House.

Source: Nine O'Clock

Maramures guidebook

2008-03-16T16:34:00.003+02:00

The Finnish publishing house Metaneira has just launched the most detailed travel guide to Romania's region of wooden churches: Maramures.

The travel guide with more than 750 full-color photographs, 100 drawings and 24 maps shows the best of this little known corner of northern Romania. Geographic and historic overviews with plans, maps and timelines are followed by a portrayal of the traditional way of life and the wooden architecture typical to the region.

Photographs, drawings and texts guide the reader through 500 pages around 47 wooden churches built in the Maramuresean gothic style. Due to their uniqueness, eight of them are on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Cornblum & Alter

2008-03-16T14:18:00.005+02:00

In the period October 3-8, 2004, we guided Martin and Rebecca Rosenblum (US), father and daughter, through Bucharest, Focsani, Iasi and Podu Iloaiei, back to their Moldavian roots. They were able to meet with the Jewish Community and visit all Jewish sites in Iasi and Focsani, as well as the Jewish cemetery in Podu Iloaiei. They were also allowed to research at the National Archives in Iasi about their relative families Cornblum and Alter (photo). In Focsani they located a family house and even talked to old neighbors who had known their relatives.

Transylvanian fortified churches

2008-03-09T21:08:00.006+02:00

In June 2007 it was launched in Bucharest the multimedia CD-ROM Saxon Fortified Churches of Transylvania. This a result of the successful collaboration among Mioritics Association, the German World Heritage Foundation and the UNESCO Office in Venice.

The CD includes an interactive map, sketches, descriptions and photo galleries of 44 fortified churches, local tales and glossary, all accessible through an intuitive and user-friendly interface.

The history of the fortified Saxon churches started in the 12th century, when King Geza II of Hungary assigned more than 2500 German colonists to protect and develop the southeastern part of Transylvania. A document issued in 1224 by King Andrew II gave to these colonists special rights and privileges which ensured their autonomy and significantly influenced the development of their villages.

As a sign of recognition to their uniqueness, seven out of the over 150 Saxon churches are on the UNESCO's World Heritage list. Other organizations are currently trying to restore several sites so as to rescue as many remnants of the Saxon civilization in Romania as possible.

"Beauty is not the goal itself, it is the lure"

2008-03-06T14:35:00.006+02:00

Sergiu Celibidache (1912-1996) was one of the most gifted conductors of the 20th century. Born in the town of Roman, in northeastern Romania, he spent his childhood in the Moldavian town of Iasi, becoming interested in musical composition at an early age. He studied mathematics, philosophy and music in Iasi, and later in Bucharest and Paris, and went to Berlin in 1936 to study composition at the Berlin Academy of Music. Two years later he enrolled to study conducting under Walter Gmeindl, and subsequently graduated from the Friedrich Wilhelm University with a dissertation on Josquin des Pres. At the same time the young Celibidache became attracted to Zen Buddism.

Despite the many accolades and the great following he had, Celibidache was just as well-known for refusing do recordings. His main reason was that the epiphenomena, which added to the total experience of a "live" performance in a concert hall, could never be captured on record. Hence, the magic and uniqueness of a "live" performance would be lost in a recording, the artificiality of which he used to compare to going to bed with a photograph of Brigitte Bardot.

Source: article written by Soo Kian Hing at The Flying Inkpot
Visit the Celibidache Foundation website

World Philatelic Exhibition in Bucharest

2008-03-05T12:51:00.007+02:00

This year there will be celebrated 150 years from the issue of the first Romanian postal stamps, the famous “Bull Head”. To celebrate this, between 20-27 June, Romania will host in Bucharest, at Romexpo, the “EFIRO 2008” World Philatelic Exhibition, followed on the 28th June by the 70th FIP Congress.

The exhibition will be organized by the Romanian Post Office together with the Romanian Philatelic Federation, under the patronage of Fédération Internationale de Philatélie (FİP), which was granted at FIP Singapore Congress of 2004, under the patronage of International Association of Philatelic Journalists (AIJP) and also under the high patronage of the Romanian Presidency.

Source: EFIRO 2008

Garfunkel from Iasi

2008-03-02T12:36:00.004+02:00

Art Garfunkel is a famous American singer-songwriter and actor, best known as half of the Grammy Award winning folk duo Simon and Garfunkel. Arthur Ira Garfunkel was born in 1941 in New York City. He is of Romanian Jewish ancestry. Garfunkel's Jewish grandparents arrived in Ellis Island around 1905 from the town of Iasi, in northeastern Romania. Art Garfunkel is an avid reader, and his website contains a year-by-year listing of every book he has read since 1968. Currently the list contains more than 1,000 books. Garfunkel has undertaken several cross-continental walks in his lifetime, writing poetry along the way. In the early 1980's, he walked across Japan in a matter of weeks. From 1983 to 1997, Garfunkel walked across the US, taking 40 excursions to complete the route from New York City to the Pacific coast of Washington. In May 1998, Garfunkel began an incremented walk across Europe.

Source: Wikipedia and Art Garfunkel official website.

The Romanian "King of Tierra del Fuego"

2008-03-01T18:18:00.002+02:00

Julius Popper (1857 - 1893) was an engineer, adventurer and explorer of Romanian Jewish origin. He is responsible for the modern outline of the city of Havana, Cuba. As a "conquistador" of Tierra del Fuego in southern South America he was a controversial but influential figure. Popper was born in Bucharest, son of professor Neftali Popper, a prosperous antiques merchant. He studied in Paris before arriving to Argentina in 1885 hoping to find gold. On September 7, 1886, together with 18 people, he as captain, chief engineer, mineralogist, journalist and photographer, they started the "Popper Expedition" and found gold dust on the beach of El Páramo, a peninsula in Patagonia. Expedition was rigourosly and stricly enforced after military standards with heavily armed men with Popper in direct command of everything. He succeeded in unearthing great amounts of gold and his Compania de Lavaderos de Oro del Sud realized enormous capital gains at the Argentine stock exchange. In Patagonia, Popper gained dominance with a private army and he issued his own coins and stamps to symbolize his power.

Source: Wikipedia

Eugène Ionesco

2008-02-29T11:00:00.003+02:00

Eugène Ionesco, born Eugen Ionescu (1909-1994), was one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd. Beyond ridiculing the most banal situations, Ionesco's plays depict in a tangible way the solitude and insignificance of human existence. Ionesco was born in Slatina, Olt county, Romania, to a Romanian father and a mother of French and Greek-Romanian heritage. He spent most of his childhood in France. He returned to Romania with his father in 1925 after his parents divorced. There he studied French Literature at the University of Bucharest from 1928 to 1933, where he met Emil Cioran and Mircea Eliade - the three having become lifelong friends. In 1936 Ionesco married Rodica Burileanu. Together they had one daughter for whom he wrote a number of unconventional children's stories. He and his family returned to France in 1938 for him to complete his doctoral thesis. Caught by the outbreak of war, he remained there, living in Marseille before moving to Paris after its liberation in 1944. Ionesco was made a member of the Académie française in 1970. Although he wrote almost entirely in French, Ionesco is one of Romania's most honored artists.

Source: Wikipedia

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days

2008-02-26T00:09:00.003+02:00

The setting for this grippingly horrible movie is Romania, in 1987: that is, two years before Nicolae Ceausescu was executed, but nine years after he was awarded an honorary knighthood by the Labour government of James Callaghan - and 20 years after he had outlawed abortion in Romania to increase the birth rate. It all seems at once a very distant and very recent era, and I can't think of a film that has shown life in the eastern bloc more fiercely than this; without ever being overtly political, it makes you feel humanity itself being coarsened and degraded by the state. In recent memory, we've seen The Lives of Others and Good Bye Lenin!, which affected to be about the last days of European communism, and they have been very effective in their own differing ways, but outclassed and made to look lenient and inauthentic by this brutal masterwork.

Read here the continuation of this article, signed by Peter Bradshaw and published on January 11, 2008 by The Guardian.

Clara Haskil

2008-02-24T22:44:00.007+02:00

Clara Haskil (1895-1960) was one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century. Renowned as an interpreter of the classical and early romantic repertoire, Haskil was particularly noted for her performances and recordings of Mozart. Many considered her the foremost interpreter of Mozart in her time. Haskil was born into a Sephardic Jewish family in Bucharest, Romania, and studied in Vienna under Richard Robert and Ferruccio Busoni. She moved to Paris at the age of 10, where she started studying with Joseph Morpain, who she always credited as one of her biggest influences.

Source: Wikipedia

Tarzan was born in Romania

2008-02-23T23:19:00.002+02:00

Johnny Weissmuller (1904-1984) was an American swimmer and actor who was one of the world's best swimmers in the 1920s. He set 67 world records. After his swimming career, he became the 6th actor to portray Tarzan in films, a role he played in 12 motion pictures. Dozens of other actors also played Tarzan, but Weissmuller was by far the best known. His character's distinctive, ululating Tarzan yell is still often used in films. He was registered as Peter John Weissmüller, baptized as János Weißmüller. Some sources cite his birthplace as Freidorf, now a district of Timisoara, Romania, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was the son of German-speaking parents of Roman Catholic and Jewish background. He was actually named Peter by his parents, but when he arrived in the US he used his brother's name, Johnny, because it was more American. When Johnny was 7 months old, the family emigrated to the United States.

Source: Wikipedia

Sephardim of Romania

2008-02-22T12:48:00.007+02:00

Read this interesting article on the Sephardic Jewish Community of Romania, published by the Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture. According to it, documents demonstrate the presence of Spanish Jews in Wallachia as early as 1496; besides, most of the original Jewish population of Romania arrived from Turkey and the Balkans and was made up of Sephardim. However, by the 19th century, the majority of the Jewish population of Romania was made up of Ashkenazim, the result of waves of Yiddish speaking immigrants from Galicia and Russia.

"Peindre, c'est la vie, la vraie vie, ma vie"

2008-02-21T15:54:00.004+02:00

Victor Brauner (1903-1966) was a Romanian Jewish painter. He was born in Piatra Neamt, Romania, the son of a timber manufacturer who subsequently settled in Vienna with his family for a few years. It is there that young Victor attended elementary school. When his family returned to the country in 1914, he continued his studies at the Evangelical school in Braila; he began to be interested in zoology in that period. He then attended the Art School in Bucharest (1919-1921). He started painting landscapes in the manner of Paul Cézanne . Then, as he testified himself, he went through all the stages: "Dadaist, Abstractionist, Expressionist". In 1930 he settled in Paris. In 1935 Brauner returned to Bucharest. He joined the ranks of the Romanian Communist Party for a short while, without a very firm conviction. In 1938 he returned definitely to France.

Source: Wikipedia

Nikolaus Lenau

2008-02-20T12:59:00.004+02:00

Nikolaus Lenau was the "nom de plume" of the poet Nikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau (1802-1850). He was born at Schadat (Csatád in Hungarian) near Timisoara in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Lenauheim in Timis county, Romania. He is considered the greatest modern lyric poet of Austria, and the typical representative in German literature of the pessimistic "Weltschmerz". Visit the Lenauheim website (in German).

Source: Wikipedia

Jacob Levy Moreno

2008-02-19T14:04:00.003+02:00

Dr. Jacob Levy Moreno (1889-1974) was born in Bucharest, Romania. He was the founder of psychodrama, sociometry and the foremost pioneer of group psychotherapy. He was also a leading psychiatrist, theorist and educator. During his lifetime, he was recognized as one of the leading social scientists.

Source: Wikipedia

National Geographic Traveler 'Romania'

2008-02-18T14:09:00.003+02:00

On February 14, 2008 it was launched in London the National Geographic Traveler ‘

Romania

’, written by Caroline Juler.

Starting with a detailed introduction to the country’s history, food, land, and culture, the book explores in-depth each of the sections of the country, including Maramures in the north, Moldavia in the east, Wallachia in the south, and Crisana and Banat on the country’s western flank.

Special detailed features give comprehensive information on many diverse topics such as Romanian folk music, the bears and wolves that still prowl the hinterlands, the excellent Romanian wineries, the ethnic minority officially known as the Roma but to this day referred to as Gypsies, and the many myths that immediately come to mind whenever you mention the country’s Transylvania region.

Source: Romanian Cultural Centre London

Golden Bear to Romanian short film

2008-02-17T15:23:00.003+02:00

During the 58th Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) - February 7-17, 2008 - the members of the international short film jury Marc Barbé, Ada Solomon and Laura Tonke awarded The Golden Bear for Best Short Film to O zi buna de plaja by the Romanian director Bogdan Mustata.

Saul Steinberg

2008-02-17T13:42:00.005+02:00

Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) was a famous American cartoonist and illustrator, born in Râmnicu Sarat, Romania. He studied philosophy for a year at the University of Bucharest, then later enrolled at the Politecnico di Milano, studying architecture and graduating in 1940. Steinberg left Italy after the introduction of anti-Semitic laws in Italy. In 1942, The New Yorker magazine sponsored his entry into the United States. During World War II, he worked for military intelligence, stationed in China, North Africa, and Italy. After the war's end, he returned to work for American publications, merging an encyclopedic knowledge of European art with the popular American art form of the cartoon, to pioneer a uniquely urbane style of illustration. Visit The Saul Steinberg Foundation website.

Source: Wikipedia

Edward G. Robinson

2008-02-16T18:26:00.005+02:00

Edward Goldenberg Robinson, Sr. (born Emanuel Goldenberg, 1893-1973) was an American stage and film actor born to a Yiddish-speaking Jewish family in Bucharest, Romania. He emigrated with his family to New York City in 1903. He attended Townsend Harris High School and then City College of New York, but an interest in acting led to him winning an American Academy of Dramatic Arts scholarship, after which he changed his name to Edward G. Robinson (the G. signifying his original last name). The American Film Institute considers him one of the best actors of the 20th century.

Source: Wikipedia

Béla Bartók

2008-02-15T20:29:00.005+02:00

The Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881-1945) is considered one of the greatest composers of the 20th century and was also one of the founders of the field of ethnomusicology, through his analytical study and ethnography of folk music. Béla Bartók was born in the small Banatian town of Nagyszentmiklós in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today Sânnicolau Mare, Timis county, Romania. You can listen to his Romanian Folk Dances.

Source: Wikipedia
Visit the Bartók Virtual Exhibition

TouristClick listing

2008-02-02T12:19:00.000+02:00

Our blog has just been listed on the worldwide travel web directory TouristClick, a comprehensive online travel destination guide and travel directory, where you can find information from local people, cheap airline tickets, booking hotels online, cars hire cheap from local services, cruises and vacation packages, all in one place, including user and expert advice from travel forums, local weather, currency information and much more.

Romanian Carnival in Venice

2008-01-23T00:01:00.000+02:00

Romania will participate for the first time officially, as guest of honor, in the traditional Venice Carnival between January 25th - February 6th 2008. The event will be marked by large-scale cultural manifestations showcasing Romanian culture.

Some of the artists who will represent Romania at the shows in Venice are actor Dan Puric, Olt county folk dancers, the Sukar Collective Gypsy musicians, the Masca theatre group, the Philarmonia chamber orchestra, the bands Nightlosers, Marius Mihalache, Amadeus and Nicolas Simion. Inside the traditional space of the Venice Biennale, the Venice City Hall offered Romania Italy's Pavilion.

New Wave on the Black Sea

2008-01-22T23:35:00.000+02:00

Read here the most interesting 6-page article by A. O. Scott, film critic at The Times, published on January 20th 2008 at The New York Times - one of the best analysis of today's Romanian cinema written by a foreign critic, who came to Bucharest and talked personally with the country's main film directors.

How do you say "Oscar Scandal" in Romanian?

2008-01-22T23:17:00.000+02:00

Have a look here at the film critic Scott Foundas' article from January 15th 2008 published at L.A. Weekly about the absence of the Romanian movie "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" by Cristian Mungiu among the shortlisted films for this year's Foreign Language Oscar. This is one of numerous recent critics to the selection criteria used by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles.

EU: promise, demands - and anxiety

2008-01-09T15:22:00.000+02:00

On January 7th 2007 an interesting and still up-to-date article dedicated to Romania, named "In a new light - Joining the European Union brings with it promise, demands - and anxiety" and signed by Tom Haines, who spent New Year in a traditional small village in Southern Bukovina, was published by The Boston Globe. You may have access to the text clicking here. And watch the video here.

NATO Summit Bucharest 2008

2008-01-08T18:16:00.000+02:00

Since yesterday, all information regarding the NATO Summit which shall be held between April 2^nd and 4^th 2008 in Bucharest can be accessed through this official site. It is still under construction, so that more information will appear in the near future. The website contains a detailed presentation of Romania and also a brief description of Bucharest, currently the sixth biggest capital in the European Union.

Moschella

2007-12-09T00:25:00.001+02:00

During the weekend of 1-2 December 2007, we guided the musicians Alexandre Moschella (Brazil) and his wife Fernanda Bertinato to Bukovina, where they learnt about local traditions, had meals at old Moldavian inns and visited the monasteries of Dragomirna, Sucevita, Humor and Voronet.

Jill Kasen

2007-11-19T03:36:00.000+02:00

On September 29th and October 6th 2007, Jill Kasen (US) and her trip colleague Arleen Glikbarg (US) were guided through the remains of Jewish Bucharest. They also had the occasion to visit the main touristic attractions of the Romanian capital, mix of Istambul and Paris.

Coppola attends the première of his latest movie in Bucharest

2007-10-27T19:29:00.000+03:00

The film “Youth without youth” by Francis Ford Coppola had on October 23rd the gala screening in Bucharest, only three days after the world first from the Rome Festival.

The event was attended by the director together with part of the Romanian production team. Francis Ford Coppola, the maker of the famous trilogy “The Godfather,” of “Apocalypse Now” and of the well-known film about Dracula, was accompanied by his wife and his son.

An adaptation of the homonymous short story of Mircea Eliade, the script of the film is written, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, marking his return to authoring his own films, alongside a production and direction team consisting chiefly of Romanians. Coppola thought to shoot “Youth without youth” as if at the beginning of his career, with a small budget and a young team who worked together with him 14-15 hours a day, for six months. “The team was very young and enthusiastic, eager to adapt to the only possible method to shoot this film,” stressed the director.

This is the first film of Coppola in the last ten years. According to the New York Times, the film is a mixture of genres. Initially, the story of professor Dominic Matei (played by Tim Roth), which begins in Bucharest in 1938, is similar to an espionage thriller from WW II. But the political plot dissipates as Matei falls in love with a young woman who seems able to travel back in time, and the film becomes a strange combination of love, mystery and philosophical speculation.

Source: George Grigoriu's article on Nine O'Clock

Picture: Romania Libera

Shell

2007-06-15T00:47:00.000+03:00

Elliot and Ellen Shell (US) - below, in front of Bucharest main railway station - spent the weekend of 9-10 June 2007 in Bucharest, the city where his family lived in the 20's, after emigrating from Ukraine and before leaving by train to Constantinople towards a new life. After a dense and touching visit including Jewish sites and chosen attractions under the guidance of Elena, family Shell left the Romanian capital to Istanbul by train as well, in order to reproduce the voyage made by his ancestrals 80 years ago.

Palme d'or décernée au roumain Cristian Mungiu

2007-06-02T12:46:00.000+03:00

Le jury du 60^e Festival de Cannes a décerné, dimanche 27 mai au soir, la Palme d'or à un film roumain, 4 mois, 3 semaines et 2 jours, en tête d'un palmarès qui braque résolument les projecteurs sur le cinéma d'auteur le plus exigeant.

Ce palmarès ignore en revanche totalement des habitués de la Croisette tels que Quentin Tarantino, Emir Kusturica, Wong Kar-wai ou les frères Coen, alors que le film de ces derniers, No Country for Old Men, était souvent donné favori par les rumeurs.

"Pour moi, c'est un peu un conte de fées", a commenté le réalisateur de 4 mois, 3 semaines et 2 jours, dont le sacre est également celui d'un jeune cinéma roumain qui s'impose comme l'un des plus créatifs sur la scène internationale. "J'espère que cette Palme d'or sera une bonne nouvelle pour les petits cinéastes des petits pays, car il semble enfin qu'on n'ait plus besoin de gros budgets et de grandes stars pour faire une histoire que tout le monde écoutera", a-t-il poursuivi.

Cristian Mungiu, 39 ans, avait été remarqué dès son premier long métrage, Occident, présenté en 2002 dans le cadre de la Quinzaine des réalisateurs. Stylistiquement épuré, son deuxième film, au maigre budget de 600 000 euros, est un récit cru et puissant d'un avortement interdit sous le régime communiste.

source: Le Monde

Romanian novel becomes Coppola movie

2007-06-02T11:41:00.000+03:00

Marking the return of substantial filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola to his homeland after ten years, "Youth Without Youth", his first effort since 1997's "The Rainmaker", will make its world premiere at Italy's 2nd annual RomaCinemaFest held this year on October 18-27.

"This film represents a new period in my career, where I intend to make only personal films," Coppola remarked. "I look forward to showing it at this new festival in Italy, whose great masters such as Rossellini, Fellini, Visconti, Pasolini and Antonioni inspired my early career."

Also written by Coppola, the WWII-set is an adaptation of the Romanian author Mircea Eliade novel which focuses on an elderly professor whose apparent immortality makes him a target of the Nazis. Tim Roth is toplining with Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Pirici, Marcel Iures, and Andre Hennicke co-starring.

source: Aceshowbiz

Jewish population in Romania

2007-05-30T21:28:00.000+03:00

The map shows the Jewish population per county in the territory of Greater Romania, according to the census of 1930.

The counties of Cernauti, Iasi and Lapusna had the largest communities, counting over 40,000 Jews each.

N.B.: (1) Cernauti: or Chernovitz, Chernivtsi, main county in Northern Bukovina, with capital bearing the same name, today in Ukraine; (2) Iasi: most important county in the Romanian historical region of Moldavia, with capital bearing the same name; (3) Lapusna: county in Bessarabia, with Chisinau (Kishinev) as capital, today the capital of the independent Republic of Moldova.

Klabin

2007-03-11T23:47:00.000+02:00

After having spent New Year in Berlin, I took a train to Warsaw. It was January 1995. In spite of the low temperatures, I decided to go to Lithuania for the first time. The railway to Vilnius crosses Belarus through Grodno. In order to avoid difficulties with one more visa, I took a Scania bus to Lithuania, whose way avoided the Belarussian border. I stayed about 5 days in Vilnius. There I learnt how infinite are the tonalities between white and black. I was guided by Regina Kopilevich. First we took a bus to Wilkomir - today's Ukmerge - where my great-greatgrandmother Haia Sarah Papert was born. From the 11 local synagogues, only a couple of them remained, but the buildings are of course used for other purposes. The Jewish cemetery was devastated during WWII. From Ukmerge we took a taxi to Poselva - today's Zelva - the shtetl of my great-greatgrandfather Lev Klabin, Jewish scholar and tax collector, who had emigrated with the whole family to Brazil around 1890. Our taxi was the only car in the village. According to family accounts, the synagogue stood close to the well. I could recognize the building, in ruins. After having eaten an unforgettable borsh soup at the local tavern, we went to the school, looking for help. The teacher of History guided us to the Jewish cemetery. Snow, wind. Tiny wooden houses. We entered one of them, an ancient lady told us about the good relationship with the Jewish community before the War. I expected to meet Lev Klabin and his long beard at any corner, at any moment. The deep impressions of this personal genealogical trip made me understand what other people can feel in such circumstances. From that moment, I decided I wanted to enable more people to feel the same.

Stern / Eiras

2007-03-11T23:45:00.000+02:00

In October 2005, jazzman Marcinho Eiras (Brazil) and family Stern (Peru) had a weekend full of revelations. After visiting Bran Castle and Sighisoara, birthplace of Dracula, they met him during their overnight in a Szekler village (photo) close to the Transylvanian Alps. Although strangely pale the next day, they were all able to enjoy the wonderful landscape on the way back to Bucharest.

Mass

2007-03-11T23:41:00.000+02:00

In October 2006, Robert Mass and Charmian (US) visited Romania after making a wonderful cruise down the Danube. In 3 days they visited important sites in Transylvania and had an unforgettable lunch at a peasant's house nearby Bucharest (photo).

Szvaticsek

2007-03-11T23:38:00.000+02:00

In February 2006, Fabia Szvaticsek (Brazil) came to Romania in order to establish professional contacts in the theater field as well as to discover more about her Transylvanian roots. After much research based on few elements, she found out she had a cousin in Arad, near the Hungarian border, whom she visited on her trip's last day.

Schein

2007-03-11T23:36:00.001+02:00

Patrick Schein (France) has come several times to Romania. His family was originally from Ramnicu Sarat, the same town where the world-famous Saul Steinberg was born. Since his first contact in 2004, we have been helping Patrick to find a way to save the Jewish heritage in the town. The synagogue (photo) and the 2 cemeteries are in ruins.

Lunsk

2007-03-11T23:33:00.000+02:00

In July-August 2006, the globetrotters Larry Lunsk and Debbi Kless (US) spent more than 20 days in Romania. We organized their trip from Oradea through Transylvania down till Bucharest and then up to Bucovina, in Northern Moldavia, visiting Cluj-Napoca, Sighisoara, Sibiu, Brasov and Suceava. In their first trip to Romania, they were able to learn a lot about its history, culture and Jewish heritage. Besides, Larry had the honour to celebrate his birthday dining out with Count Dracula. In the photo, they are visiting a traditional farm 30 miles from Bucharest.