Pernambuco in Bucharest

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

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

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

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.