Szprowski

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.