I was quite taken by this shot of a snowy lane in Sighisoara, Romania. Part Tim Burton, part fairy tale, and part old world Europe, Irish Guy has adroitly captured the amazing capacity snow has for transforming the ramshackled into the magical.
Word for the Travel Wise (06/07/06)
Before you proceed to find out what the word of today is I suggest you check out this photo on the Romanian tourism site. For some strange reason it blew me away. The brightly painted yellow colors from the trains railing to the young, smiling Romanian children seated up front makes for one of the best tourism shots I’ve ever seen. If I had the time and money to take off on the steam railway at Viseu du Sus I would do it in a heartbeat. The railway starts from a small logging town, runs through a roadless valley and is considered one of Romania’s finest heritage attractions. I provide no justice to even touching on the site, so please do yourself a favor and add this to your itinerary if headed to Eastern Europe.
Today’s word is a Romanian word used in Romania:
multumesc – thank you
If you’d like to know some real practical basics visit this Easy Romanian site. They offer proverbs, months, numbers, and days of the week. As usual Pimsluer offers great audio methods and Lonely Planet has a pocket sized phrasebook for Eastern European langs. BBC has the quick fix holiday downloads with the very, very, basics of the language worth looking into.
Transylvania International Film Festival
It always does me
great pleasure to step out and away from the places I only dream of voyaging to one day to share with you my personal
thoughts on places I have seen with my own two. This happens to be the case today with Cluj-Napoca, Romania. This year
marks the 5th edition of the Transylvania International Film
Festival to be held June 2-11, 2006 in the Eastern European university town filled with amazing, rich history,
people, inexpensive food and culture. Though I have not experienced the festival itself in Cluj-Napoca, I can only tell
you checking out local cinema is
bound to be an experience beyond phenomenal. The website is slowly but surely updating info on the schedule for this
year’s event, but just so you’ll have an idea of what’s in store see what occurred last year.
If you’re
thinking along the likes of Bram Stoker, Anne Rice or those missed episodes of Buffy stick to the states and
search for YouTube clips. Romania is so much more than the folklore.
(Poster is from last year’s edition.)
Word for the Travel Wise (04/03/06)
Of all my travels abroad one of
the places I miss more than anything is Romania, but that could very well be due to the special memories it holds as my
very first trip abroad. Before making my way over family and friends wished me well with tons of good luck as if they
were afraid something really horrific was going to happen. And while I hate to make yet another Dracula reference in my
Romanian lang lessons, it was almost as if they thought a vampire would come crawling into my hotel room and I’m sure
you can guess the rest or if you like you can use your imaginations and create a better ending. One where the young
girl returns home safely and later becomes a blogger for an online travel site and teaches words from various
lingos.
Today’s word is a Romanian word used in
Romania:
no roc – good luck
If you’d like to know some real practical basics visit this Easy Romanian
site. They offer proverbs, months, numbers, and days of the week. As usual Pimsluer offers great audio
methods and Lonely Planet has a pocket sized phrasebook for Eastern European
langs. BBC has the quick fix holiday
downloads with the very, very, basics of the language worth looking into.
Past Romanian words:
ciocan
Experiencing Nature up Close
Looking to commune with nature this year? Hoping for some quality time with the lions and tigers and
bears? Well, here’s your chance to play Grizzly
Man but without, hopefully, the same tragic demise.
Our friends over at The Independent have just published a Ten Best list for Close Encounters with Natural
Wonders. They provide us with details on how to hang with pandas in China, fraternize with bats in Romania,
keep a safe distance from polar bears in the Svalbard archipelago (Norway), stalk snow leopards in India, and howl at
the moon with grey wolves in Yellowstone.
The article also lists a few less exciting natural wonder opportunities such as bird watching in the Outer
Hebrides and counting badger poop and deer dung in Oxfordshire’s Wytham Woods—not exactly up my alley, but
at least I won’t get eaten by a bear.