Bellu

This week it´s been so hot we hardly managed to leave the house. However, as weekend approached, temperature started slowly descending. We know Summer is definitely not over yet, so we decided to take this opportunity window and make the best of it. On Saturday afternoon we headed to Bellu Park, a nineteenth century cemetery famous due to its upstanding mourning art.

 

 

Cities in dust

There is something undeniably ghostly about cities in Summer. They always acquire a certain desolated look, due to the vast space left empty by people absence. However, that´s am scenario I love, as my vivid imagination tends to portray a post-apocalyptic landscape (the image of a metropolis after vampire consumption, or maybe once the zombie plague is over. The tons of lovely movie scenes you could set in here...)

A day of my life in pictures: March, the 19th.

Hi there, everyone and happy Easter!

I hope you are all having a lovely holiday. This month has been kind of busy for me, as I am looking for a new job and some friends from Spain were visiting. Well, I am not going to talk about all those real life boring work details here. As for friends, we had an interesting but exhausting week together, I carefully documented in pictures, but those are kind of personal, so I need to see how many of them I am able to share here.

However, I thought I could take the chance to document last Saturday, as it has been some time since my last "a day in pictures" sort of post. 

I hope you enjoy my March, the 19th! 

 

Blogmas Day 8: Bucharest Christmas market.

Welcome back to Blogmas Day 8.

 Last Saturday The Gentle One and I had a little walk to the city holiday themed market. This is something we truly enjoy, as we don´t have those in Spain (I think it is a central European tradition rather than a Mediterranean one). We took the chance to wake up early, have a quick breakfast and head to the beautiful University Square, where the market is placed. We spent the morning looking around, shopping for wood tree decorations, drinking mulled wine and eating Kalács (a typical Hungarian seasonal sweet which is my new favourite without discussion! I am a bit afraid I am quickly turning addicted to it, and a bit worried I won´t be able to find it once the holiday is over).

My (fake) weekend in outfits.

All right, let´s just pretend I did take all these outfit pictures during the actual weekend, rather than just during those week days in which The Gentle One and I found the time to go out together.

Well, sometimes you can´t choose what days are off, right?

 This a strange kind of week, mostly spent between work, studies and last minute arrangements for my twenty days trip to Spain. So instead of just going out from Friday to Sunday, we made most boring errands during the weekend, and had our proper spare time in between.

And this is what we did:

Snapshots of my Easter week.

Last month I terribly failed at my monthly round-up, so I decided it could be nice to make some sort of little week summary in exchange. I actually like the idea of taking random pictures all along the week/month and share them with you. Somehow, they are a nice little testimony of life, and although I am not a great photographer (and most impressions were just captured with my phone during  spontaneous moments) I think is beautiful to treasure them.

So here you go: some random images of my Easter holiday week.

Just for your eyes!

This year higlights

My calendar reminded me it is time for another monthly round-up this week, but for December I thought it could be interesting to forget about my last month adventures and simply talk about this year´s highlights instead.

And gosh, this year has gone by so quickly! 

I can´t believe 2014 is almost over and we are getting ready for 2015. The truth is I can´t actually complain about it, as this has been a very positive period for me. Of course there are some little things I would like to have solved better, but today I want to focus on all the other small good moments and share them with you.
My 2014 highlights have been...

Bucharest Christmas market

A couple of posts ago I mentioned one of my current favourite things about Christmas are traditional street markets. We don´t have those in Spain, so celebrating the holiday with mulled wine, sausages, candy apples and hot chocolate while having a walk around is totally new to me.

 At the very beginning I couldn´t understand why people would enjoy just spending the evening around a bunch of shops, listening to some seasonal music and trying their luck at traditional games (silly city girl, right?) but after a little while we finally managed to pay our own visit to the place in proper conditions AND without being in a hurry because of the fear to get hands totally frozen (this is a hundrer per cent literal, last December was so chilly, you could feel your fingers hurting even with wool gloves...).

Concert outfit

 Last weekend we The Gentle One decided Friday was a good night to go out for a concert. To be honest I was not feeling like partying at all, partially because I had been dealing with boring health issues almost the whole month, and partially because after 

my eight good hours of regular work, last thing I would do is to attend a crowded concert

on a stuffy basement.

Sometimes we do silly things for love, don´t we?

November in the park

Do you know that type of day, when you feel lazy but you think it´s not healthy to stay indoors the whole time, so you basically force yourself to put some cozy clothes onand go outside?
Well, that was my Saturday.

The Gentle One and I went to a concert on Friday night and yesterday´s morning we were quite reluctant to make anything but procrastitating on the couch.
Nevertheless, we started a funny conversation about pros and cons of our current lack of exercise:

Murphy´s law for everyone

When I was a school girl I found a bit difficult to understand abstract physical laws and concepts, unless practical exemplification was providen. To be exact, I would NOT believe in any kind of principle I couldn´t see with my own little eyes. I was a midget skeptical, if you please, and this frequently produced a good dose of fun in the family meetups.

Victorian deviations

One of my favourite deviations hobbies consists on looking for places where I can sit, have a good cup of tea, and pretend I am the first beta-tester for a time machine prototype to be successfully transported to some point between 1900 and 1929. Well, yes, that can be considered a little weird, but you weren´t expecting anything different from me, were you?

Valentine, the ruins are no place for you to play

Weather has been acting like a bipolar psychiatric patient lately.

That means that most of the times my early morning plans go totally ruined just before lunch, as the sun tends to dissapear quickly and be replaced by heavy rain.

So as soon as I realized it was improving a bit during last weekend, The Gentle One and I jumped from the coach (we had been spending a good dose of our spare time by watching movies, which was the only thing you could actually do on this weather) and went for a long walk through the city.

Five O´clock Tea at Phileas Fogg´s place

This has been a very long and nice weekend.

The type in which you make so many things that at the end it looks it has lasted ages.

On Friday afternoon, The Gentle One and I decided to spend the day together as on Saturday I was busy by developing a second brain plus a second pair of arms in order to organize and attend a Lolita meetup in Bucharest (but that´s another story... and I´ll be telling later).

The Secret List

I have a secret list.

I am sure many of you do, but maybe you don´t call it a secret list (indeed, mine is not secret neither but I like to call it that way, just for the shake of keeping the mistery around). 

What I really have is a DO list or a wishlist, a list about all the places I wanna go and the things I want to do.

Small vices (and some afternoon tea)

First goes first, so Happy New Year everyone.
I hope you all had a memorable day accompanied by your beloved ones.
The last few days of the year have been a relaxing balm of happiness to me and my partner as long as we decided to leave stress behind a have a good time together.
These pictures are an illustrative example of it.

Christmas concert at the Romanian Atheneum

As a child I received a very strict musical education, nearly Victorian.

I used to study sol-fa, piano and voice practice because well, one of my uncles is a musician and he thought I was sensitive and could easily learn. After some years of non-stopping practice, I decided music was not my vocational path, but I always kept a tender love towards it deep in my heart.

Kretzulescu palace

 One of the things I love the most about Romania is the incessant possibility of finding an amazing building in the next corner. 

When we first moved here I knew very little about this country, so inmediately had a crush: you wouldn´t believe the overwhelming quantity of historic places flooding the streets.

Castles, palaces and old mannor houses are a national symbol of their glorious past. 

By the nineteenth century Romania maintained a continuos rivalry with the Russian Empire, and this was reflected on the architectural magnificence of the period. They wanted to buy more and better in order to demonstrate their cultural superiority.

In this very context, the princess Elena Kretzulescu decided she would like to leave her own print on the history of Romanian arts and hired young architect Petre Antonescu, who had studied at Paris, in order to rebuild the family residence.

They followed the French Renaissance style, by imitating Loira Valley constructions.

Kretzulescu Palace was finished in 1902.

Since 1972, it houses the headquarters of UNESCO's European Centre for Higher Education UNESCO-CEPES.

The superb palace is situated on Ştirbei Vodă street nr. 39, very close to Cismigiu Gardens.
If you visit Bucharest, don´t miss its evocative view.
And, in case you want to know more, there you have a Top 50 of the most beautiful Romanian palaces.
Just for your joy!

♥ The winner of the Give Away will be announced in the nex post.
Please, remember you are still having the chance to participate.

Autumn in Bucharest

Ey, darlings! It´s so good to be finally back! I did miss you.

It looks like we arrived to Bucharest yesterday, but tomorrow is the two month anniversary of the day we moved to our new home. 

Can you believe it?

However, reporting my adventures has taken me much more time than I expected.

When we released our shimmering apartment I was foolishly convinced that we would get an internet connection soon.
 I assumed I would simply jump into the first internet provider office I could find, get a good deal and happily walk back home to make a couple of posts or whatever.

Silly Violette (I can hear you saying), she will never learn.

And you´re totally right. I am a chronic optimistic...

 The first time I visited an internet provider they smiled a lot (I really mean it, people. The kind of smile that makes you think about The Jocker), but as soon as I started talking in English the smile vanished from their lips. They (and from this point I will refer to them as The Inexplicable People from the Internez) sent someone who could "speak" English to me and explained that I couldn´t be able to register with their company as a foreigner.

 "Really?" I thought. "Ok, I´ll look somewhere else".

 

So merrily off I went, searching for the next internet shop.

And against all expectations, I heard the same words again. In fact, I tried three different companies that evening. 

"What´s wrong with The Inexplicable People from the Internez?" I asked The Gentle One. "Don´t they want our money?"

And then I started thinking they wanted something else in exchange.

 Something like children to eat.

 Because if they are able to transform a simple internet contract on a nightmare, well, they must come from hell or something.

 So, after a week of stupidity and confusion, one of those demons employees told us that we needed to get a national identity number in order to hire any service.

Yeah, like a foreigner you don´t have that kind of right.

As you might deduct, we finally got it but it took a long, long time.

Nevertheless, I am back and I´ll be able to tell you about my Romanian experience, which despite the crazy internet issue is being really amazing. ♥

The Autumn is a lovely season here, as you can see in my pictures from Herastrau park.

Oh! And I don´t forget about the whole Give Away thing.

 I kept receiving questions through the blog mail (you can see the address on the right column). 
So nice to see I have many lovely readers out there! 
I will answer them all on a post very soon and then I will claim the winner and the secret prize.

Good luck everyone.

Stay stunned! ♥

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it

Well, it looks like the boxaholic period has finally begun.

Just before last weekend we got some of these awful cardboard boxes and started packing to face our future. I´d like to say that we are making a wonderful job but actually, the ONLY things we´ve packed so far are The Gentle One´s books. Just his books, not mine. Didn´t even try.

'Why?', I can hear you intelligently asking.

And the reason is, to be completely honest, that I don´t want to do so.

Please, do not get me wrong.
I am dying to move to Romania and start this atonishing adventure, but if only we could wake up one fine morning in our new apartment without all the Last-time drama...

The idea of packing it´s truly hard to me because, as soon as I place the first book, dvd, or framed picture in a box, I´ll be saying goodbye home and I am not ready, not quite yet anyway.

I might get started to freak out a bit here. A little bit. OK, maybe a huge bit.

We are supposed to be moving in less than a month. A MONTH, do you understand? And by then I won´t be sitting in front of this desktop computer anymore, I won´t bake cupcakes on my old oven, I won´t read books by the window (here we go with all the Last-time drama again...). Indeed, in less than a month I´ll have left this house forever.

Yes, I know this house is old (older than Matusalem, actually), and we (well, that´s The Gentle One) spend a lot of our spare time fixing up ruined supplies, but the thing is that we´ve been living here for the last seven years and a half. This house was our first house, the place where we first moved when we started our relationship. 

This shabby house is our home. And now we must leave. OMG.

Ok, I´ll keep breathing, I promise.

[Uses the asthma medicine again]

So, I decided to start documenting the little things that make me happy all around the apartment.
Like my summer reading refuge by the window, the light in my boudoir, or the glowing purple colour we painted the walls many years ago. Because someday I won´t probably remeber the place clearly, and then I´ll have my pictures at least.