Cine schimbă becurile în cartierul Coppedè?

Cine schimbă becurile lampadarului, de exemplu?

În imagine, intrarea în cartierul roman Coppedè.

Nu e chiar un cartier, mai degrabă  o grupare de peste 40 de clădiri, proiectate  de arhitectul Gino Coppedè cu imediat un secol în urmă.

Benefits of living in Rome

My rusty English comes back in Rome! Spring has also come while the winds seem to have vanished.

A Google search brought a reader from Africa who really wants to know what were the benefits of living in Rome.

Let me tell you:

Food. Fresh food (people here have refrigerators but no other food storage space in their homes). From vegetables to fish, one could simply shop everyday for the dinner ingredients. Today we'll have broccoli, for example!

Then living in a open-air museum is another blessing. iPhone apps already help tourists understand where they are and what happened there years, centuries, millenniums ago. There are all kind of tours, exhibitions happenings. Google is generous with information on that, just search!

Climate. Though I shouldn't mention this after the snow that paralysed the city in February, temperatures here are friendly to Rome's inhabitants. (the minus being house heating is not a plus here and icy nights could be unpleasant just because people here do not agree it can be really cold inside. On the other hand, looking around in department stores one realises pyjamas are warmer here (I even saw woollen pyjamas. So they do know, just pretend Roman homes are warm)

Art. Art is everywhere and one only has to open the eyes.

Water. Tap water is very good, don't be afraid to drink it. Then all the fountains down town are the place all thirsty tourists should spot. Free fresh water.

Please let me know if you want a list of disadvantages of living in Rome.

back to Rome

Here I am , three years after, back in Rome.

Lovely warm autumn with very few clouds and a special treat at our arrival: 27 Celsius degrees at 7 PM. A shock, even if we were back from Mexico City, where winter or hot summer never comes.

A lot of exhibitions advertised on the streets and buses: Mondrian at the Vittoriano, Filippo Lippi and Boticelli or Georgia O' Keefe? Soviet art or street art? Plenty of time to discover it all.

In the meanwhile, I've discovered that at Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the other weekend, there will be Mahler and his Symphony of a Thousand. I shall be there.

I won't be talking about politics, it is really complicated to me to readapt to Europe and its struggles. There will be a way, I am sure.

due to the flu, i am blogging only in Romanian, here. *(why would that be a reasonable reason?)

i can have what i want here

extrapolation we organized a party last night. the posh kind. a reception, come on!

police car outside, called by ourselves, doorman tipped to be at the entrance until everybody leaves etc.

The first guests arrive in time, they are not Mexicans, what did you think? 

Me, near the door, busy with the flowers I got, somebody rings, I open, the posh lady that comes in ignores me (yes, normally the muchacha opens the door, why a muchacha will wear an expensive black dress, jewels and high heels i don't know) goes right where the people are, talks with them for some minutes, I imagine she is related to one of them, she then turns around and leaves. I don't remember who opened her door, the muchacha inside me didn't do it.

She was going at the Alliance francaise, one block away, and she ended near Allianz Fondika. I blame the taxi driver. And the policemen. And the doorman. Come one, how could she pass all those filters just because she was elegant? Nobody cared where she was going to! 

I intend to become a party breaker. And to go to all kind of posh dinners, just because I will dress the way I will dress.

PS: it would have been so cool if the lady realised she wasn't at the right party only after midnight!

Monica in the Silver City

As we had a loooong weekend in Mexico (it's the Benito Juarez day on the 21st of march and for some years every monday before is a day off, as many other Mondays, in fact)we got out of the city. As you go out of this big tortilla city for other reasons but sightseing: one of them, and an important one,  BREATHING (pollution and high altitude!).

Compasses, friends' suggestion, what we read in books, guides and magazines made us say Taxco and Taxco it was!The silver city.

It's up in the mountains, near the silver mines, and it has no more than 150 thousand inhabitants. And it's really cute!

We were lucky enough to be able to go there on the highway (still horrified with the roads we saw in our way to the monarch butterfly mountains)

So, what's going on in Taxco and who is there to testify?

Thousand of tourists who come to buy silver jewellery or oth

er souvenirs (it's not a cheaper one, but at least it's 925 or even 950 type silver), or  to linger in the main square (Zocalo, as in all Mexican villages or cities), or to eat in the few places that the guides recommend, to listen to some music, on Sunday, or to swallow what the buses', taxis' and dozens of cars' exhaustion pipes produce  as there are people who seemd to have been born in the car, if they cannot climb the city hill by themselves.

There are also museums in Taxco.

I was really sad when I realised the Humboldt House was closed, there was a witch stuff exhibition there that I missed (after the Cuernavaca one featuring torture instruments used by the Inquisition). But I visited the Silvery Museum and I found out that indigens used to work metals way before the Conquista, as precolumbians used silver for religious purposes and not only. 

And yes, I came back with a wonderful pair of earrings.

___________

PS> 10X for the Spanish to English translation down here!

help me understand mexicans

Here I was, this morning, at the Club where we go, waiting for the Aquqgym teacher to arrive. Like the past Friday, she didn't show up neither at 11 when the program say we should all begin move our bones deep into water, nor at 11.40 when I realise the all the classes began until now (what if the sun burns harder?)

Here she came at sharp 12, telling me the class will not begin because, please sit down- I don't want my readers to faint- in 15 minutes they will charge her more for the parking. I was this close to tell her: here are 15 pesos for that damn hour, but I couldn't move, speak, think farther. Here it is anot so cheap club, here is a coach paid to hold classes every day, here she comes telling me I don't know what Mister Vasconcelos talked to her for more than half an hour, and then the parking bomb. 

Chapeau, LaChapelle!

Thanks to Gorgeoux, I didn't do I don't know what on Sunday, but went to the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso  to see David LaChapelle's exhibition here in the DF.

LaChapelle's Mexican debut, called "Delirium of Reason (Delirios de Razón),"features, as you can immagine, some of the photographer's works, done in the last 13 years.

45 pesos for a colourfoul hour downtown, plus some funky photos in the LaChapelle style our friends got taken at  the Colegio's Taller. Inside.

looking for yoga classes?

I know the feeling. While in Romania , I was looking with almost fear to the flyer announcing yoga classes in my neighbourhood. (A long scandal not solved yet, linked to a Romanian Guru.) Then I found a class held by Irina, a Romanian who spent many years in London. All OK, except the cold in that room. I simply didn't wish too much to continue. Then my private teacher, with the techniques that helped me heal from a horrible disease. Then Mexico. Yoga classes almost on every street. Neither in the day/on the hour I wish. I found the AgoraLucis place,here in Polanco, on La Fontaine, where  they have classes even in a glass pyramid. Cool, but then we joined a Club where I could do more than yoga, so I had to leave. Yoga every day at 11! What a blessing! There I was, Araceli was teaching us almost the same asanas that were good fo my health problems, we were there, relaxed, who could be more happier. Me, going there, last Tuesday, jumping like a grasshoper, until, as I was late, I realsied the people weren'tt using mats and the woman in white named Araceli was a man in black. No, it was not a holdup, a TaiChi class which I couldn't attend, as I went there barefoot. Then the Club's programme changed, the classes are only 2 days a week, not all 5, and here I am again without yoga as I dreamed: every day, the I want, not too early, not too late, in a lighted warm  room.

Going to the club, now, to get the programme for February and see what can I do with my life.

By the way, you could do yoga at one of the dozens Instituto Mexicano de Yoga schools too. Just search the areas they cover.

If you are based in Condesa and you are looking for hatha yoga classes on Saturday, here's a tip.

sand, birds and boats

Empty Jack Daniels bottles, trance rythms, burnt faces, nachos on the beach, boat parties a few miles away, Pittsburgh Steelers vs Arizona Cardinals and one sorrow: in February night comes earlier, even on the beach.

Greetings from Playa del Carmen!

¡Viva Don Vasco!

We went to Morelia. The last weekend. My reaction when I heard where we could spend the weekend was: so what's going on there? 

Let's see: 4 hours away from the DF, on the highway,there's this city, capital of the Michoacán  State, who's name is, obviously, taken from Morelos, the revolutionary. Just because Morelos, the Mexican State,and the dozens of Morelos streets in Mexico City weren't enough. OK, I come from a country where the cult of personality was something special. in a way much people don't want to remember. 

And I didn't say anything, even if I wrote half a page:)

OK, a university city, 600.000 inhabitants, a beautiful central plaza, the Zocalo, a UNESCO treasure, a lot of festivals, no security problems, lovely climate, blue sky, a colonial downtown, portals, old tram, information points for tourists and, the most important in a country with so many polices yet inefficient, the Tourist Police. 

The sweets market, where I got waaaaaay before the merchants, is what I didn't expect, in fact, hoping it will be different from what I've seen in Mexico so far. nuts, pistachio, almonds, raw, fried, in chili or caramelized, the famous Alegrias, figs, dried fruits, tamarind and so so on. All uncovered, guarded by people who, at 10 AM, was that breakfast or almuerzo? digged their noses in the plastic plates with steamy tamales, chilaquilles or God knows what it was. I imagined, of course, in my twisted mind, all kind of greasy drops on the sweets so away I went, with fear.

Souvenirs, then. As here in the DF I could see all the colourful things artisans in this little country do, nothing impressed me in Morelia's market. Not even the tiny little leather booties where you could keep your Tequila glass, neither the "Remember Morelia" Eco bags, nor the cowboy frogs with  sadist smiles, who knows why.

11 AM and the sun was burning so hard that i wanted to throw my coat. I kept walking, though, as all my pockets were filled with phone, ID, money, batteries, Kleenex, all necessary when you are alone in a town you don't know. No map! 

The shoe cleaners in the Zocalo were busy bees working hard. I felt compassion for the one who was paid to dye some ex-trendy pink boots in the sades dullest black I've ever seen. But the one who wasn't working yet was somehow more depressing. Or was it the one totally ignored by his client? Don't know, I clean my shoes myself.

The coffee, a real blessing for my half-opened eyes (to too much light or too few oxygen- the altitude is not much lower comparing to the DF)- was taken at Lilian's Gourmet, in the chlorine flavour of the stuff one guy used to scrub the floor so vigorously that I suspected a murder took place there, the night before. I chose the place as at the  Conspiraciòn the doors were closed. Conspiracies have nothing to do with the daylight, it's more and more obvious for me!

I bumped into Melchor Ocampo's,statue too. A man who is so many streets, like Morelos, in fact.** 

A dauntless man with a cruel end, who strongly believed, as the plate is saying, he did for his mother country what he judged it was better. Another moment when the local patriotism strucks me in my head.
I took a deep breath to recover and then, like any normal human being with a stomach, no barriers and fresher air in his lungs, I was hungry. As I never go hunting without my gun, I searched the web looking for The Restaurant, I ignored the guides who, one night before sent us where some guys were selling the tables and chairs of what was once las Viandas de Don Jose.  So we went to Fonda Marceva.Then we walked, say a beautiful tree

a strange guy, 

we realised the little green man runs hard here, when it's his turn, of course, and we noted that it's hard to get bored on a Saturday evening in Morelia.  We saw a tram that does the city tour so we decided that could be a nice thing to do, even if near the Zocalo there were two different concerts. We paid our tickets, waited for our guide, met a family who was really prepared to do the tour (with fried potatoes, sweets, coke, popcorn and toys for the kids), saw where we could leave the tips and we waited. And waited. And waited, until the tram driver told us there's no way he could leave, since the tram is empty.


So we climbed our hotel's roof, sat down, listened to the music and watched the fireworks. And the lights on the Morelia Cathedral . And the people on the street. 

_____________

*Don Vasco de Quiroga, born in Spain, came here some 500 years ago. A great man. Details here.

** There's no happier moment than the one you get lost in Mexico City, just because in every colonia there is a Morelos, Ocampo, Revoluciòn or Londra street!

useless mexican police

While people are assaulted on the streets, while drivers are left without the cars at street corners, while families are left without children for weeks and get a piece of the victim's ear or finger for some million of pessos, I was stopped at a corner because I claxoned. I did it because at every corner somebody jumps on my car to clean it. My car is cleaned every week with proper products and I don't intend neither to get a scratched or dirtier car, nor to see a pistol pointing my head. I claxoned, the policeman stopped me and asked for my papers. This time I was lucky. Next time I could be killed. Policemen are there only when you don't let the guys "clean" your car. Mexico has ten kinds of "policias". Could I know, please, what are they doing? 

this is not a dead blog!

I just didn't have too much time to blog in two languages, with all the things that happened, in the last months.

Briefly: I am in Mexico City and I intend to share with you my experience here.

It's so much fun and also some fear. Yeah, the security blah blah, my paranoia and the rest.

I did see some of the city but it will take months to visit everything. Not to mention the time one'd need to discover the whole country.

keep you posted!

PS: that's me, on one of the beautiful benches on Passeo de la Reforma.

first 2008 post

Gosh, me addicted to blogging, no more than two years ago, realized today I have no stories online for 2008. The truth is I blogged more on my Romanian one, though I haven’t been a graph maniac there either. Life!

Promise: October will bring more stories from more interesting parts of the world.

PS: I don't remember where I was telling stories about the spiders in my house. The fact is for more than three days two of them are on my left. Well, a good housewife would have cleaned the spots immediately. I and some other Romanians are superstitious. First: seeing a spider in the afternoon or better in the evening brings good luck. Seeing one in the morning, the opposite. The most important thing: never kill a spider. So there they will stay until the cleaning lady comes! I wonder what they eat and if they wander around, while I am not here.

PS: my two little ones are not dangerous, thanks for the good thoughts!

Vienna for the first time

Think of me: I liked it so much that I cannot help telling you some little secrets you might want to know.

First of all, I proudly announce you I've been to Vienna with 100 Euros!

Well, thanks to Skyeurope and a ticket reserved two months in advance, I made it at 30 Euros, place included.

Lodged, then, in the fresh Meininger hotel, opened in the Columbusgasse, 30 meters away from the Kepler metro station.(U3) Brand new, as I said, IKEA furnished, with an all-you-can-take breakfast (1ox for the lovely brown buns!) plus 10 minutes free internet for everybody in the room, if the reservation is made online.

What other expenses you should keep in mind: the CAT - train that takes you from the airport downtown...9 Euros/person. BUT! If you go with friends and you are 3, I suggest you reserve a cab, online of course, here. The price from the hotel I was lodged in to the airport was 25, 5 Euros, so less than 9 euro/person, if you are three. I had to take it in the morning, since my plane was leaving at 6 AM, I made the reservation in time, a month before, and with no other phone call or email, ten minutes than the hour I was expecting the cab, the driver was there, waiting. For going around in the city, the 72 stunde (72 hours) ticket is the best, at 13, 60 Euros. It works on all buses, trams and underground trains, for 72 hours, as it is called.

Places to eat: accidentally we've had our first meal at Cafe Diglas, which proved to be in our guide, so our 6'th sense is still working.

Nice huge courses, choose a menu but only if you understand German, otherwise the waiter doesn't seem to keen to explain what it is all about. I had a potato-celery soup with thyme, and some ricotta ravioli, while my companions had a Kaiser schnitzel with chalots sauce with chestnuts and a Buchtel in vanilla sauce as desert, and some veal and mashed potatoes with beet and horse radish sauce plus a vanilla sauce over a baked apple stuffed with nuts and raisins.

*The menus were numbered, so the waiters dropped at our tiny marble table saying 1, 4, or 5 :).
The last day we dropped again at the Diglas, since it is very closed to the Stephan's Dome, for an apfel strudel. Very good, as we guessed watching on a wall screens how the people make it.

Sacher?

Of course! It was on my plan from the beginning. In a not so warm room, though atmosphere was cosy, *heat, people, the room, heat it!, we tasted the famous cake and watched the pictures on the walls. Keep in mind, the prices are high but any cent worth the hmmmm yummy cake with natural plain cream. Some 4 Euros a slice, 1 euro the wardrobe, and the 10% for the waiter, since in Austria service is not included on the bill.

Sissi!

Sissi is everywhere, in Vienna. So we decided it's the Schönbrunn Palace where we'll get to meet her better. As you can see on the Palace's website, tickets are available online. For those who don't want to spend their life in the small quite humble I would say palace (come on, I come from Becali's land!) there is an Imperial Tour, for half an hour in the most important rooms of the building. 9,50 Euros. For 12 Euros, the Grand tour take the visitors to another wing of the palace, important, as well, for history stands in small pieces, no?

Christmas!

Isn't it lovely to arrive in Vienna before Xmas? We loved the Christmas tree and market at the Schönbrunn Palace but we enjoyed more the Xmas market in front of the City hall. Plus the huge doughnut (I asked vanilla cream, got apricot jam, yikes) and the punch, yummy in a cold winter night.

For I forgot to mention: Vienna is really cold in november/december keep that in mind when you plan to see it during winter. But it's such a lovely place!

how you get to Scream

Montain Dew Ad

Agency: Graffiti BBDO

Location: Bucharest

Creative Director: Ema Prisca

Copywriter Dan Stanescu

Art Director: Cosmin Simionescu

hey

My Munch Scream obsession came again, while I was reading about the National Novel Writing Month in the US, a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing, whose goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. Munch is one of the participants, horrified he didn't finish the novel. Drawn here

virtual Xmas list from a naughty girl

what would you ask Santa Claus to get to your little girl, this being the list?

for girls who travel

luggage mustn't always be dull, grey, black!

look here.

mine looks very much the same. not so expensive, though.

X things to know about Rome

Rome is a city of ruins, churches and baroc squares. the guides also speak about Vatican, Fontana din Trevi and other two, three maybe ten big touristic attractions. Thousands of other little things can make a trip to Rome richer.
Walking around the city. Rome is big for thousands of years. As the old romans, you could have a walk near the Imperial Fora, starting from the Colosseum and Constantine's Arch, to climb, then, the hill to Domitian's Imperial Palace. Look at the Circus Maximus. An amazing panorama! Don't forget about Via Appia Antica. So beautiful, by sunset!
Rome is the Vespa city but it's more beautiful if you see it by bike. With only 11 euro, uou can rent one for an entire day (more on http://www.ecomoverent.com/) and you can go from downtown to the outskirts, on the Tiber's banks.
No need to talk about the big piazzas, they are in all the guides. My favourite is Piazza di Spagna. The little squares, though, have a special scent. On my list: Campo dei Fiori, downtown, near Piazza Navona, from where, on a very narrow street you can get to Piazza del Fico.(now in refurbishments)

In that area too is Piazza di Pasquino, where you could go by day, to read what are the roman citizens complaints. For five hundred years, people come here to tell what bothers them, in verses or prose, on little notes called pasquinade which they attach to a statue. Conceived in the roman dialect, the little tirades generally attack the Pope and the governants.
Coffee, coffee and coffee again. Tip: if you drink it for the daily caffeine dose, you better ask for it at the bar. A ristretto vanishes in two seconds on the addicted's throat, so no need to pay almost the double price, just to sit at a table. Attention: the romans are drinking cappuccino only in the morning, so don't ask for it at noon or worse, in the evening. I am not claiming you won't be served, but in Rome we behave like romans, no? Ask for a cornetto near the coffee. Or for some aragostine ( filled with Nutella). For a richer sensation, I fully recommend the sorchette. They can be found near Porta Pia. The translation is vulgar, the pleasure not. A puffy dough with a chocolate and cream icing on top, the sorchette are famous around the students that spend the weekend nights in the clubs near Porta Pia. It is a real custom that before they go home, they fill themselves with these goodies, from the la Lambiase. A proof: the dozens of cars parked near the building.
(Lambiase Antonio Laboratorio Pasticceria Via Cernaia 49 A, Roma)
Rome is the city of angels. On the walls, on a bridge that is only theirs (Ponte degli Angeli), in the churches, everywhere you can see the beautiful creatures that are watching upon us.
Caravaggio without a cue. Possible! Just go to the Saint-Louis des Français church, between the Pantheon and Piazza Navona. Three works of Caravaggio, all consacrated to Saint Matthew cand be admired in the chapel that bears the same name.
You can discover another Rome if you go to EUR, the quarter the fascists built in the 30's. Few tourist know about it, but, if you have time, you can go there to see how the architects of the early XX century saw things, then. If you get there, you could see the Collosseum in a square variant.
At table: waiters in Rome are generally rude, so don't take it personally! You cannot leave Rome if you haven't tasted the Italian wines . If you want to try something not so expensive, go to the Enoteca Cul de Sac (73, Piazza Pasquino) and wait for a free table. To the ladies, I recommend a Braccheto d’Acquim, because it is sweet, bubbly, and not so alcoholic. The enoteca menu consists of hundreds of wines from all over Italy.

full article in Romanian here, in Timeout Bucharest.
all this wouldn't have been possible without Silvana, Andrea, Dana and Poliana. Mille grazie a tutti!