Finally Spring !

Today, during lunch break I met my husband downtown and we spent a lovely hour together, chit-chatting and having the first ice-cream on a terrace, for 2010. It was warm ,sunny and all in all, a perfect time to enjoy both the exquisite ice cream and the light, glowing air.

I had yoghurt ice cream with strawberries and he had a chocolate and mint one, with an expresso. Ah, it felt so good. ! Sometimes precious moments like this one, disguised in simplicity and casual ,can be so rewarding !  There was a Shakespear Theater Festival taking place and a Ford Exhibition in the plaza but frankly the ice cream and the lovely time beat them by far.

Getting a driving license in Romania

This post has been inspird by a very nice post of Piglet in France.I found her blog while rambling over the net and loved it. Her post was about driving in France and the right priority rule :)) My post is related to driving, right priority rule in Romania and preparing for the driving license test.

Not only to take a driving license is a dreadful complicated thing, but learning for the test itself is boring and hard work, like the kind of hard work one has to put in a most important exam. You have 30 minutes to decide the right answer and u have to answer 26 questions .You can have only 4 mistakes ....

Until 3 years ago I was a proud pedestrian and used the car only when I was a passenger in a taxi. But I had to take my driving license because my husband insisted I had to and bought me a car so I couldn't avoid driving. Learning for the driving license test was hard, nasty and completely un-rewarding. Lots of signs and hundreads of hypotetical driving quizes, learning by heart all the driving rules in the Law Code... bla, bla, bla ...

I am proud to say that after 4 month of learning daily I passed the test with an A+ .... Oh, I was very happy and eager to start driving but I soon found out I had to face now a new nightmare- that of dealing with the Romanian trafic and Romanian men driving a car ( a human specie u don't wanna meet, trust me).

The photos below are only a fewbfrom the hundreds  the candidates  had to solve on subjects related to non-marked junctions and the order of engaging in crossing :))

Have fun looking at them :))
Now they don't seem complicated but at that time I was horrified and had to over learn the driving rules to get it right :))

Winter Has Come !

It has been raining in the last 24 hours and the south of Romania is now covered in snow.
This is the old house across the street- I see it every day when I walk by and I have always loved it. This is what it looks like today:

This is another splendour - a corner house representative for the late 19th century architecture. Unfortunately, just like the one across my house it should be carfully renovated...

Well,  these are some old oak trees .
I wonder how many generations of children have walked by it , just like I did it as a young little girl.

Finally, a perfect proof of the saying: " The way to hell is paved with good intentions'. The peole who bought this house wanted to fix it and make it a " modern" thing.... How horrible this one looks painted in lime and without its original plaster moulding , you can see from the picture below.

The Gloomy Road to Slatina (or Hell )

Travelling in the southern Romania ,in a cold february afternoon.

I was going to visit the city of Slatina, Olt County . The roads were  empty, with a void, almost Russian atmosphere which was very strange since this part of the country is usually crowded, sunny and friendly. Alas, the day these photos were shot the gloomy air made the whole place hard to recognise. We felt like in a Nikita Mihalkov movie.

Still, it was beautiful and dark, in a dangerous ,  frightening way I will alawys remember ... This is part of my southern Romania. I was born here and I love this place.

the Ugly and the Dirty ... Centrally Located

Grafittis on Stirbei Voda Boulevard in Bucharest, the capital caity of Romania. Once a former cleaning and ironing shop, the building got closed althogh it's located in the very center. Someone decided it should be 'transformed'with grafitti paint. This is the ground floor. The upper floors remained untouched by colour. It is hard to say if this is a case of "beauty assasination" or a mere way of turning gray stone into something alive.What is for sure is that among the other normal houses the former cleaning shop stands out.