Author: ghetran

Friends

Friends make your life worthwhile. I´ve never had tons of them, but I had a couple of close friends in school up until I moved to Bucharest to study languages, 15 years ago. Quite on the sociable side, it has always been easy to find a person to chat with over a coffee or two. A close friend however is not something you stumble upon at any street corner. It took me in fact years of either trying too hard or giving up too easily on new friendships to find the right people. For ages, I used to think that I had no close friends anymore. That they somehow belonged to a closed chapter of my life and that the new ones were more or less acquaintances. People to have a beer and mingle at parties with. Somebody to invite over for dinner from time to time.

Two years ago I worked in Bergen for 3 months, so I would only come home in the weekends. It was a strange experience, a good one in many ways. I hardly had time for my husband, my pets and my closest friends and that´s when I discovered I did have some close friends, whom I really missed while away. Little by little I gave up on friendships that mostly stole my time and my focus away from things that matter.

I´ve been a little under the weather for the last couple  of days and I had to ask my friends for practical help. It was so difficult to ask and yet they offered their help without even blinking! Today things are starting to  look up. I came home to find a card from Paris sent by my best friend friend from high school. It´s amazing how the little things in life are the ones that count the most!

It just felt right to write down a couple of lines paying homage to friendship. Because it´s so precious. And because without it, you stand alone.

Amsterdam

A blog I follow by a fellow countryman Amsterdamming always presents the canal city in a new posture. The more I get to see of it, the more enchanting I find it. It´s alive! We went there for a long weekend a couple of years ago and were lucky with the weather, too! We walked and walked, almost got run by a bicycle  several times, enjoyed a waffle, then a coffee, bought a souvenir, localized the Anne Franck museum, took a picture of a cat living on a boat, you name it. Vintage shopping was great and so was the Indonesian cuisine. We´ve been planning a spring break there, but it seems it´ll have to wait until next year. Enjoy some pictures so long.

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Joey L via Lumas

I discovered Lumas in November last year, in Berlin. The concept is pretty cool- affordable art, meaning that a photography is available in a limited number of exemplars and its selling price rises along with the demand. We were supposed to buy one picture as a Christmas gift for the house, but the jolly season proved more expensive than we had foreseen. 😉

This week´s artist is Joey L. and his pictures of holy men of India is no less than amazing! Thought I´d share them with you!

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Summer is on its way

Oh, I can feel it already! Winter is gone, I can smell the fresh air, but it doesn´t have a sting to it anymore. Summer is on its way! I´ve been longing for it for so long, anticipating, making plans, I´m sure it will be the best summer yet!

We don´t have that many holiday plans yet, but we´ll probably take all those weekend trips we never get around to do otherwise. Except for two short breaks in May- me in Lisbon with a friend and Vuong at a fair in Barcelona, and 10 days in Belgrade in June, we have absolutely no idea what we´ll be doing. It just has to include Sam and some good weather. And shrimps and white wine.

Take a look at Drøbak, it´s a small town dream just an hour away from Oslo where we spent a Saturday last year.  It was such great fun, can´t wait to go back. They have a lovely antique shop, white wooden houses, a small marina and a couple of restaurants. Who needs more?

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Sunday walk

On a sunny day, Oslo is the best thing you could ever wish for! We have the forrest just a tube ride away, the marina downtown and lots of cafés around. Besides, going out to enjoy the sun and get some D-vitamin is mandatory. Everybody does it. You just can´t let the chance pass you by.

Yesterday was such a day and since Sammy is the real deal, we decided to go to Frogneseteren.  It´s a nice walk in the woods and on the top you get to eat some goodies, too! This is the Romanian way, nothing is too strenuous if you have the prospects of a good meal afterwards.

Afterwards we left Sam à la maison and  went to Sørenga to have a coffee in the sun. My friend Elif joined us and it was a really pleasant afternoon. Dim sum and a movie were in order, so we watched Non Stop with Liam Neeson, an exciting, though pretty straight forward type of movie. Now that´s what I call a Sunday well spent!

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Glorious spring

Yesterday was a marvelous day and the minute I woke up I decided to be happy. Actually, the whole city was set on enjoying the sun, I would later discover.  I started my day with a morning walk with Sam, picked some spring flowers on our way back and had a joyous egg and bacon breakfast with my man.

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France

I´m having a really difficult time adjusting to this uncertain weather, is it spring, is it still winter, which coat do I wear, do I still need gloves and how come it´s so windy!? At least it´s been sunny, it made it so much easier to spend time outside with my Sammy, without needing to force my own hand.

I´ve only just returned from my trip to Romania and I´m going to Lisbon for a few days in May and still the only thing I can think of is travel. And since France is one of my favorite places, thought I´d share some of my travel pictures with you.

Although I adore France, I haven´t seen nearly as much of it as I should have. Paris is the place I always long for and find a reason to return to, both for its magic and its food. In fact those two are quite interconnected since food is one of the main ingredients of magic! And you´ve got to love French food! Oh, my God! The snails, the cheese, the macarons, the rabbit, the onion marmalade, the Tarte Tatin. Yum! I´ve been to Normandy, Corsica and Cote D’Azur and besides beauty, divine food was the second thing they had in common. I need to explore more, I need to see Provence, the Loire Valley and Bretagne. In the mean time, enjoy a trip on my memory lane!

Restaurant in Corsica, France

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Norway on Sunny Days

Thought I´d throw in a couple of pictures of my adopted country in good weather, since it started snowing today and it got me into a seriously bad mood. To think I was sure the spring was already here! I´m so good at deceiving myself!;-)

 

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I´m a Communist Biddy

I´m a Communist Biddy joins the ranks of great Romanian post 2000 movies  and made me really proud to be Romanian. I have to say,  the way Europe regards Romania, both due to the problems with the Roma and on account of the crimes committed by Eastern Europeans, pride is not the first thing I have in mind when I think of my mother country. Pride seems to be reserved for those with a great historical past or with a blooming economy. Luckily, this is where culture comes in. One shouldn´t judge a book by its cover and neither should one judge a nation by its reputation. And while Romania´s people are the ones who bring shame to their country, they are also the ones who save it from disgrace.

But let´s get back to the movie. I´m a Communist Biddy is a warm and humorous family drama sprinkled with bizarre elements of Romanian culture, the tuica drinking, the living in the past and the worshiping of all things foreign. The daughter who emigrated to Canada and then moved to America comes back with her fiancé Alain, whom her parents insist on calling Alin, since that is a common Romanian name and they can´t be bothered with foreign pronunciation. One of the presents they bring home is a sort of an egg cutter that shapes the egg into a square. This absurd device is perfect to illustrate the admiration Romanians have for all things fancy, although they might not have a function at all. The whole audience laughed as hard as they could at this recognition.

After a while, the family is let in on the young couple´s secret, that they are about to lose their home if they don´t pay 15000$ to the bank. The parents agonize about it and end up mortgaging their own apartment to borrow money from a Chinese pawn-broker.

All in all, the movie is not so much about Ceausescu and the old communist times as it is about youth, nostalgia and family values. And since the mother lived her best years under Communism, she idealizes the impact it had on people´s lives.

You should all see it if you get the chance! And while I´m at it, check out this short movie, too!

Source: http://www.oslokino.no

It´s weekend again

Hi! How are you all doing? In Oslo we´ve been having some nice weather, but today is grey and it´s been raining a little, too. March is bipolar, they say, and I have to agree with that. The problem is that I´m both lazy and capricious.  And the weather doesn´t help, either. I´ve been struggling with what looks like a spring asthenia- low energy and an exaggerated need for sleep- so I´ve done my best to take some extra walks and go hiking in the woods with my Sammy. I don´t know if it helps, yet, but at least when I´m not home, I can´t sleep. hahha! 😉

Today however, I felt like doing everything at once and decided in the end to take Sammy for a city walk to Grunnerløkka, where they “happened” to sell a Ted Baker purse at Fretex, the Salvation Army store. Needless to say it was gorgeous and a bargain, so the walk and the coffee were just a bonus.

This evening me, Vuong and some friends are going to see the Romanian movie “I´m a Communist Biddy” and then have a bite or two. I´ll let you know what I think of it. 🙂

Meanwhile, enjoy some pictures of Sam and his girlfriend, Emi, while I take my long-awaited nap.

Kisses, Alina

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