The accent

Last evening I came back from a 2 days trip to Bistrita where I had to participate at a stock counting. I had another post about a local taxi driver and now I had another pretty amazing conversation with one of them.

" - You're from Bucharest, wright?

- Ya, we're coming from Bucharest.

- I could tell from your accent...

- :))))))) (what accent????)

- What? You didn't think you had no accent...as you say we have an accent, so do you."

And then I realized that he is wright. I always thought that I am on the right side and that the pother person was talking in a funny way, but never thought that the other person may think the same way.

Like most natural languages, Romanian can be regarded as a dialect continuum. The dialects of Romanian are distinguished by minor differences in pronunciation. Romanians themselves speak of the differences as accents or "speeches" (in Romanian: accent or grai). Several regional accents are usually distinguished:

• Muntenian accent (Graiul muntenesc), spoken mainly in Wallachi and southern parts of Dobruja.


• Oltenian accent (Graiul oltenesc), spoken mainly in Oltenia and by the Romanian minority in Timok region of Serbia. In Oltenia a notable dialectal feature is the preferred usage of the simple perfect rather than the compound perfect which is preferred elsewhere.


• Moldavian accent (Graiul moldovenesc), spoken mainly in Moldavia, northern parts of Dobruja and Moldova. Written (p) is at times realised as /k/, written before front vowels is sometimes realised as /ʃ/, written <ă>, in final position, is sometimes palatalized, written is rarely also pronounced /i/.


• Maramureșian accent (Graiul maramureșean), spoken mainly in Maramures.


• Transylvanian accent (Graiul ardelenesc), spoken mainly in Transilvania.


• Banatian accent (Graiul bănățean), spoken mainly in Banat. Written before front vowels is sometimes realised as /t͡ʃ/ and as /d͡ʒ/.

Over the last century, however, regional accents have been weakened due to mass communication and greater mobility.

At the end it's great that we can still manage to understand one another.

Love you. Take care.

The map of my adventures

Ever since I got back from my second euro-trip I wanted to buy a map of Europe in order to signal out the places I have visited so far. Last Saturday I finally managed to put the map on the wall and it looks like this:

The white dots present the cities I visited in the first euro-trip in 2007: Budapest, Viena, Praga, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Barcelona, Cannes, Roma, Venezia and Rijeka

The blue dots present the cities I have visited during the second euro-trip in 2010: Munich, Koln, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Goteborg, Oslo, Stavanger and Hamburg

The red dots are isolated trips: 2003 - Lisbon, 2010 - Madrid, 2008 - Split and Belgrad, 2009 - Creta, 2007 - Athens.

That's the resume of my adventure though-out Europe. Hope to put some other dots on the map really soon.

Love u. Take care.

Holidays

Tomorrow is Saint Nicholas and the tradition says that all the children that have been nice will receive presents in their boots tonight but this day is also celebrated by a lot of persons who have this name, and in Romania there are a lot.

One of this person is my uncle, so I went home with a nice cake to celebrate him. Saturday rained all day long so I didn't to much, but today when I woke up around 9 am the sun was shining so bright like in a summer day.

I took my camera and I went to my aunt's. We had to wait for my cousin to get back from work to begin eating and celebrating and as I was quite bored I began taking pictures of the three cats my ant has in her yard: Vasilica, Mircea and Costica (named so by my uncle) and here they are:




They are very knotty and make a lot of mess, but everybody loves them because they are so sweet:))

Coming back to the main event of the day we had a lovely meal and a delicious cake in honor of my dear uncle Nicholas.


Counting the days to Christmas and New Year's Eve.

Love u. Take care.

Celebrating the national day

Today is the 1st of December, Romania's national day and it's a free day. Even though it was a Wednesday and tomorrow I have to get back to work I still insisted on leaving this ugly city for better landscapes.

And so, at 7 a.m. in the morning, me and 8 other people were buying train tickets to Sinaia. Unfortunately for us a 2 and a half train ride turned into one of over 4 hours because there were some troubles with the electricity.

When we got to Sinaia it was late, foggy and raining...but we still had to go up. So we took the cable cabin (i did not find another term for it) to 2000 m where there was quite a serious blizzard...we still insisted on going to Piatra Arsa...but unfortunately after half an hour we had to turn around because we couldn't see the track signs anymore.

That's the short version of the story because I am quite tired...I will leave the pictures to say the rest:

in Sinaia train station:


getting ready for action:


deeeeeeep, cold snow:


just a "little" windy:)



everything was frozen:


so after a while we froze too:))


the well deserved hot wine:


and bonus one big, fat cat living at 2000 m altitude:


Coming soon with more pictures.

Love u. Take care.

Driving through the country

The past few days I was out of town with work. I had to participate with a colleague of mine to some stock counting in Cluj Napoca and Caransebes. I liked the idea from the very start only because it involved driving. The whole road trip took 3 days and each one brought it's surprises.


Day 1: Thursday, November 25 Bucharest - Pitesti - Ramnicu Valcea - Sibiu - Alba Iulia - Turda - Cluj Napoca (12:00-18:00)

Even though I had driven this road so many times before during all the seasons the view of the mountains, covered with the white coat of snow still surprised me.

Day 2: Friday, November 26
Cluj Napoca - Turda - Alba Iulia - Sebes - Orastie - Hateg - Otelul Rosu (17:30-21:30)

In the morning, when I woke up in Cluj Napoca, I was amazed to see that the snow had taken over the city.

Day 3: Saturday, November 27
Otelul Orsu - Caransebes - Drobeta Turnu Severin - Craiova - Pitesti - Bucharest (15:15-22:15)

It was nice to see once more the great Danube...
This is the greatest part of my job, that it gives me the opportunity to travel, to combine the work with the thing that I like doing best, discover new places and new people.

Love u. Take care.

Discovering Bucharest on two wheels

Yesterday I did something I wanted to do for the past 2 weekends...I got back on my bike and joying a group of bikers explored the unknown part of the city.

Did you know that Bucharest, is surrounded by a ring of 18 fortifications built in the late 19th century.

A report by the War Ministry led the celebrated Belgian military architect Henri Alexis Brialmont (who made several visits to Bucharest, meeting with King Carol in the process) to draft a plan for the city's fortifications, with construction beginning in 1884. The forts, about 4 km apart, cost 111.5 million gold lei (15 million were initially allocated), or three times the annual army budget. The forts took over two decades to build, and work was quite complex; the walls are two metres thick in places. All 18 were linked by a road and a railway, which today is DN100, Bucharest's ring road. 18 subterranean batteries were placed between the forts, and the fortification ring included some 240 pieces of artillery in all.

Romania, which had recently won its independence from the Ottoman Empire, undertook this enormous effort in keeping with the prevailing military doctrine of the day, which said the capital city should be defended at all costs. In case of invasion, Bucharest was to be the point of retreat, but also the place where significant military operations would begin, spreading from the Danube to the Carpathians.

At the beginning of the 20th century, chemical and aeronautical advances rendered the forts obsolete a short while after their completion. Explosives and aerial bombardment made classical fortifications useless in modern warfare. In 1914, the Battle of Liege, in which the German Army broke through fortifications also designed by Brialmont with greater ease than expected, alarmed the authorities in Bucharest. The forts' artillery pieces—all top-notch Krupp cannons—were quickly dismantled and transformed into mobile artillery. Indeed, by 1916, when the German Army was approaching Bucharest, the forts had already been abandoned, and the city was taken without too much difficulty.

Today, the military has abandoned most of the forts. Stray dogs seek shelter in some of them; storage space and mushroom-growing facilities are other reported uses. During the Communist era, Fort 18 in Chiajna was used as a pickled goods market. However, the military still employs some of the forts, those to the southwest of the city in particular. They serve as firing ranges and munitions deposits, also housing army units; civilians are forbidden entry. The best-known fort is number 13, at Jilava - a military prison from 1907, a feared destination for political prisoners and place of execution during the Communist era, and now still a penitentiary.

The destination of our bike ride was fort 18 and here are some proves of the stories mentioned above.

And at the end these were the results...

Thanks to all the people involved in this adventure and I hope to get to ride with you again.

Love u. Take care.

Time flys when you'r having fun

Have you notice that when you are on vacation or just on the weekend, enjoying yourself, time flys a lot faster than when you are at the office working your ass off checking the clock every 5 minutes:))

Last night I went out and at a certain point in the evening I just looked at the watch and it was almost 2 a.m....I couldn't believe my eyes, I had such a great time that I wasn't even tired. I slept about 3 hours last night and I still have so much to do today. But it was worth it:))

Love u. Take care.