2
August
2006
Here are the rest of the pics we took this weekend at the medieval festival:
On most of the streets of the citadel there were swarms of merchants trying to make you buy something from them, be it a pair of traditional leather shoes:
or some hand-embroided belts
or perhaps some carved wooden spoons
if not some semi-precious stones or jewelry made out of them.
Me, I preferred to buy a hand-made choker and get a butterfly painted on my face:
Along with the usual mixture of goth kids/ rockers/ hippies/ clueless turists you can find at the standard Transilvanian festival, there were also a large amount of people dressed in Middle Ages garments.
Look for example at these young ladies:
or this young gipsy merchant:
not to mention these wandering minstrels
There were also people dressed in folk costumes, like this proud girl:
Music was everywhere, popping up where you least expected it -
in the theatre square, as accompaniation to the stilt walkers
near the wall of the citadel, where these very talented girls improvised a two-violin concerto, which we stood mesmerised for almost half an hour to listen to:
(what you cannot see from this picture is just how smashingly beautiful both of them were);
or as another impromptu performance we overheard while eating a pizza in the afternoon, and which turned out to be delivered by a bunch of jolly South-Americans, dressed in North American natives and singing and dancing their hearts out while two locals were offering the band’s CDs for sale. We had to leave Julia and Nora there while we went on a second tour of the citadel, ’cause they didn’t want to move until the Indians ended their concert.
Posted: on the road
31
July
2006
At the beginning of the summer we decided that we’ll either go to the rock festival in Tg. Mures or to the medieval one in Sighisoara. The rock festival lost, mainly because of my ear infection, since the one act we were interested in was on Friday, when I was in no shape to travel. We were no strangers to the second event, since we went there in 2002. That year wasn’t exactly the most glamorous for it though - lots of drunk / high people, plastic beer glasses scattered on the streets and kitschy merchandise everywhere. Fortunately, this year the situation looked a lot better. Lemme show you:
This is the western entrance to the citadel, and you can see me, Julia the apprentice (the girl in the black skirt) and our mutual friend Nora (sporting black trousers) in front of it, in probably the only vanity picture taken there. There was too much beauty to spoil it with some self-promotion, y’all.
The streets were narrow and the houses were placed in the most improbable angles possible. The colours of the houses covered the whole spectrum.
There was a clocktower:
A church in the middle of the citadel:
And one up the hill
to which you had to climb a huge amount of stairs
but it was worth it, because there was a preclassical concerto inside, and some gorgeous mural paintings and altars.
There was also the house in which Dracula’s dad (actually, the chieftain which inspired that particular vampire) lived for a while:
This allowed the merchants to put mr D. on everything, from mugs to T-shirts to paintings to diplomas certifying that you got to this place unbitten.
The rest of the pics, completed with explanations (yes, Raluca, you’ll find out what were those Indians doing there) - tomorrow .
Posted: on the road
31
July
2006
I finished to upload a huge amount of pics from the Medieval Festival that took place in Sighisoara this weekend. Until I get to write the post (or posts) about it, feel free to look at them (and comment) on Flickr. (they’re public, just search for shrinkmamma’s photostream). Oh, and they are put in inverse order - so if you want my comments to make sense, find the beginning and start from there.
See you tomorrow, Ada over and out
Posted: on the road
17
July
2006
My cousin Agnes came to visit this Saturday with her husband and our other cousin, Stefania. They were heading towards Sibiu, where HIM were having a concert. When they arrived, they told us they had a spare ticket, so would one of us join them? Both me and Robi didn’t want to go alone, so in the end we ended up leaving Timi at my mom’s and hopping in the cousins’Logan together.
Sibiu is mostly under reconstruction, because being chosen as the European capital of culture for 2007, it received a shitload of money for renovating its old buildings. It’s still an awesome medieval city:
with awesome medieval streets:
and awesome (medieval?) toilets, decorated with stuffed birds:
Being such an awesome city, it also contains a local branch of the CIA:
We killed time before the beginning of the concert in a park. Notice how Robi is the only one dressed appropriately for the concert:
And then we went in, just in time to see the perfomance of the last opening act, called Amorphis. Shame on me, but I don’t know much about these guys. Wikipedia says they’re also Finns. They were OK, but I went to far to the soft side these days to enjoy a good moshing anymore, so I stayed back. As a friend of us said - “being in the front row while Amorphis is playing gets you a free cellulite treatment.”
Oh, and how soft we got - we had an insulating mat we put under us while we waited for the big guns to begin, and opened our umbrellas whenever rain decided to pay a visit. Hardcore is for childfree youngsters, not us old settled people:
But we sure had a good time. Agnes went to the front row, because she’s the biggest fan of HIM (read - Ville Valo) among us. She also made these pics of Ville, who sang, smoked, drank a few beers and spitted every 5 minutes :
The last song was a Black Sabbath cover, during which Ville learned a bit of Romanian. All in all, a great evening - although I still can’t feel my left eardrum.
Posted: on the road
