Hooray!
Tags: photos, Sibiu, Romania, Cluj, politics
Date: 22 May 2007 10:23:41
So, I've found a nicer internet cafe (smoke free, and round the corner from the new flat) and a laundrette, so no going commando for me! The laundrette is extortionate, so I may yet resort to handwashing (one of my most loathed household chores), but for now I'm happy. I had a bit of a wobbly moment last night at the hotel, it really hit me that I'm here by myself and I missed HD so much, plus what I'm doing is scary! But this morning having found the laundrette and phoned one of the charities I'm hoping to do some research with, I'm feeling a bit less freaked by it all.
Anyway - as promised here are some photos (apologies to those of you who've already seen them on my flickr page).
These first two are of the pro-Basescu rally in Cluj - if you click on the first one it gives you more of a description there of what it says.
These next three are from Sibiu - the first one is of snow still on the mountains just outside the city (the southern Carpathians) despite it being boiling hot in the city itself, which I took from the bus. The others are from Piata Mare (Big Square) - Sibiu centre has 3 main squares, Piata Mare, Piata Mica (Little Square) and Piata Huet.
This one is of pro- and anti-Basescu posters - again click on the photo for explanation. The referendum took place a couple of days ago, and President Basescu won it convincingly (nearly 75% voted no to him being impeached). He's been in trouble already though, having grabbed a mobile phone from a TV reporter and then driving off with it still switched on, so now the entire nation has heard him refer to the reporter in very racially unflattering terms. It's all go here.
Here are a couple of extremely unflattering shots of me trampolining at the weekend! Sigh - I'm so glam.
All the other shots from now are from Saturday night, which throughout Romania was "Museum Night" - lots of museums opened for free between 8pm and midnight, and I went with a friend to Cluj's History Museum. It was all very alt.worship with lots of tealights all over the place, and I took a ton of photos - these are just a small selection:
Now I'm in Sibiu I've been taking lots of pictures, the previous internet cafe didn't have USB ports on their computers but this one seems to, so I'll have to remember to upload some more pictures later for you.
More outtakes from the research diary will probably follow next time too!
(PS Sorry to anyone who's looked at this in the first few minutes after I posted it - photos were all over the place, I cocked up some of the coding which is pretty impressive given that it's copy and paste!)