July 31st, 2010
Since the 10th of July Green Revolution Association and the local authorities have launched a bike-sharing program to promote biking in the city. The recipe is simple: take 150 bicycles and let people go around the city in a two hour limit, just by signing a simple contract, and what’s more important for the citizens of this great country: totally FREE! This sounds interesting… let’s try it 
The rental-center is at the big parking at the Sports Hall in the Grigorescu quarters (kindof hard to miss actually). We decided to go there at around 11:30, since the opening hours are from 10:00 to 20:00 (though I am not sure about the closing time). What is interesting, however, is that when we got there (11:45), there was a huge crowd waiting to “share bikes”, but there was nobody from the organizers to be found…. HUGE minus, it shows a slight lean towards our usual lack of seriousness… sad.
Anyway we took an hour stroll on the banks of the Somes river and when we got back things were already going on: the bike sharing has started! In order to get a bike ones needs to have its ID Card present and to complete a sharing agreement. The place is equipped with stands to do the completion, they provide ballpoint-pens so this part was really easy. After completing the template, we received a card from the rental-boot and exchanged that for a bike at the bicycle-stand.
Great, we have our wheels! Now to see what you actually receive: a quite decent quality bicycle (with a slight wobble while riding it) no gear-changer, nothing fancy, just a basket up front, protection over the chains, and a broken bell (at least in my case 
). The fun can begin!
Apart from the great bike track along the Somes river and into the “Roselor” park, it is quite hard to get to the city center… Getting to the central park is relatively easy, but from then on the bicylce-roads are a bit disconnected (or hard to spot). From the center to the Marasti quarters it was a piece of cake, bike lanes all the way (with a few interruptions only) and also the main streed towards the train station (Horea street) has bicycle lanes on it’s entire length (one way lanes on each side). For a more complete overview of tracks in Cluj, click here.
All in all it was a great experience: for a guy who takes the car everywhere in Cluj, it was a great surprise how much fun this can be on a sunny day (no worries, I am still a petrol-head). Two years ago since I have left Cluj for my adventures in Italy and Belgium, the city did not have a single bicycle track, and now here we are… I think if this goes on well, things can get really great in Cluj 
.
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July 5th, 2010
Over the weekend Bugatti once again proved it’s superior performance to other sports cars. The new Bugatti Veyron SuperSports claimed back it’s trophy as the worlds fastest production car… in the world 
The car clocked an average of 431.07 km/h on it’s two way record setting run, to the engineers amazement, who were hoping a speed of 425 km/h.
What I like about this car, is that not only it managed to break the record (again), but (as always), the Veyron has always done it with style. I mean yes, the SSC Ultimate Aero was the previous record holder, barely beating the Veyron’s short lived record, but just look at it… it’s… well… it lacks the glamor… And now, the new Bugatti kept it’s style (although not as fancy as the original) and has jumped ahead with 20 km/h more than the SSC. Now that’s something.
More info on autoblog.it (In Italian, but I have to be honest, that is where I have read about it first…)
Here’s another report from the guys who never really got the hang of the metric system: autoblog.com
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July 4th, 2010
On the European road E58 towards Baia Mare from Cluj, there is a small village called Coplean. It is a quite insignificant village, one might just pass through without even remembering it’s name. There is, however, one thing in this village, that made me go there and took some photos of it: the ruins of the Haller Castle.
The castle was built in 1725-1771 by János gróf Haller de Hallerkö, the governor of Transylvania between 1735-1755. It is a baroque style castle having some rococo elements which have been added later by the sculptor Anton Schuchbauer (1719-1789).
In quite the same shape as the Bánffy Castle, this small castle has been completely forgotten nowadays. Nobody really knows about it, there are no markings on the road to lead a curious visitor there, it is just standing alone, hidden behind the village houses, out of sight. In size it is much smaller than the castle of the Bánffy family from Bonchida, no stables, no side-buildings, just one single one storied U-shaped building surrounded by brick fences (what is left of it) and the ruins of a small tower at the entrance. The communist era did quite the job to ruin the “Shell Castle” (because of the ornaments on the side) along with its five hectare park…
How to get there: well, there is one dusty side-road that forks off the main road and leads into the village. Follow that, cross the railroad, take a left and then a right and the ruins will immediately get into sight. No signs, no markings, just ask the locals if you’re lost (that’s what I did…). Oh, yes: make sure you do not go there in shorts and sandals the vegetation surrounding the ruin is not very friendly on some points .
Here are some pictures I have taken. Enjoy.
—===[#22]===—
Posted in Romania, Travel | No Comments »
June 1st, 2010
… or how can one plan to see two movies in one evening and actually see a completely different one. Yes, it is possible and it is not actually our fault.
As I have written in a previous post, TIFF has started and is ongoing for the entire week. We have planned to see two movies: The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks around the Corner, a Bulgarian film and after that, Tehroun an Iranian/French movie. According to the plan, we could finish just in time with the first movie to get to the other.
So let’s start with the cinema of the first movie: Cinema Echinox, an open air cinema, inside the walls of the Babes-Bolyai University. As a second very important information I have to mention, that the rain was pouring as if the whole city were under a great shower. The result: the movie was canceled… no matter, we were told, that we can get voucher’s for the ticket which we could use to watch another movie during the festival.
So far so good… we went to Cinema Republica, a full-size cinema, protected from the rain. The second information that needs to be told here, is that Cinema Republica was the refugee cinema for another open air cinema of the festival, meaning that in case of rain, the movie from the main square was moved to this cinema. As I wrote before, it was raining. Movie no.2: canceled.
So now, we had the option of watching the movie which was moved in from the main square: Road Movie, an Indian movie, or be satisfied with a nice stroll in the city center in a rainy evening… we chose option one, and exchanged our voucher’s to enter the Indian movie.
The movie started off great, but somewhere in the middle I think the writer got bored and made up some quite stupid scenes which I think ruined the whole movie. Maybe I was too tired, after the movie-hunt of the evening, but I still do not get the whole point of the movie…
So, was the whole evening worth it? Definitely
—===[#21]===—
Posted in Movies, Romania | No Comments »
May 30th, 2010
I discovered this track a year ago, in the track-list of DreamDance vol. 48. While I was living abroad, I did several long walks either to work or just exploring the city. So I wouldn’t get bored, I always took my iPod (shuffle) with me with some songs… this one, was the best:
—==[#20]==—
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