Archive for the ‘Cluj’ Category

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Light Festival

Saturday, May 8th, 2010

Honestly when I was told that there is going to be a “Light Festival” in the central park of Cluj, I really thought they were talking about laser shows and a spectacular light-parade. Then, I was told, there is only going to be candles… now how spectacular can that be? Well pretty spectacular 🙂 : I have never seen the central park like this. There were thousands of small candles lit in small paper-boxes on the alley borders. It really looked magical.
Light Festival Cluj
There were a total of 8000 candles in the entire park and for 2 hours (21-23) the park lighting was turned off (apart from the lighting around the lake) letting only the candles illuminate everything. Although the place looked good, it was a bit crowded. Because of that, I was not really able to see anything of the street performers who were making a fire-show.

The event is organized by a national organization called “Cercetasii Romaniei” (Romania’s Scouts), who organized this event the first time in 2004 in the central park from Cluj, lighting 200 candles to remind people of the beauty of the little things in life. Since then the event has been organized each year, now it has been extended to 12 cities in the country.

I was not able to do any usable photos (apart from the ones I used to make the picture for this post), so no photos about this event… sorry.

—==[#15]==—

Posted in Cluj, People&Society, Romania | Comments Off on Light Festival

A baroque castle

Saturday, May 1st, 2010

…well the ruins of it actually. But still it was an interesting place to visit. And again I have begun talking about the subject, without first presenting it. So: what is the subject? The subject is the Bánffy Castle from Bonchida, a small village near Cluj. The construction of the castle started in 1437 and was finished in 1543, but it was still standing until WWII. The castle had a mixture of renaissance and baroque style. It was owned by the Bánffy family who also had a palace in Cluj.
Banffy Kastely
So, how to get there? Well if one starts off from Cluj, then the main road towards Gherla has to be taken. One has to pass Jucu (Nokia) village and from then it is basically a straight road until the crossing of the entry road to Bonchida (Bontida). At the entry to the village there is a huge map of the area and one can easily spot where the castle is. Now this was a nice surprise: at last something that is easily found. The entry fee is 2RON (50 cents), so it is a bargain 😉

A lot of people do not know about the castle, simply because it does not mean much to the local population and it’s touristic potential is barely being scratched. But there is hope: the castle is being slowly restored after signing an agreement between the Romanian Ministry of Culture and “Institute of Historic Building Conservation” from Great Britain and The Office for Hungarian Cultural Heritage Protection (I hope I translated it right). The restoration works have been under the high patronage of Prince Charles of Wales who has visited a number of times the construction works.

What is sad: this is only one of the numerous castles and fortresses which have been destroyed after WWII and under the period of the communism. I have visited several countries and admired the abundance of cultural heritage sites. These are the backbones and pride of a society: something to fight for, something what gives you the necessary power to move on. Much of this is completely lost in our country. We have a lot to work until we can get things right, but as this example shows, nothing is lost forever…

Picasa photos here.

—===[ #14 ]===—

Posted in Cluj, Romania, Travel | 1 Comment »

A salt mine

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

I find myself in the same situation as I was at the time I started to write about my travel experiences. Again, I could not find too much information about the place we wanted to visit on the internet. Or… I must correct myself, I found something, but of course it was wrong… from two points of view: the opening hours of the place we wanted to visit were wrong (due to which we actually changed the day of visit) and the entry price was wrong. What was this place? It was the Salt Mine of Turda (a nearby town), which can be visited by tourists. The mine has undergone recently an extensive renovation process making it more accessible for visitors of all ages, so we said we have to visit, to see how it looks like.
Salina Turda
Yesterday at around 13:00 we had the idea of doing this short trip. On the internet I have found a timetable saying, that the mine is open from 9:00 to 13:30, so we postponed the trip to today. We started off at 10:00 to get there on time. One little thing: look for small indicators saying “Salina Turda” they forgot to mark it on the big indicators (good thing they didn’t put out an A4 and hand-written the directions on it 😉 ). Anyway we arrived there safely and relatively easily (the short road connecting the main road to the mine which is full of holes can be ignored).

We got to the ticket-office, where to my surprise I saw indications in three languages (wow): Romanian, English and Hungarian (a lot of Hungarian tourists by the way). On one of these indicators there was also a time-table: the mine is open between 9:00 and 15:00 (so much for the accurateness of what I have found on the net). Anyway we payed the entry price of 15RON (€3.65), contrary to the internet price of 10RON and we went in. The whole visit started with a quite long walk through an entirely lit tunnel until we arrived to the actual entrance to the mine. From here a larger corridor lead us to separate chambers. Nothing spectacular there. There was however, a small, wooden staircase leading downstairs: now don’t miss that, that IS the actual entrance into one of the modernized chambers (photo below).
Salina Turda
The chamber itself is huge: it even has it’s own lake on which people can go row boating. There is a mini-football field a small theater even a ferry’s wheel (which was stopped at the time of our visit). The view of the walls was breathtaking. The sheer size of them and the stalactite-like formations of salt give the place a unique feeling. Even the bottom is filled with salty-sand which is sparkling in the internal lighting of the place. Amongst all this salt, we met a few tourists, who have not been able to see the salt: “Where f…k is the salt? All I can see is big gray walls”.

It is really hard to write about it. One most go see. It has a little bit of ‘Sci-fi’ feeling: at first glance I thought I was in a secret underground facility where spacecrafts are built 🙂 . The whole trip lasted between 90 and 120 minutes (at the entrance it says it takes 1:30h).

Here are some photos I took.

—==[ #12 ]==—

Posted in Cluj, Romania, Travel | 1 Comment »

André Tanneberger…

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

… or ATB as most of the people know him, has performed today in Cluj, at Obsession club. He has already performed in Obsession for a couple of times, but this was the first time I decided to go see (I have elready missed Above&Beyond, so I said I will not miss this…)

Before anything else, I have to say: it was GREAT :D.
ATB Obsession
The ticket price was 40RON (€10), because we bought it in advance. The ticket at the entrance was 60RON (€15). The party started with Josh Gallahan at around 12:00 who has warmed up the crowd for the star of the night, who arrived precisely at 01:00AM as scheduled and took over the DJ controls until a little after 3:00 AM.

Among other things he has played some of his well known hits (contrary to the rumors), but other good trance songs, too. At one point the sound completely changed, by ATB playing the song Killing in the name of by Rage against the machine.

Unfortunately I only had my telephone to take pictures/shoot videos. Anyway, here’s a sample I uploaded, just to give an idea of what went down there:

Concerning future plans, all I can do is repeat his words: “See you next year”.

—==[#10]==—

Posted in Cluj, Music, Romania | Comments Off on André Tanneberger…

Attracting Clients

Friday, January 29th, 2010

I was surfing on the internet and just out of curiosity I have entered a site with real-estate businesses. There have been a few interesting offers, but they all had a general flaw, which I personally hate about the new flats that are being built in Cluj: almost none of the flats have underground parking. A few levels into the ground would really not hurt, if nothing else, it would add extra stability… but no… not in Cluj…
Home
As I was surfing among the offers I have stumbled upon one which said it had underground parking… wow… I was amazed, could this be possible? I checked the pictures and the floor-plan: quite good. It was a one-room apartment for €38.500 in a very good area (Zorilor) and the ad said that a garage comes with it also. I did a quick calculation and I realized that with the new house-loan program that the country has (“prima casa”), the monthly rates would be a bit more than the rent I am paying right now. I decided to take a look the next day.

The second day I called the real-estate agency. My first question was if the garage was really in the price of the apartment: this is where the first surprise hit me… the answer was NO, an extra €6.000 is charged for that. Well, I thought no problem, maybe I’ll pay the extra. I decided to arrange a meeting to see the apartment. When I got to the agency I had to sign a paper which said, that I would have to pay the agency an additional 2% of the flat price if a deal would be made… interesting… another €800 or so… On the road we picked up another agent who was supposed to show us around. In the car the two agents immediately started to talk about how well business went and how few apartments were left for sale… yeah right I thought (Nice move however from the agents 😉 ).

We got to the flats and had a look at the apartments: there have been various arrangements on different levels, but I was told, that there were only 5 flats left… (nice move again…). The apartments had a pretty decent quality, however they were not really impressing. The isolation was however really good: no heating and in the -10 degrees, which was outside, nothing could be felt in the apartments… The down side was, that the apartment which had the price tag from the ad was actually quite small, on the top floor and nothing like the one described in the ad. The apartment described in the ad was actually €42.000…

I asked the agent to have a look at the garage also: nice, but dusty and seemed like a construction site (although it was ready for more than a year). The really big problem which appeared however, was the fact that I could only pay for the garage with cash down:€6.500 for one spot in the underground parking area, or maybe if I have cash at the spot when paying, I could get it for less:€5.500…
OK, I said… I’ll call you tomorrow with my decision…

I was really determined to go on with the arrangement, but all day long something was bugging me and made me uncomfortable… something was not right. I stepped back and analyzed again the problem: now it did not seam like it was a good idea anymore: the full price got up to €49.300 and I had to pay around €8.000 as an advance… I said NO: this would eat up all my salary and practically I could not save up anything for 30 years… not nice…

In general it is quite easy to get into the fever of buying something and agents are on a hunt for that. They almost had me, too. I think when buying something this big, it is wise to step back and re-analyze everything with a clear mind: just imagine that you do not want to buy it and you hate the flat, no matter how good it is. It might seem that it is a once in a lifetime opportunity, but it isn’t: there will always be good opportunities and flats will only get better and better in time. Who knows, maybe one day there will be also in Cluj flats with proper underground parking…

—==[#3]==—

Posted in Cluj, People&Society, Romania | Comments Off on Attracting Clients

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