Horrid houses

June 1st, 2009

The economical crisis is upon us. We all felt it and feel it continuously. In Romania, Cluj-Napoca to be more exact, people find more and more interesting things to do in this situation. There is a local newspaper, Clujeanul.ro which tells all sorts of stories from really stupid ones to some (a few) interesting ones. Sometimes I really do not know why I bother reading it… I guess because of those very few cases when it tells important news also, I just give it a glimpse now and then.

The other day I have discovered, that there is a new article-series going on, written by a local reporter (I guess he is a reporter… I am not sure). The series is called “insectarul arhitecturii clujene” (roughly translated the “bug-tracker of the architecture of Cluj-Napoca“). Since the articles are in Romanian, a brief description is I think required for anyone who does not understand the language (not sure if there are any):
The guy goes around in the city and takes photographs of houses he doesn’t like and writes long articles describing their “disturbing architecture”. He calls these buildings the terror of Cluj and keeps on yanking around why they have a bad design and all…

Click here to see the pictures of the houses he criticizes. Some have too many pillars, some too many spikes in their fences and some are just utterly ugly…

Now I may have a very bad taste in design, but I personally do not find these houses that disturbing. Surely they are not the best ones I have seen, but I do not feel that they are so bad… 😕 … I sometimes visit freshome.com to see interesting design ideas… well now, those are REALLY out of the ordinary and funky… and what do you know: people do not complain about it. Civilized people seem to recognize the art in something different, something out of the ordinary… Just to make things clear some of the editors of freshome are also Romanian so thankfully there is hope for us 🙂 .

I think this is the most important problem of some citizens in our country: they simply can not accept that not everything is the way YOU like it. I feel that these people tend to hold back any type of development in a country: after all, development means changing and change means difference. Maybe I am wrong and the guy is right… but then PLEASE: tell us how a house should look like? What are we ALLOWED and what are we not to do with our houses? I personally have not found anything about this issue and to tell the truth, I do not think that the guy really knows…

To the owners of those “horrid” houses: yes, the houses are not masterpieces, but be proud, YOU have achieved something (I do not care how), the reporter never did (and judging by his attitude he never will).

So: my question in the end is are the houses really that horrid? (Please respond, I am really curious 🙂 ).

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La Festa della Focaccia di Recco

May 24th, 2009

Recco is a small town to the south-east of Genova. It is known for its Water Polo team, and for it’s delicious focaccia. I have eaten focaccia di Recco several times now, but this time, it was the festival of the foacaccia in Recco, so we went there to check it out.
Focaccia Recco
Usually in this region, when it is the day of a food, there is free food given at an abundant rate. This was the second such activity in two weeks (after the Camogli Fish Festival). In Recco there were two periods when free focaccia was given: one in the morning until 12:00 and the other one from 15:00. Since we were very lazy this Sunday, we did not manage to wake up early enough to reach the morning run. No matter, we decided to go to Camogli and then maybe on the way back, in the afternoon we will go to Recco for the second round of “focacciata”.

The beach in Camogli was full of people. We barely managed to find a place to stay. A particularity of the beaches here in the ligurian coastline is the abundance of rocks. Camogli beach is not different from this. Although the rocks/pebbles on the beach are not sharp, one still needs to have some shoes to walk around. Another exciting feature is that the rocks tend to get VERY hot these days. Nevertheless we had a great time, swimming around and enjoying the sun.

At around 16:30 we decided to visit Recco. The focacciata was already going on, with huge lines waiting for the free goodies :). There were different places where focaccia was given, every hour this place was changing: one hour here, one hour there, depending on which local bakery’s turn was to serve the people.
The good thing about this, was that we could try many different bakeries and eat as much focaccia as we wanted (one could even get in line twice at the same bakery).

The focaccia itself was delicious as always. It is not as thick as usual focaccia, it is crispier and it has lots of cheese in it. Absolutely magnificent, if anyone comes to this region it is good to know: the really good focaccia is in Recco 🙂 …

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Whale Searching Liguria

May 23rd, 2009

Whale Watching Liguria is a program organized by the Genoa Aquarium. It is a tour of about 5 hours consisting of the “Delfini Metropolitani” (Metropolitan Dolphins) project on the open sea and a trip to Portofino (40 minute stop). The whole trip costs €32.00 and it is required to reserve a place in advance (www.whalewatchliguria.it).
NoWhales
The trip started out well, with the usual Italian 15 minute delay, we parted off from Porto Antico (from near the aquarium). The ship was a little overcrowded, but no matter, we have managed to find a place on the upper deck, so that we could all enjoy any sightings of dolphins. It was also a perfect place to take pictures of the scenery and to just enjoy the late-spring sunshine.

Immediately after we got out of the port, we saw an ocean sunfish (mola mola)… well its tail anyway. It is a very interesting fish… I saw it on pictures 😕 … An interesting particularity of it, as the tour guide said, it cannot be seen once it goes underwater… well… yes… very interesting…

After the thrilling encounter with the ocean sunfish, we continued our trip towards the open sea to search for dolphins/whales… and we continued… and we continued in zig-zag… and we continued… and we arrived in Portofino… 🙂 The tour guide said, that the name Portofino actually derives from Porto del Delfino (Dolphin Port), so we might just see dolphins in the entrance to the bay there… we didn’t.

Portofino Bay
Portofino was a thrilling sight in this beautiful sunny day. We had only little time to explore the peninsula a bit, but we used it to walk up to the light-tower of Portofino. The view was magnificent, I could see most of the coast… and all the yachts… and all the nice people on the yachts… by the way did I mention my zoom works excellent? 😛

We rushed back to the port (our little trip up on the cliffs to the lighthouse was a bit too long) and got back to the ship. On the trip back to Genova, our route was closer to the coast, so we could enjoy the coastline better backwards.

Oh, yeah… the dolphins… well we saw some… in the aquarium… 😛 . I have uploaded some picture to my Picasa account

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Night at the Museums

May 17th, 2009

Taking the example of a lot of European cities, The Long Night of Museums has been organized here in Genova also. I have mostly seen privately owned museums since now, so I think it was really about time to visit other museums, too. The time to pick the visits couldn’t have been better: the entry fee into the state owned museums was completely free this night. The night of the 16->17 May was the fifth edition already of the Notte Tempo nei Musei.
Museum Night
We started off at around 8 o’clock in the evening to avoid most of the heat of the day. We took as starting point the museums of Strada Nuova: Palazzo Rosso, Palazzo Bianco and Palazzo Tursi. There was a prescribed route through the 3 museums, with guides at every corner to tell us where to go in the ever complicated maze of corridors, rooms and stairs.

Palazzo Rosso was full of very nice paintings, sketches of a sculptor presenting 20’th century ideas and of course the frescoes from the top floor. Palazzo Bianco was next in line with a very nice garden, again paintings and frescoes and a clothes exposition. The last palace was Palazzo Tursi presenting paintings, sculptures, a porcelain exhibition and a coin exhibition. This last exhibit was very interesting presenting coins from the 12th century also.

After the museums of Strada Nuova we went to the Royal Palace Museum (Museo di Palazzo Reale). It had a very nice garden and imposing facade, but sadly we were told at 11:15, that all tickets were out ( !?!? ) for the last entry, so we were kindly rejected from entering… So much for the nice line of kind people we have encountered till that moment…

After this all museums slowly started to close and after a nice stroll in Porto Antico we decided to head home. Other than the museums, this little night-walk provided an excellent proving ground for my camera’s night photo capabilities. I shot every picture with manual settings… but I think I still have a lot to learn: Picasa account.

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Camogli – Sagra del Pesce

May 17th, 2009

This actually happened last Sunday, but sadly I did not manage to make some time to write this post. But I think it is better later than never 😀 .

Camogli is a small fishing village to the south-east of Genova. Since 1952, every year, on the second Sunday of May, a festival is organized dedicated for fish frying. In an enormous frying pan fish is being fried and served for free to the locals and to the curious tourists.
Camogli Sagra del Pesce
Living so close to Camogli (14 minutes by train), we decided to go down and see what is going on. After all, the previous night there were some nice fireworks visible, so it must be “something” 🙂 . Our trip started with very good news: the workers of the Italian Railway Company (Trenitalia) have picked this day for a strike and there were some precious few trains left in service that day. No matter, we waited for about 2 hours in the Nervi Railway Station ( at least I could try out calmly my new camera… 😛 ).

At last, a train came and picked up the nervous passengers. Arriving in Camogli we had a huge crowd awaiting for us. Little ad-hoc boutiques, carabinieri and people, people, people were everywhere. It was a very hot sunny day, so it was just perfect for a little sweating for the day in the crowd 🙂 . Of course there were the intelligent ones, who simply went for a swim and did some sunbathing on the pebbly coast of Camogli… (sadly that day none of us was prepared for this… ). A few of my friends managed to wait the long line and get some fish. I tasted it too, it was really good, I think it was worth standing in line for it (especially if it was not me standing in line 😛 ).

I think mostly this is it, nothing more to say. A fun day, just getting out from our houses and enjoying the yearly festival of fish frying… There are some photos on my Picasa account.

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