In Bruges

Being in Bruges is probably one of the nicest things that could happen to you in a lifetime. At least, that's what I felt. It's always like stepping into a parallel world where time stopped, if it weren't for the many modern shops.

I visited Bruges three times and I would always go back there. It's beautiful in the summer and more than amazing in the autumn. The colours are incredible. I will attach some proof at the end of the post.

Word of advice: don't go alone, it's too romantic, so drag that special other half of yours to come along. I've yet to see the town in spring and winter... Maybe someday...

Watching "In Bruges" on the other hand, didn't prove to be the same fairytale-like experience. Or maybe I was just expecting something else since I first watched the trailer for it. I was waiting for it to come out so excited. It sounded perfect: Colin Farrell - in Bruges. Since Colin Farrell is one of my favourite actors and Bruges is one of the few towns that went directly to my heart, I was expecting nothing less than pure perfection.

But the feeling only a bucket of ice cream when you're depressed can bring you, wasn't anywhere. Hmm...

I mean, ok, there was Bruges, looking as beautiful as ever and me recognising every corner they showed. There was Colin Farrell looking as gorgeous as always, great actor, his face bringing out all the emotions the character he plays is experiencing, awesome accent... There was Brendan Gleeson whose character is closer to Santa Claus than to a killer... There was Ralph Fiennes who's funny as hell because he's too mad... but... but...

Maybe I just didn't understand the movie. The rating it has on the Internet Movie Data Base website is incredible: 8.1 out of 10. Did I focus on the images so much, that I missed the plot? Could be... Should I watch it again?

Can a guy and a girl ever be just friends?

I know this question has been raised many times before tonight, but I wanna talk about my own situation. This won't be written just to soothe Cristina, but also because it's something I've been thinking about. ;)

STUDY CASE:

We take Livia, 5 years old, moves to another neighbourhood with older brother, parents and grandmother. Since the building they are moving in is a new one, there are many other families in the same situation. This is where we find Bobo, 6 years old, moving in with older brother, parents and being looked after by grandmother. We know that at these young ages girls and boys are not really interested in each other unless they both like to play hide-and-seek or Monopoly. But since the grandmothers are in the same situation (i.e. looking after grandkids), they start talking to each other and exchanging experiences on raising the little brats. Oh, forgot to mention that our characters' apartments are identical, just on two different consecutive floors.

School begins for Livia, while Bobo had already started the previous year. Although they are good friends when home, at school or at the playground Bobo likes to embarrass Livia just to make himself look good. This lasts until he turns 18 and gets a really cute dog called Mark, so he doesn't need being cruel to Livia to impress people (i.e. girls!) anymore. They spend a lot of time together, mostly because Bobo and his older brother are more of siblings to her than her own brother ever was... or will be! Also, they are cool! They had the first VCR in the building! Imagine that! Got to learn "Rambo" and "Rocky" by heart. Saw "Pretty Woman" like 40 times. What could ever beat that? They also had amazing candy all the time! Well, food in general... Food always tastes better at someone else's place, haven't you noticed? Unless it's one of those facilities where you are locked away to lose 100 kilos... :P

Years pass... Highschool ends... Unfortunately for Livia, she had to finish the last, being the youngest. If on the first year there was Seby (Bobo's older brother) who was cool because he was on the basketball team (Livia felt important because she knew him and he would say "hello" to her in front of other people!), on the rest of the years there was Bobo. I don't think there's anyone who went to that highschool back then who didn't know Bobo! He was such a star... or show-off! And yes, he'd say "hello" too. She was kind of a dork (meaning she was shy, fat, wore glasses, learnt pretty well and some of the teachers liked her), therefore she wasn't part of the cool kids' group. That is why it meant the world to her when both brothers weren't ashamed to admit that they knew her. It became even better when they started... or was it just Bobo back then?... they started calling her their "sister". *shivers with pleasure* :))

After highschool, they spent so much time together that when the first of the brothers married, it was kind of weird to put a stop to the endless hours spent watching movies, playing computer games or just goofing around.

I always found it weird that Bobo, despite his popularity, never became a jerk. I know he's not perfect, who the hell is? But he's the kind of person that you can always... and I mean ALWAYS... count on! Sometimes I wonder how he is not more selfish. You ask him for something and you actually expect he is going to turn you down, but he just says yes! He has the loveliest soul ever and Livia loves him for that.

A bit later in the story, Bobo met Cristina. I'm not 100% sure that Livia liked her from the beginning, but not because there was something wrong with Cristina, but because Livia was just over-protective with Bobo. Did any girl think they could just come along and take her brother away? Hmm, she had to pass some tests (in Livia's mind, of course!). Military drill? Piece of cake when compared to the checklist of things to accomplish in Livia's mind. More like in Livia's soul... :) Cristina gracefully managed to convince Livia that she was right for her childhood friend, especially because she was (still is) intelligent enough to understand the kind of friendship that her husband (yes, they got married!) had with this girl called Livia. She understood that she didn't have any reason to be jealous or paranoid because Bobo and Livia were strictly friends. No, brother and sister!

So when Livia (endlessly single) had to attend another childhood friend's wedding somewhere in the country, Cristina didn't have anything against Bobo accompanying her. Coz yes, Bobo was that nice again as to offer to go along with her.

This is why, last Saturday, early in the morning, Livia was picking Bobo up from his home, saying goodbye to wife and baby, promising to be back soon. And the wife actually had a genuine smile on her face and not a fake smirk saying "I don't like this one bit!". They drove away, arrived to their destination, went to the wedding together, came back to the bed & breakfast they stayed at, shared the same bed, never touched (or even thought of touching for a second), Livia endured Bobo's snoring, not sure if Bobo had to endure Livia's snoring, woke up early in the morning, packed and drove back to Bucharest, where Livia delivered Bobo to his wife and son in one piece and with very clean consciences. If Bobo hadn't go with her, Livia would have gone up the wall with boredom. He was funny, polite, brought three shirts and three ties along for her to choose what suited what she was wearing, socialised, drove on the worst bits of the road, encouraged her to get over her driving fears, stopped and waited patiently for her to take photos of mountains and of fields of poppy flowers. He was just great.

Guess what I'm trying to say is that for me, the story I have just told you proves that yes, a guy and a girl CAN be only friends, quite easily actually.

END OF CASE STUDY

To make this more interesting, I'll add some pictures that Livia and Bobo took this last weekend. Enjoy! ;)

Kylie in Bucharest

Last night, I went to see Kylie Minogue in concert. I am not one of his dedicated fans, but then again I kinda grew up listening to her songs and fell in love with Jason Donovan in the video for Especially for You.

I had no idea of what to expect from the show, but I hoped I was going to get the entertainment I was craving for last night.

Although it was supposed to begin at 8.00 pm, due to the fact that she had no opening act, the show started at almost 9.00 pm. Never mind, I was in good company, Andra & Marius + friends. We had tickets in the area nearest to the stage, but, God, I wished I was a bit taller. I think Andra wished the same... especially when these two very tall (and fine!) blokes stopped in front of us, followed (to be read guarded) by their girlfriends. I did feel one of the girls was going to bite our heads off when Andra dared to ask one of the guys to move a bit aside coz she was not able to see anything anymore... Hmmm, maybe it was just me...

The show was... good, but it could've certainly been better. I hated the silence and blackness moments between outfit changes. Loved the outfits though! She must've changed like eight or something. As far as I understood, they were all Jean-Paul Gaultier's creations. Most of all, I liked the cheerleader one, maybe because my photos came out fantastic while she wore it. :)

What else was good? Her voice was good, couldn't hear a lot of off-key notes, the background screen was awesome, the colours used were amazing, the dancers... I need to mention that I have no idea how the girls danced just because the guys were way too hot and I tried to get their image imprinted on my retina for those cold and lonely nights! :D Just kidding! Pffff...

I wish she sang more of her older songs... I realised how old I actually was when happiness burst out from me when she ended the show with "I should be so lucky".

I also liked the organisation of the show, so thumbs up to EMag!c Entertainment.

Besides being a good way to let off some steam, it was also a great opportunity for me to test my camera. I took loads of photos, but only about 1/4 came out right. It was because the position I had wasn't too good. But I'm happy with the ones that are ok. I have to mention that I used no flash and it was only due to the ISO set to 1600 that my photographical mission was successful! Enjoy some of them below... And the six-packs on the guys... :D

New passion... or is it?

Those of you who have read my previous post will know that I have recently went on a short holiday to Istanbul. Moreover, they will know that there were loads of photos in there, to show everyone just how beautiful the city really is.

I am ashamed to say that those are probably the best pictures taken there and I couldn't do better than that. Yes, it's true... I'm a lousy photographer and I had a lousy camera with me.

I kept watching the pictures, getting angrier and angrier with myself due to the fact that about two holidays ago I had promised myself to pay a lot more attention to the photographs I was taking while away. I love watching good photographs and I am proud to say that I actually have a friend who is providing me with some wonderful ones now and again, whenever he chooses to pay a little attention to me and to be lavish. ;) You don't have to take my word for it, just click on the picture below to see a sample of his work. Maybe my favourite ever!

All credits for it go to Adey. :) It's not him in the photo, just a good friend of his. And if you like it and wanna find out more about my friend, click here and here.

Apart from Adey, there's Vlad and he's probably the person most addicted to having the best photo/video/audio toys. He's like in love with them and when he shows them to you it gets you equally addicted.

So I found myself cornered, while Adey and Vlad kept finding bad things to say about the photos I had taken.

Since I hate not being the best in everything (not possible, I know, working on that, with proper medication along... just kidding! About the meds that is! :P), I tried to improve my photography taking style. I managed to take nice pictures during my last two holidays, but messed up big time in Istanbul. Why? Because I was in a rush and never relaxed in order to find the best shot. Also because the sun was too bright and the camera screen was barely visible. Really disappointing...

Last year, I gave a thought to buying a camera like Vlad's. It was professional, a DSLR, took amazing photos, if only you had enough money to buy it and enough patience to learn how to use it. Had the patience, didn't really have the money.

That changed this year, better said this month. I realised I could actually get it and didn't think twice about it. Just phoned the company who had it and went to get it. Here it is...

Nikon D4o... Not too expensive for this type of cameras, but definitely perfect for someone who is just starting to learn photography such as myself. It takes beautiful photos and if someone is patient enough to explain it to you, you will take amazing shots. I was given a short intensive course on what everything means by Vlad. In this way I understood what 18-55 mm means, what f/something means, what exactly ISO is and what happens if you increase/decrease exposure. It was also very useful to check out Ken Rockwell's website, where he describes most things that you may do with it.

Therefore, I started learning... Baby steps! I need to go out and take pictures, but in the meantime, James, my poor cat, had to model for me a little. Also, caught some beautiful sunsets from my window and played with the thinggies I mentioned above in order to get the best shot. I will attach some samples of my... ahem... work. ;)

James

Sunsets

Keep your fingers crossed for me. I wanna learn, as Adey says, to "stay away from AUTO". Currently I'm on P, wondering if I'll ever get to M. Hehehe!

Istanbul break

So here I am, back from a short, but full of events trip.

It was not long ago that we were seated on a restaurant's terrace when someone came up with the idea of going to Istanbul on 1 May since we had a few days off for Easter and everything. From a group of 7 people, we eventually ended up going only 2 of us: my best friend and I. I think her husband managed to panic a little when he heard that it would have been only us girls in a city full of men who cannot help asking you "where are you from?" We didn't pretty much cared, just wanted a nice holiday for ourselves. All being said, we booked the hotel and bought our plane tickets and off we went.

We left on 30 April in the morning and we arrived at the hotel in Istanbul around 2 pm, after praying for our lives in the crazy traffic of Istanbul. We checked-in and didn't waste too much time, grabbed a map and we left towards the Dolmabahce Palace, on the shore of Bosphorus.

It was a wonderful day outside, sunny and very warm. The palace was looking amazing! The concept of the palace was developed by the sultan Abdul Mecit in 1843 and the castle was opened in 1856. It has 46 rooms full of gold and crystal, trying to compare to the Versailles palace. The last sultan that lived in the palace left for exile in 1922. The famous Ataturk lived here until his death on 10 November 1938 and all the clocks in the palace are stopped at the hour of his death, 9:05.

All the above information I got from a guide published by Dorling Kindersley and not from the guide who accompanied us in the palace because I couldn't understand much of what he was saying. He had a very funny accent, palace was "pee-yeah-luhs" and it was the first time when I realised that the word "scared" could have around 5 sylables and not only one.

After the tour inside the palace, including the harem, we went outside to look over the Bosphorus and took some very nice photos. Click on the photos below for a larger size.







From the Dolmabahce Palace, we hurried towards the Galata Tower, but we stopped to eat something on the way because we were starving. Got to the tower and was a bit disappointed by the fact that the coffee shop inside was closed at that hour. I left Leila downstairs and I went up into the balcony of the famous tower.

The tower was built in 1348 by people from Genoa and is 62 m high. From the balcony - if you don't suffer of claustrophobia and you don't meet Israelian people who stop way too much on the way, so you're stuck with them - you can enjoy a view of both the new and the old Istanbul, as well as of the European and Asian sides along Bosphorus. The view toward the Topkapi Palace, Aya Sofia and Sultanahmet is great! Pictures follow...

We crossed the Galata Bridge and hurried towards the Eminonu docks where we jumped on a boat that was about to leave for a tour on Bosphorus. We bought simit, of course, and had tea. I personally would like to apologise to the man on whose lap I fell because of the way the boat was moving. *blushing* At least it was just my first day there, so I wasn't as heavy as on the last day, so... cheers mate! :D

Beautiful views on the tour. We could see a lovely sunset, the Dolmabahce Palace, the Ciragan Palace that looked amazing, the expensive houses from Bebek and the Beylerbeyi Palace. You may see below...







We jumped into a taxi after the tour ended and finished our day with a nice dinner in a restaurant close to our hotel near the Taksim square. I became a fan of ayran and I only wish all dairy products were as good as that!

We started our second day in a very funny way... It was 1 May. Some of you who usually watch the news will know what happened in Istanbul on that day. If you're not one of those people, continue reading.

As we left our hotel and headed towards the Taksim square, we realised that we couldn't cross it because it was closed with fences and there were tons of policemen. Hmmm... we wondered what that was about, but because next to the group of policemen, they were selling beautiful flowers, we thought that maybe there will be some... quiet marchings or something like that because of the International Labour Day. We kept walking towards the Kabatas pier where we knew we could take a boat to the Adalar or Princes Islands. We met like 20 more policeman groups on the way, looking like the Ninja Turtles, prepared for good fighting... When we got to the pier, this calm policeman stopped us and asked where we were going. We explained what we wanted, but he said that the boats were not making tours on that day. No one could explain what the reason for that was. Everyone kept saying that something MIGHT happen. Therefore, we ignored them all and just decided to go shopping. First, we tried to go to a shopping center, but we couldn't because of the police. We ended up in what seemed to be like the most expensive shopping center, then we took a cab and went to Nisantasi although the taxi driver kept begging us to go to the hotel and sleep. It was the wrong day to be on the streets! We had this feeling that something had already happened there because of the... you guessed it, policemen, as well as the bricks laying on the ground. It all got very clear when I felt like something got in my left eye and when I opened it, it was burning as hell and tears were flowing freely down my cheek. Need I say my make up was ruined? Damned tear gas! Even the press had gas masks, why couldn't have we thought of bringing some to continue our shopping? Maybe next time when in Istanbul... The good thing was that it wasn't too much tear gas and as we walked backwards, it started to fade away.

From there we hurried to the hotel, where the driver basically pushed us out of the cab and pushed on the gas to get away from the area as soon as possible... Very strange behaviour... Hmmm... We got to the hotel, dropped the bags and decided to go to the Golden Horn, thinking that there were no problems there. The guy from the reception looked at us very strangely when we said we weren't afraid to go out... Took another cab and went to the Topkapi palace, but decided to eat in a traditional restaurant before visiting it. When lunch was finished, we realised we couldn't visit either Topkapi or Aya Sofia because it was too late, but we did get to see the Basilica Cistern and Sultanahmet, then hurried to the Grand Bazaar. We took some photos in front of Aya Sofia too! The pics...

We started our third day in the Golden Horn where I went to see the Topkapi Palace and Aya Sofia while Leila waited for me coz she had seen those before. There was a cute cat in Aya Sofia, looking at the tourists. You'll see it in the pics. Istanbul is full of cats, I loved it! :)

Once I have finished visiting those two, we went to the Kabatas pier to try once again to go to Adalar. It worked this time and we got on a boat full of locals and tourists. We were crushed by two Turkish women who didn't care that the bench we were sitting on was for maximum 3 persons and 2+2 = 4. I found it a bit peculiar when I opened the map to look at the islands and one of them started pointing to stuff on it and talking to her friend. Hmmm...

We went to Buyukada, the largest island and the last on the way. First thing we did was to get a huge ice cream, then we hopped into a carriage that took us through the streets of the islands. At the end of the trip, we climbed a hill for about 15 minutes and we ended up to the Ayia Yorgi, a little orthodox church. Lovely view from up there. We bought some souvenirs and hurried to catch the boat back to Istanbul. Another wonderful sunset, we saw dolphins and then it started raining...

The night ended on the Istiklal Caddesi which was full of people flowing from all directions and shops were still opened at 10 pm! Ahem, people with shops from other countries should hear this... I was so tired that I could barely move and if someone were to push me just a little, I would've just dropped on the stone right there. My muscles hurt like hell and when I went back to the hotel, I fell face down on the bed and didn't move anymore.

We spent the last few hours we had in Istanbul doing a bit of shopping and then prayed for our lives while in the taxi to the airport. My God, the Turks are the craziest drivers ever! :) We made it home safely and that's all that counts. The entire experience was lovely and I know I'm gonna go back someday to see the rest of things I could not see or just to sit in the sun in the park between Aya Sofia and Sultanahmet.

Tesekkur ederim, Istanbul!