i somewhat remember this place

on my first day in cluj with my mum (last week), i had a headache within half an hour of reaching ´downtown´ (i´m not comfortable with saying downtown, it´s been ´city center´to me since forever). i was surprised at how noisy, chaotic, weirdly animated it felt for a city of roughly 300 000. traffic is maddening and people were filling the sidewalks at 9.30 on a weekday , something i´d expect of bucharest but not of the lovely sleepy cluj of my memory. i still don´t have a good explanation, but here are some attempts :
- shock of  realizing that things move on without me
- presence of my mum, who hates cluj for the exactly stated noise/useless traffic reasons.
- lack of a distinct place within the chaos...always makes the chaos feel...more chaotic
- there were local elections going on during the weekend, hence the presence of election-themed booths and fare
- there was TIFF.

TIFF means a lot to cluj, and to my friends and i particularly. it´s probably the biggest international cultural event in romania at this point, but it was born only 10 years ago, and i was there when it started. i had my last BA exam session during the first edition, and still went to 10 movies! from there on, as the festival was growing, it was marathons of 3-4 movies/day/ week. i have good and tired and proud memories.

over the past...4...years i´ve celebrated TIFF from abroad mostly by association: my friend giulia works for the festival - after years of volunteering, she´s now on staff, doing translations and subtitling. here´s giulia on the last days of the event, at Casa TIFF, the meeting point for staff ,volunteers and fans of the festival. and a special mention for outstanding contribution to TIFF goes to giulia´s bag, marlene.

i´m linking to the official TIFF channel, in case anyone´s interested. it´s got info on organization and on the films, trailers and things. it also shows bits and pieces of cluj, which was my main purpose when i started this post:

http://www.youtube.com/user/tiffteam?feature=results_main

and i want to caption some pretty random pictures i took over my weekend in cluj. apart from spectacular weather and meeting good friends, nothing really happened. but here you go:

as i walk from the railway station to the center, my heart ALWAYS  (still) does that strange flip of anticipation

cluj is au courant with all the memes, you guys! (i didn´t vote! i didn´t think it was fair, given that i had no idea about the current political situation. i´ve learned a lot since last week though.)

´Bulgakov¨ used to be my favourite coffee shop, but hey, it´s changed a lot in 4 years. from the street, the terrace looks too big and too much like a...normal beer garden. i didn´t go in. anyway, i used to love ´bulgakov´so much , i included it in the draft of my MFA thesis. also, this is a plea to everyone who hasn´t read ´the master and margarita´ yet: do it, it´s worth it! if only for the cat!

glad to see we´re still multilingually snarky

nothing to add...so much to say! giulia&i at pizza rex hiding away from the heat. courtesy of sonia p.

music school and one of my favourite squares

old walls of the city, going to potaissa street



cobbled! yay

my friend lari extolling the virtues of her health cuisine. man, i forgot to ask if the soup was good!?

with lari and her roomie alexandra, talking about boys, funny subtitling, quebec french, and what to do to find a place (again?) among whatever´s happening in cluj

more meta, and stories, this week, and complaints about the weather (just maybe). i took this photo on the bus back to bistrita, while caught in a mini-storm.

soon, c.