christmas days in bistrita

i've pretty much been in an eating/wine-drinking stupor the past week, which is not an exactly nice meaningful way to spend christmas... why does this happen?? whatever, i hope we're all already over it.
nothing truly spectacular...no new snow, some wicked ice on the road, warm-ish weather but lots of thick fog. visits with the family back and forth, meeting the people from high school briefly. watching tv and taking naps in the daytime and then not managing to sleep at night. presents and browsing mum's closets for old things of mine that i'd left there 6 years ago - that kind of days.

my mum putting the final touches on our tree...ha! amazing how many of the ornaments turn out to be stuff i'd picked up in cluj during my student days. either we used to have a high rate of globe-breaking in bistrita, or (more probably) it was that in my childhood we had a tree in the village, at my grandma's. (a batch of completely different ornaments is there! my mum dreams of planting a fir tree in the yard so we can just decorate it right there. my mum also dreams of me staying here and giving birth to a kid for whom she offers to pay for guitar lessons, so yeah.)

there's always a secondary adorned branch in the living room, because what if someone only gets into the living-room and thinks we haven't taken any trouble decorating?

i got this one from cluj this year

and this adorable penguin i got from montreal last year (hi, melanie! hi, 'aux petits freres'!)

so my mum finished with the tree and then she proceeded to just sit under it in the dark. no kidding, i found her there. and i made her sing some carols (see the next post)

all the girls who came to the traditional christmas meeting: ralu, lari, liana, celi, nico, dani. not pictured - dyan, who left very early because TOO MUCH SMOKE. which, true.

and the special sofa of the patient, resigned significant others

this is trembly but we liked it, and nico insisted that i should post it - so: cheers to her and her bizarre blue drink. (this is the kind of stuff they teach you in bucharest??:))

- sorina, you were missed! we did gossip about you i guess.
- i'm waiting for more pics of the meet - lari, i think you have a stash on your camera, give'em!

the view from the window of my room at night. that tree in the square looks really much less impressive from close up. and you see the star made of lights on the door of that store? that damn star was flickering on and off on my ceiling at night when i couldn't fall asleep. grrrrr

this is from the tower of the old germanic church (showing the building of our highschool). on christmas morning i met up with dani, and lari and ralu with their SOs, to climb up as far as the elevator goes. that's right, there's an elevator inside the entrance, taking people up to the tower balcony. back in our time (i.e. when we were in highschool) we had special status with this church -"we have a history". we used to climb the spiral stairs inside, which i guess at that time was only semi-allowed. also one winter night me and my friend so climbed up on the scaffolding they had up at that time for renovations. we were 17, it was new year's eve, there was a lot of snow and we had gotten out of a party, in our festive dresses and all. sorry, i couldn't not mention it.

the view on the opposite side, toward my neighbourhood. hey, i have another stoy i just reminded lari of: on the day we found out we'd passed our final exam post-highschool graduation, me and lari were locked inside the church, drawing. we were drawing for an exhibition to gather funds to renovate the church, and the deal was we showed up, someone from the germanic parochy opened the door for us and locked us in and came back in 2-3 hours to let us out. so we were like...ooooh we need to get to high school and see our grades, they've been posted!

of course the most picturesque side of the view is the foggiest one! of course!

so...classical view of the old bistrita architecture, with the archways and all...from above.

my favourite pic of myself over the holidays (in all the other ones taken by my mum i look clowny or double-chinned, ugh). here i was blissfully unaware. wearing a newly-rediscovered old old sweater left behind by my friend matt (in 2006) and a new-to-me circle scarf which my mum apparently never took to. and re-reading some comfy ...romain rolland (my teenage education) , for the 284th time. and chewing my nail because...that's a thing i do all the time???