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:
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:
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| as i walk from the railway station to the center, my heart ALWAYS (still) does that strange flip of anticipation |
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| 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.) |
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| ´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! |
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| glad to see we´re still multilingually snarky |
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| nothing to add...so much to say! giulia&i at pizza rex hiding away from the heat. courtesy of sonia p. |
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| music school and one of my favourite squares |
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| old walls of the city, going to potaissa street |
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| cobbled! yay |
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| my friend lari extolling the virtues of her health cuisine. man, i forgot to ask if the soup was good!? |
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| 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.
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