25 November 2009

MN@R - National Museum of Art of Romania



National Museum of Art of Romania is a huge building localed on Calea Victoriei. The museum is in fact consisted of two separate buildings, one is Gallery of European Arts and other is Gallery of Romanian Art.

I first visited European Arts section and surprised to see masters as Rembradt, Anton van Dyck, Rubens,Jan van Eyck, Pieter Bruegel the Younger....they were also rooms for Italian masters,French,German and Spanish Schools which included a few El Greco pieces.

Then I advanced to Romanian arts section which consisted of several medieval Romanian pieces including orhodox icons, treasuries , clothes used in rituals ....the museum also inclused modern Romanian paiting artists.

Back In Bucharest



After one year,I am in Bucharest one more time.Not much has changed in Bucharest, even the huge artificial Christmas tree in Piata Universate is the same.

Bucharest is a still gray,depressive city, exteriors buildings are not taken care of, most are old,ruined, gray, dirty....Even in the most expensive streets.

But in the streets you can see many luxory cars, I guess the tax rate on cars is low so people can affort nice cars and relatively wealth people can affort very nice cars.There are more X5 on streets than Moscow.

Yes,I always tend to compare Bucharest to Moscow since they are both capitals of ex-communist states.I think the situation is better in Moscow in terms of houses, yes they are also in bad condition but Bucharest is worse. In terms of cars on the streets, you can still see very old, ruined,Lada or Jiguli or Volga, Bucharest sceene is much better.

photos by my good-old P1i.

22 November 2009

Benim Adim Anne Frank

After I visited Anne Frank's House few years ago in Amsterdam, I became interested in her story.I knew about her diary but only in last year I was able to read the book[shame on me:(( ].
You can find my previous entry on Anne here.

Althought the book title is my name is Anne Frank , the book is not written by Anne and even is not on her story.I guess this is a marketing issue.Anyway, the book is written by her best friend whom Anne mentions as 'Joop' in her famous story.

This is the story of Joop and her family but of course their ways with Anne cross at the same school during Nazi invasion in the Netherlands, there are sections in her book that she mentions about Anne and her relationships with her.
Also after the WWII and Holocaust, Anne's father Otto finds Joop and the books tells about their conversations.

I liked this book,it once again reminds us what the Nazis did in WWII and how cruel can the people be.

18 November 2009

Sen-Petersburg'da Beyaz Gece

A very nice novel! Indeed the book cover says that it is a memoir-novel so it has some historical information in it but I don't know which part is true and what percentage is fiction, still it was a very good reading.

Grandduke Nicholai Romanov falls in love with an American prostitute Fanny and faces many troubles due to this relationship including the ones coming from Tsar and his own family.

He is exiled many times to several places, his titles are removed and at last he is forced to stay in a mental instutituon since his family finds the only solution in declaring him as insane!!!

I highly recomment you to read this very nice novel even if you are not interested in Russia.
Details are here.

Tanri Rusya'yi Unuttu

A boring novel takes place at the last days of USSR, everthing is corrupted....
Young doctor graduates and is assigned to somewhere but faces problems of a dying state...

Nazım Hikmet Şiirinde Gizli Tarih

I was hoping to read days of Nazim in USSR & Moscow but this book dealt with his early career, his days in Turkey.The writer tries to find out whom Nazim was impling in his poems. There are many characters from 30s-40s-50s Turkey..many names that I am not interested in and many names that I have never heard, so this book was not a great interest to me...
Still, you may find it here