Bucharest Parks -Bordei Park

Althought I had presented negative opinions on Bucharest in my previous blog entry, I must admit that it has a nice side also: the parks.Bucharest has several parks in it where people can recreate.The wiki entry says that there are 11.

I've only been to one of them,I 'guess' its name is Bordei from the list above.It was a small but nice,green park.

Canon EOS 500D and choosing a SD/SDHC card

After I ordered online my Canon EOS 500D (a.k.a Rebel T1i) for replacing my Sony Cyber-shot P200 that I bought from Garbushka/Moscow in 2005 which performed bad in low light conditions ....

The camera does not come with a memory card so I had to purchase one,I looked at the forums and was totally confused.Reviews on amazon.com said some users had problems running with Kingston Cards, some users had problems with Transcend, there were also reports of issues related to 16GB/32GB cards and also the Class-4/Class-6 debates...so I decided to ask Canon for a clarification. Here is their answer:

"We recommend using memory cards with a Speed Class 4 or higher. (As of December 2008, the movie recording function has been tested using SD/SDHC memory cards made by Panasonic, Toshiba and SanDisk.

The SD Speed Class is a standard that indicates the minimum guaranteed data transfer speed of the SD/SDHC memory cards. When you buy a new memory card, look for the Speed Class logo on the package.

It is highly recommended that you format the memory card in your camera. Formatting the memory card makes sure that it is going to work properly in your camera. This would be the best way to delete all of your images at one time."


I hope this helps anyone having confusion with buying the correct card.I will go with a Class-6 card from Panasonic, Toshiba or SanDisk.

Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?

Another '1984' book:) a future-prediction work written in 1970 by Andrei Amalrik,a Russian writer. Used copies of the books can be found on amazon.com.

977 Movie

I do not want to give any positive or negative feedbacks about this movie since I undestood nothing, absolutely nothing.See yourself here.

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.

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.

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