Places

Selected photos from Iasi, Romania

What you see below are photos from the city of Iasi, Romania, the second largest city in Romania after Bucharest, according to a recent census. It’s a city with a lot of history and a lot of historic buildings. It was the capital of the province of Moldova for hundreds of years, and also the capital of Romania for a short while. It’s home to the oldest university in the country, named after Alexandru Ioan Cuza, who founded it in 1860.

We visited the city in June of 2006, after an all-night train ride in horrendous conditions, and we only had about half a day to see it. Naturally, we went to see the Palace of Culture (which was closed for renovations unfortunately), so we rambled around for a while then decided to go see Ion Creanga’s house (he’s one of Romania’s most beloved writers).

Let me just say that I took these photos with a digital camera, not a DSLR, so the picture quality suffers. Given that I was just starting to learn proper composition back then, some aren’t framed properly. But enough apologies. Here are the photos.

Continue reading →

Standard
Thoughts

Star Wars and Kings Row theme songs are quite alike

When we watched Kings Row (1942) recently, I couldn’t help noticing a marked similarity between its theme song, written by Erich Korngold, and the main Star Wars (1977) theme song, written by John Williams.

I doubted I was the only one to hear it, and sure enough, a quick internet search revealed many others talking about the same thing. See Wikipedia, or this YouTube video comparing the two theme songs.

Sixty-eight years after the release of Kings Row, and 33 years after the release of Star Wars, this isn’t as big a deal as it probably was back then. In my opinion, Williams’ remaking of the Korngold theme is much better suited to its movie than Korngold’s was for its intended vehicle — and it is a re-making, not a plagiarized copy. Korngold’s theme sounds much too dramatic for a coming-of-age movie set in a turn of the century provincial American town, but it’s perfect for a futuristic sci-fi movie that was (and is) one of the biggest box office successes of all time.

Still, it’s an uncanny resemblance, isn’t it?

Images used courtesy of Amazon.

Standard
Places

An evening in Munich

We were on our way back to Matrei from Innsbruck, we were tired, and we had a few more hours to drive. What to do? Stop in Munich for coffee, naturally! It was only a short detour of a little over 100 km from our route, so why not?

Coffee turned into a nice little evening walk through historic downtown. We arrived in Matrei really late and extra tired, but it was worth it.

Standard
Thoughts

Found better photos of Felix

Remember Felix (I), the little deaf tomcat I wrote about earlier this year? In the course of winnowing my photo library, I found better photos of him, taken a few months before his untimely demise. This is how I want to think of him.

Standard
Places

Crossing the Danube at night

Selected photos taken at the Galati ferryboat crossing over the Danube River, in Romania. The atmosphere, the lights, the machinery, it all makes it look and feel like an otherworldly experience — a sensation which is all the more pressing if you’ve just been driving all day and you are exhausted.

While it’s interesting to ride on ferryboats every once in a while, it’s not fun to arrive at the crossing point and to find out they’ve closed for the night, or to pay ever-increasing fees so you can cross. This is not a comment on the Galati ferryboat crossing in particular, but a general observation on the nature of the ferryboat business. If you want reliable travel, you need a bridge, period. You may not be able to stop and take in the sights and sounds of the river, but you’ll get home on time.

Standard