The central plaza in the city of Medias (Southern Transilvania, Romania) is called Piata Regele Ferdinand (King Ferdinand Plaza). This is what it looks like in winter, during a snowfall.
That’s what it would look like this winter as well, if there were some snow around. I recorded this video almost a year ago to the day and so far, I’ve only seen some frost around. Just yesterday, it was into the low teens (Celsius) and super sunny — warm enough to do some light carpentry work outside.
This (long-awaited) episode presents the story of Paul Hemmerth, a Saxon born and raised in Romania during Ceausescu’s regime, who emigrated to Germany with his family at the age of fourteen, and who came back, drawn inexplicably by the land of his birth, to spend as much time as he can, each year, in the Romanian countryside.
Paul has a website called SlowlyPlanet, where he promotes slow tourism — travel at a leisurely pace, where you can take in all that you see. We filmed the episode at Casa Noah, his B&B in Richis (Reichesdorf), a village near Medias in Southern Transilvania.
Various occurrences (some of which couldn’t be helped) delayed the release of this episode. The hard drive on my editing computer died, and the repairs took almost a week. We also had some scheduled travel abroad, and that delayed us by another week. Further shooting for the episode introduced an extra day or so to the workflow, and the extra editing time introduced by the show’s new format added another three full days to the schedule.
I really do hope you’ll enjoy the new format. It’s a lot more work for me during the filming and especially during the editing, because of the two-camera setup, but it makes the show more engaging. Just to give you a quick idea of the data behind the show, the raw footage comes to about 44 GB of 1080p video. The final version of the episode is 4.3 GB of 720p video, and it’s about 55 minutes long.
Enjoy!
Episode RTTE-005-DE-HD
Released 6/19/11
There’s an official Facebook page for the show, so head on over and give it a Like if you want to be kept up to date with day-to-day details about the filming of RTTE. There’s also an official website for the show. Also don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel, where the show’s episodes are posted, along with other interesting videos I create.
We had a wonderful time last night, as we counted down the seconds to the New Year and watched the fireworks show put on by the Medias City Hall, followed by a cozy party at our home.
I hope you’ll enjoy the video I recorded during the fireworks. It was freezing outside, which is the perfect weather for the holidays. On a side note, I was a bit let down by the Christmas weather this year. We had a ton of snow in the days before Christmas, then warm weather moved in and melted all of it just before Christmas Eve. At least winter redeemed itself in time for New Year’s Eve, with lots of snow and cold weather to boot. Very nice indeed!
Here are a few photos taken in the last days of 2010. Happy New Year!
We woke up this morning with a puffy white blanket of snow covering the town. It was the first snowfall of the 2010-11 winter, and while it didn’t cover the ground, it did manage to stay on trees and rooftops, providing a welcome change in the scenery. (It’s been ugly weather most of this week, with cold, rainy days and mud everywhere.)
Built in 1488, St. Margaret’s Church in Medias, Romania, is the town’s most recognizable landmark, thanks to its leaning clock tower, which can be seen from miles away. Its tower dates from 1460, and left its originally vertical position due to some soil shifting. The photos shown below are from the church’s interior courtyard, inside its fortified walls.
A primary school is housed in its courtyard. I attended that school as a child, and have fond memories of playing in the courtyard, underneath a chestnut tree which is still there today.
Three other landmarks are inside the courtyard:
This is the main passageway that leads into the interior courtyard.
This is Turnul Funarilor (Rope-Makers’ Tower) and S. L. Roth’s place of birth (next to the tower). Continue reading
Raoul Pop 