Welcome to 2011!

Happy New Year everyone! Allow me to welcome myself back to my blog. I have slowly and painfully managed to pull myself out of holiday mode. It was particularly hard this time, as I had such a supergreat time over the holidays.

Christmas was normal: food, drinks, friends, movies and handmade gifts which I will brag about on my other blog.

But New Year's was abnormal in oh so many wonderful ways. First of all, it was abnormal of me to want to go somewhere cold with lots of snow. Second of all, it was totally unheard of for me to like it. Yes, dear readers, I liked the snow! Yes, I went out in it and I wasn't cold! (Granted, I had no physical contact with it, as I stayed safe within my polar fleece and Gore-Tex bubble.) Now I finally believe that Norwegian saying, that there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.

As is the way of wise people, very late on the morning of the 31st we decided to climb to the summit called Scaunul Domnului (God's Seat), the very one that's mentioned in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
All bundled up and ready to go:
We knew we had an 8 hour walk ahead of us and we knew we'd end up walking in the dark for at least 2 hours, but we went anyway. And boy was is worth it!

It was special for me, as it was my first (more or less) serious winter hike, and everything, even familiar places, looks so different when covered in snow.

The view from the summit was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. The pink sky made it all look like a painting, and the fir trees seemed more like computer graphics than real life.

It was Mutty-Mutty's first time in the snow too, and he had a great time:

On the way back, slipping, tripping and groping in the dark, we became sure that we'd be too exhausted for any kind of New Year partying. But back at the cabin we were met by the rest of the gang, freshly arrived from the city, who gave us no chance but to stay up. And party we did, until the wee hours of the morning.

The rest of the night contained a lot of this...
...some of this (sneakily)...
...and, for the less fortunate, some of this:

And you know the best part? Nobody was drunk! This is just our collective true self, coming out when we are all crowded together in one small cabin. It was another opportunity for me to realise how blessed I am with such silly friends.

As we all know that practice is very important if you want to become good at something, the hike-food-party-sleep sequence was repeated twice again in the following days.

I hope your holidays were satisfactory and that you'll have a great year. But if first days are anything to go by, then 2011 will be a blast!

Happy New Year!

Today Romania celebrates Mărţişor, my favourite holiday of the entire year! If you want to know what a mărţişor is, go here. It was all the more exciting since I haven't spent a 1st of March in the country for 5 years.

The weather knew exactly what it had to do today. After weeks and weeks of gloom and clouds and snow, I woke up to brilliant sunshine and temperatures of over 10 degrees. Yes, above zero.

As usual, the center square was filled with stalls selling spring flowers (the town smells lovely today) and little tokens tied with red and white string.
Unlike previous years, though, the offer was very disappointing: small range, high level of kitsch, very few genuine handmade products. I hope this is not the sign of a dying tradition, or else I'll take it upon myself to revive it next year!

The 1st of March also means snowdrops: the first delicate flowers of the season. Their awful smell (they smell like dirty communist train stations to me) doesn't cloud the happiness they bring. For those of you who have never seen a snowdrop, the "vase" is actually an eggcup :>
And this is me this morning, wearing the first Mărţişor I received. It was Dad who was quickest this year :)
Happy spring to the Europeans!
A plentiful autumn to the dwellers of the Southern Hemisphere!

This is probably the most belated account of New Year festivities in the entire blog world. I guess I can pull my usual excuse: I'm Transylvanian, don't rush me!

Not that it was terribly exciting. We went to a cabin in Bistra (no Wikipedia page, sorry), in the beautiful Mures valley. Loaded with festive food, appropriate clothing, skiing gear, a considerable amount of alcohol and anything else a self-respecting Transylvanian may need for such an important occasion as the end of 2009, we expected to have a great time. We were planning to spend 4 days there.

The weather was terrible: rain, flood warnings, thick clingy mud, obviously no conditions for either skiing or hiking. But, as the climbing of some height or other was compulsory for such dedicated mountain people, on the first day we rushed to the nearest cliff in the few hours of daylight we had left.

It was already dark by the time we got to the top. Walking on muddy ground in the dark is quite a delight! But the hike was worth it, even just for seeing the breathtaking moon. I wish one of the people who can actually take pictures had their camera with them. But they didn't, so these murky images are my only proof of a beautiful evening:
After our return, it was time for eating, drinking and merrymaking. The other guests were most sociable,
...the host very welcoming (and very tipsy)
...and the midnight firecrackers were of the appropriate loudness.
Later, high class entertainment was provided to those who wanted to sleep...
...so they didn't sleep!

And in the morning, the skiing gear, festive food and alcohol were taken back to the city, as there was not much point staying longer in that weather.

And after that, i spent the first 2 weeks of the year (going on 3) being sick. I hope it's not a sign for the year to come.

But there, I've done my duty and told you about my latest exploits. Maybe I should drag my convalescent bottom to the craft table now and catch up with this month's projects.