listen all i’m saying is it looks like romania ran out of fabric to use for the male dancers’ shirts and had to cut some from the female dancers and hope nobody would notice
I loved Castlevania, and I enjoy a lot of other vampire media, but what deeply bothers me is hoe, starting with Bram Stoker, every story just erases the eastern European qualities and aesthetic of Dracula and vampire myths in general. It’s jarring and borderline offensive to see Dracula dressed like a western romantic gentleman (yes i am aware it’s an iconic look by now and it was one of us who sold out and brought him to Hollywood, looking at you Lugosi Bela), it feels weird seeing so much catholic aesthetic in the stories, catholic priests being the enemies, all the Gothic architecture, all the vampire ladies looking like some 19th century English girls , it’s really damn weird!
Just once I’d like to see something that says “Eastern Europe” clearly in a vampire story.
I feel cheated and ignored by the media.
Not a big deal, they’re just our stories and history, right?
you always know you’re going to have fun with a romanian entry when they present a slightly unwell looking man dressed as a vampire: the masquerade cosplayer
In planning a trip through German-speaking Europe that I am hoping to take this December/January, I started thinking about other overland trips that I would like to take in future. I came up with three really exciting ones and thought I would post the theoretical itineraries here!
I’m not sure when- but I’ll definitely be taking one or more of these trips in the next few years.
This trip would be amazing! It combines ancient sites, Soviet era architecture, small modern cities, a beautiful coast, low lying mountains and more. For me it would be unique in that Eastern Europe is really one of the regions that I’m least familiar with- I speak none of the languages, only know the basic outline of political history, and am not aware of much of the culture. All of this would make it the perfect kind of travel- full of learning and experiencing new things.
The trip would start in St. Petersburg experiencing the iconic “Mother Russia” before heading west through the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) this fast developing though often forgotten part of Europe interesting combines Eastern and Western Europe with some Northern/Scandinavian flair - or so I gathered from my short weekend in Latvia in 2011. That brief encounter made me want to see more of the Baltics.
From there the route would go through Belarus and Ukraine. These two large countries were two of the more connected to the core of the USSR and still exist as more reserved (especially Belarus) than other parts of the former Soviet bloc. These two nations being so large would mean long hours going through country-side, hopefully stopping in small towns, seeing the rural life a bit, making new friends, who knows.
Next would be moving into the mountains of Moldova and Romania. Considering I love low lying mountains and hills, I think this would be a highlight! Plus Moldova is probably the most obscure of the countries on the list, so getting to know it a bit would be really exciting.
Once in Bucharest, the plan is to cut directly West through Belgrade and all the way to Zagreb in Croatia and even further to Ljubljana, Slovenia. These two capital cities are said to be somewhat unknown gems of Europe, with the latter being popular with cyclists and sharing some parts of Italian culture because of its proximity with Northern Italy.
The ride down the Croatian coast of the Adriatic sea will likely be the peak of beautiful landscape on the trip. At some point though I’d move inland first to visit the campus of the boarding school in Mostar that is part of the United World College movement that I attended. After crossing through the last bits of coast in Montenegro I’d move inland a second time, through Kosovo to Sophia, Bulgaria.
After Sophia I’ll be deep in old Greek territory, visiting Alexander the Great’s sites in Montenegro and then through another beautiful capital, Tirana, Albania. I will then leave the “Balkans” proper and head down through Greece to all the ancient ruins on the way to Athens!
Wow! I’m both exhausted and exhilarated from even writing about it! Definitely would be a whirlwind experience. Hope I will do it (or parts of it) soon!
Bonus Trip: South Pacific While talking with a friend we came up with three other long trips, and though I haven’t put much thought into them, I’m including one in each of the posts as a bonus trip. This idea is to island hop around the South Pacific- seeing Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, Marshall Islands, and many more! I would be done ideally on a boat, though there are lots of small planes that go between the islands as well! Who knows!
Romania is a good example of the fluid multi-national nature of many of the small states in Europe - prior to its conquest by the Ottomans in the mid-16th Century, there were many city-states in the area, many of which, in turn, had their own patrilineal aristos (most commonly, princes). Near the end of Ottoman ascendancy in that part of Europe, various of the Danubian principalities joined together (notably Moldavia and Wallachia) to form the United Principalities, the precursor to the modern state of Romania. After the Ottomans formally departed in 1877, the Kingdom of Romania was founded under Carol I, a German prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. The inter-bellum years were not particularly kind to Romania and its people, and post-WWII was even less so, as the influence of the Soviet reaches allowed for the authoritarian (and, quite frankly, sadistic) rule of the Ceaușescus until their execution by their own people in 1989 as Communism fell in Europe. Romanian, as you know, is a romance language - and I guess here we see what happens when romance and internecine authoritarian squabbles mix. Harkening back to the good old days of Ancient Rome indeed…..
Stamp details: Top left: Issued in: 1864 From: Bucharest, Romanian United Principalities YC #11
Top right: Issued on: December 31, 1866 From: Bucharest, Romania MC #16
Second row left: Issued in: 1885 From: Bucharest, Kingdom of Romania MC #57
Second row right: Issued in: 1919 From: Bucharest, Kingdom of Romania MC #254
Third row left: Issued on: April 8, 1948 From: Bucharest, Romanian People’s Republic MC #1118
Third row right: Issued on: August 25, 1965 From: Bucharest, Socialist Republic of Romania MC #2427
Bottom left: Issued on: January 8, 1990 From: Bucharest, Romania MC #4585
Bottom right: Issued on: January 23, 2019 From: Bucharest, Romania MC #7493
Pauline Elisabeth Ottilie Luise of Wied was the first queen of Romania as the wife of King Carol I. Elisabeth was a prolific writer under the name Carmen Sylva.
Since today is Romania’s national day / Great Union Day I thought I might spam everybody with my culture and explain some of their folk costumes.
First thing i want to mention is that I got all my info and ideas from this website [ Romanian Museum ] and all the reference pictures are from there ( i’ll share the links below for each picture).
What I’m doing is a really really brief explanation so I might simplify some events / briefly mention others so if anybody is interested to find out more feel free to message me.
1) Sieg
First of all, even though I watched Fate/ Apocrypha it never crossed my mind that Sieg might be Romanian ??? ( even tho he was born there) so i’m really happy to have him part of the famiglia.
*The Saxons have arrived in Transylvania in 12th century and created the Siebenburgen = The Land of The Seven Burgs / Citadels , Sighișoara being one of them
2) Vlad III ( berserker ver)
I always thought he was meant to be the younger version of Lancer Vlad, or at least a more refined version??? but apparently not, he’s just the Vlad-that-is-associated-with-Dracula version so welp.
While we do not know for sure, legends say that Vlad the Impaler was born in Sighișoara which means Fate/ Apocrypha was pretty accurate I get to draw him in that area’s folk costume. The geographical area around Sighșoara is called Târnava Mare, and the men’ costume looked like this ↓ ↓ ↓ [ for further references ]
Also Vlad is playing a traditional Romanian instrument called nai (pan flute) <— bless wikipedia for having an English version.
3) Vlad III ( lancer ver )
So while the berserker ver is a bit difficult to be placed historically, for Lancer Vlad FGO is pretty straightforward so we definitely know he is supposed to represent ‘Christianity’s shield’ aka the King of Wallachia* who protected his kingdom from the Ottoman Empire.
For him, I’ve decided to go with a [ folk costume from the Giurgiu/ Vlasca region ] because 1) it looks so cool like… transparent sleeves???fragile masculinity what?? 2) he was buried at Comana Monastery in Giurgiu 3) one of his important battles took place in Giurgiu in 1461/1462 ( if anybody is interested in the details, i can give you a summary )
*Wallachia is the historical name for Southern Romania, before all the kingdoms unified
We entered Russia from Ukraine today in a fairly painless two and a half hour border crossing. Only a cursory glance was given to the contents of our cars, but we had a little bit of headache filling out some declaration forms. It didn’t help that the…
