Chestnuts Festival, Baia Mare 2007

Every Romanian city or town has an annual so-called "Beer Festival" when all the urban population goes out on the streets, eats the traditional meal MICI (impossible to translate or to describe the feeling when eating those:) and drink tones of beer. It's a time when everybody, young or old meets their friends and chat while getting drunk. Well Baia Mare needed to be more special than the rest of the Romanian cities so we organized The Chestnuts Fest.

The name it's not just a coincidence, Baia Mare is a rare place on the Romanian territory where chestnuts grow. In Romania we have only one more place like that but it's not at all so prosperous. You can see I still love that place very much even if I live in Cluj for 8 years now.
Anyway at the fest it gets very crowded at some point...I mean all the time...the streets are full of people wandering here and there trying to bargain something...clothes, pieces of traditional art, handcrafts, food, etc. At night (because the party goes on until morning; on Saturday we got home at 1:30 am and the party was still to continue) it gets very crowded, it's like attending a concert of thousands of people and having a survival space of 1 sq cm around you. You have to go where the crowd goes. If you want to turn left maybe you just get back from where you first came. Oh! But what am I explaining here...you all know what I mean.

It was a good moment to visit my parents and to involve them as well into this bath of people. Here we were still together, afterwards we got lost ;)

Through the sun-glasses (It was like summertime those days 23-25 degrees Celsius):

Like all the locals we sat to a table ate MICI with mustard, had a beer and had a lot of fun and bought some cheap clothes. Here is the MEN's side of the table:

Here is the WOMEN's sector. You can feel the "girl power" can't you?

We enjoyed the street singers (some old indians playing traditional music...they can be found on the street of Cluj as well).


We also had a walk through the old city of Baia Mare, now reconstructed and modernized and we fooled around...like kids. Gee! Those child-games can be so relaxing and fun...if your butt still fits those tiny spaces...auch!



Then we walked by the place where our wedding took place an in the Municipal Park. Somewhere on that hill on the back was the restaurant where we had our party:

And here is the Ethnographic Museum from Baia Mare...I'm ashamed as I have never visited it!

I realized that we have our beautiful and special places in Romania too, and in our small quiet tows as Baia Mare is we just have to raise our eyes and take a look...and of course take attitude and preserve them...and OK! we need some marketing training as well, as we have no idea how to sell our jeweleries .

Of course we have our funny silly parts:

But over all we're funny people with a great sense of humour and a great respect for our family...and we look good together even if some really fought for a place in the front:


Chestnuts...yummy they are tasty but everything that is very good it's hard to get. Try these with bare hands:


Or better do not try this at home...PLEASE!