Do cleaning, not war

While I agree making love is by far the best option, cleaning is way better than making war.

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Envy

Is this envy from one traditional costume on another?

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Riverdance for St. Patrick Day

There are not many Irish people in Bucharest as there are neither many Irish business in the country, but the city is packed with Irish pubs, so no wonder the St. Patrick Day, the national day of Ireland, started to be celebrated here too with a parade. And at such a parade, the traditional Irish dance is a must.

However, the parade in Bucharest has its own twist: there are also groups performing traditional Romanian music, maybe some dance and such. I guess the beer is international and nobody would pass a celebration involving large quantities of beer.

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St. Patrick parade

At the first thought, one wouldn't expect a St. Patrick parade in Bucharest, where we probably have more Irish Pubs than Irish people (or maybe this is the reason), but our city had one for the first time. And I don't think is a bad thing, is a good opportunity to get people out from their houses, walk, listen to music, meet other people, enjoy a show. Yes, as a first edition it has some (many) flaws, but that's to be expected. Looking forward to the next year.

There was a Romanian riverdance group, a couple of Irish music groups, but there was a serious presence of Romanian traditional dance and music groups, from Săpânța, Vaslui and Vrancea. Which probably enjoy better the local palinka over the Irish beer.

Personally my biggest disappointment was not seeing any green beer, which I understand is an international tradition for the day. Not in Romania... fingers crossed for the following edition.

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National Day is a Children Day

Probably half of the people assisting the military parade on the National Day are children, eagerly awaiting to see the tanks and the horses. They were not bothered much by being groped by strangers as they were bothered by the wait: to get good places some went there 1-2 hours earlier.

But when the parade started they were happy:

And even more happier after the event, when they were allowed to play with (and on top) of the military vehicles, guns and soldiers (no ammunition was present, of course).

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Groping for the National Day.

What is the most pleasant way to spend the National Day? How about having your genitals groped? Bonus: if you are a guy and the person doing it is a blond female. OR you are a girl and he is a man in uniform.

Long story short: 1st of December is the Romanian National Day and traditionally there is a big military parade in Bucharest at Arcul de Triumf, which is admired by a lot of people (I heard around 15.000 were this year). Less traditional, this year the security was a lot tighter.

In all the access routes, there were control filters: some gendarmes in uniforms were controlling everyone: men, women, children, old people by groping the bodies and looking inside the bags (TSA-style pnly low-tech).

The gendarmes were both male and female and the intention probably was for same-gender groping only, but with such an amount of people it was chaos: everybody groping anyone. I saw an old woman protesting, who escaped only with a purse-check and an young man unhappy he was groped by a guy gendarme, not by the blond women gendarme.

After this filters, there were some guys in suits watching, probably the SPP amd some more... After passing the check I stopped, turned around to shoot the groping, but somehow my view was blocked all the time. Breathing, I understood: there was a "normally" dressed guy, most likely a SPP undercover who was moving in such way to be in my view all the time while maintaining a casual appearance. Time to change my lens, put a wide one, extend my arm and shoot from above his head. He tried to extend his arms too, realized is ridiculous, exchanged a few words with a suited guy then dropped his arms. I continued shooting while asking him "is there any problem?" and when done left with "see, there is a solution for every problem".

On the positive side, when waiting in queue for the filter, I was asked if I have a press pass (had my biggest lens mounted) - don't know if that would have me skip the filter or just go in front. Another fellow photographer was asked to take a shoot to prove the camera is working - not sure if because she had a red Nikon DLSR which the gendarmes had doubts is a real camera or because it was early in the morning, before the gendarmes got bored.

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Two on a bike

Besides SkirtBike, another event at BikeFest was the "two on a bike" race, here teams of two people riding the same bike went head to head in a competition.

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SkirtBike

Last week-end the Izvor park in Bucharest hosted the BikeFest festival, which had as one of its events the fourth edition of SkirtBike (autumn edition), where women are invited to take part with a bicycle while wearing a skirt (preferably vintage) and maybe high heels.

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Bucharest like Rio

B.FIT, the Bucharest International Theatre Festival, closed with a big parade, part of it was the parade of Latin dance schools, with samba, salsa, capoeira, bachata and more. There were some costumes making you think of Rio de Janeiro.

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Wilhelmina Arz at Femei pe Matasari

Even if it was only the second edition, it seems like a tradition became for Femei pe Mătăsari urban festival to be opened by a fashion show by Wilhelmina Arz. It take place in the evening before, on a stage built on the street, where the next day people will roam.

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Frames of Style

Last Friday, the Intercontinental hotel of Bucharest hosted a fashion and style event called "Frames of Style", it started with a fashion show from the Thai designer Saruda Nimpitakpong:

It continued with another Thai designer, Chinachan Nimpitakpong:

In the interlude, master Miyuki Ueda made a demonstration of sumie painiting:

Then the Romanian designer Irina Irmia presented the culmination of her project, Japanese Jungle Jam Trilogy:

The finale was the awards of the contest happening in a fashion workshop with fashion design students:

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