This is a genuine recipe for Papanasi, as run through Google translate. Perhaps the world’s most dangerous meal:

Preparation time (average complexity)

Ingredients (for 10):

* 1 kg cheese cows,
* 400 g flour,
* 4 eggs,
* 100 g sugar Farina,
* 4 g bicarbonate,
* Race of lemon peel,
* 100 g semolina,
* 200 ml oil
* 500 g Sour cream,
* 50 g sugar Farina,
* 20 g salt.

Method of preparation:

Cheese cows mix with strained flour, eggs beaten, sugar, bicarbonate, the lemon peel, meal and salt. Mix well until the composition homogenization, then shapes papanasi round in shape, is a means to push a dialing hole and deep-fried infierbintat until crisp. Serve warm with Sour cream and sugar over Farina, many second shot to pieces.

“Little by little, I’ll get my building…” Film makers think that Jean Rouch is an anthropologist, antropologists think that Jean Rouch is a film maker.
“Petit a petit” was the perfect ending of a day full of superb downloads. If you enjoy Jim Jarmush’s comic sense, this film will match your taste. Hilarious inocent naivity.

Some Romanian economists complain that the country exports nothing of its own. That’s why you don’t see Mici in the supermarkets of Paris, or large bags of fresh Spaga on sale in Madrid. But Romania does have some unique potential. Take the graffiti, for example. It’s quite unlike any grafitti you’ll find anywhere else, even Mars. It has a strange quality of complete inexplicability that could sell very well in the art houses of Bruges.

Wandering through Bucharest recently, we discovered this:

Who can find words to follow that? Well, there’s the Japanese foreign minister, for one. I am sure that, were this piece brought to his or her attention, they would make an official complaint to the Romanian Government, insisting that Japanese people are not aliens. Adding perhaps that they are, quite simply, people from Japan.

Taking a closer look, we discovered that someone had sprayed a stencil over the original:

At first sight, the words ‘incredibly racist’ might spring to mind. But if you look closely you can see the really radical and, hey - let’s go for it, ’subversive’ copyright symbols, because this, like, just gets at and I mean, like, gets at those big old grasping corporations run by guys with cigars, like, yeah? I mean, it’s saying, on some level, that everything is a coroporate symbol, even, like a swastika. Which is true. Ask any Nazi. They might have been evil incarnate, but they had great accountants. And that, I think, in a nutshell, is the lesson here.

REALLY IMPORTANT UPDATE!!

It just goes to show, when it comes to grafitti, there is always more to learn. The figure spouting dubious assertions on the validity of the Japanese on Earth is called ‘Keke’ and it’s all over the place. The idea seems to be to draw Keke and then have it say some random quote. Anything will do. Off the top of my head - “Anarchist’s only drink herbal tea because all proper tea is theft”. And I mention Anarchists spuriously. An actual quote is more like “Everything is blue and there’s no clouds in the sky”. Yeah. I was stunned too. Its street art you understand. And “Street art is like, so hard to do” as Rembrandt once memorably quipped. Still, for those of you itching to see more, here’s A boatload of Keke.

The French Library again - a set of films by Jean Rouch, Miles Davis and Michel Legrand (DINGO) and, Bernstein’s “Trouble in Tahiti”. “Chronique d’un ete” by Jean Rouch impressed me very much (if only Romanians had the freedom of expression here…), especially Marceline’s walk through Paris scene, but I couldn’t find it on youtube.
Here is instead a scene from “Trouble in Tahiti”, a DVD worth buying…sometime in the future.

… was another offering from the French Cultural Center in Bucharest, who decided a couple of years ago to introduce the Romanian public to the tradition of early/baroque music. Considering that Bucharest is a place were ‘culturally exceptional’ usually means less traffic than usual, this is an oasis for the local music lovers - ensamble “Les Basses Reunis”, “Les Lunaisiens” (Arnaud Marzorati - bass and Jean Francois Novelli - tenor, marvelous voices!).

Here are two of “Les Basses Reunis” members, with the superb Romanian violin player Mira Glodeanu in a concert that I watched last year on Mezzo TV.

Last week I borrowed two books on Cioran from the French Library - one features an interview (with a short introduction) taken by Liiceanu, the other one is a collection of letters addressed by the Romanian philosopher living in Paris to his parents, brother, friends (Dinu Noica, Arsavir Acterian, Jeni Acterian, Liiceanu, Vulcanescu, Eliade) from Romania. The letters proved to be relevant documents to Cioran’s philosophy, works and to the times he lived.

Apart from that, in the letters to his family and brother, he refers often to medicine, clothes and books that he sent back home. Some of the letters and packages were returned, others were “lost” by the Romanian Secret Police (Securitate) through routine checks. He very rarely commented on the political context, because he knew that his letters were checked carefully and didn’t want to cause any trouble to those whom he wrote to.

The work features Cioran’s continuous complaints about bordom, Romanian visitors, life in Paris/in the Western world/in general and his (apparent) nostalgia for the place where he was born. In my book, however, a few odd notes were penciled by a reader exasperated by the way the letters were translated from French to Romanian - in his opinion there are too many words of Turkish, Bulgarian origins. Then, at some point, another anxious reader who also underlined most of the book, had crossed out/deleted the first reader’s comments, but they are still readable.