Monday, December 8, 2008

Romania: Party at the Palace

Greetings from Bucharest, Romania, where I am sitting opposite from Alison, who managed to find me off the train this afternoon and steered zombie-like me through the gray Bucharest streets into a nice Italian cafe with free WiFi. Phil Collins is playing on the loudspeakers, and I just drank a mint latte. 

We're here to open the "No Other Home" exhibit of photographs at the spectacular Cotroceni Palace as part of a European Council meeting that will be taking place next weekend.

Tonight, we're catching a train to Costanza on the Black Sea coast, the home to the biggest population of Crimean Tatars in Romania, where we'll try to do some more interviews and take some more photographs of the community there.



2 comments:

Martha Smith said...

Dear Maria, Your mom gave me the link to your blog a year or so ago and I have really enjoyed reading about your research and your adventures. Yesterday I found an article I'd saved 4 years ago from the Rice University (my alma mater) News. It's about a Rice grad student's research into the origin of "Carol of the Bells." Anthony Potoczniak, an anthropology grad student of Ukrainian descent, is quoted as saying "It was originally a Ukranian folk song that was written as a winter well-wishing song." Written in 1916 by Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovich and titled "Shchedryk," the song tells the tale of a swallow flying into a household to proclaim the plentiful year that the family will have. You probably know all this already. Still I can send you a PDF of the article, if you will let me know your email address. Keep up the great work. Best wishes for warmth and joy during the holidays. Your one-time piano teacher, Martha Smith martha.smith@comcast.net.
BTW have you visited the blog of your old friend Michael Salvatierra? He and his wife are missionaries in Peru and having some interesting times, too: http://salvatierras.blogspot.com/.
Happy Beethoven's Birthday!

Maria Sonevytsky said...

It's a small world - Anthony and I are colleagues from the Ukrainian ethnomusicology world, but I haven't ever seen this article. I'm emailing you now...