THE SONG OF THE SIBYL: THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT

The Grandma in the Airport of Strasbourg

The Grandma has finished her travel on The Orient Express. This morning she has arrived to Strasbourg where she has taken a plane to Barcelona, via Palma.  

The Orient Express continues to Paris, Calais and London but The Grandma has returned to Barcelona because today is Christmas Eve and she has a meeting in the Church of Sant Gervasi i Protasi in Bonanova in Barcelona. She's going to listen The Song of the Sibyl sung by Maria del Mar Bonet.

The Song of the Sibyl, in Catalan El Cant de la Sibil·la, is a liturgical drama and a Gregorian chant, the lyrics of which compose a prophecy describing the Apocalypse, which has been performed at some churches of Majorca in Balearic Islands, Alghero in Sardinia and some Catalan churches, in Catalan language on Christmas Eve nearly uninterruptedly since medieval times. The Song of the Sibyl is also sung in Naples in Campania and Marseille in Provence. It was declared a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO on November 16, 2010. 

More information: UNESCO

Several versions, differing in text and music, exist:

-Latin Sibyl, from 10th-11th century, which incorporates fragments of The City of God (XVIII, 23) by St. Augustine.

-Provençal Sibyl, from the 13th century, reflecting influence of troubadour poetry.

-Catalan Sibyl. The latest and most ornamented version. Incorporates popular traditions of Balearic Islands. Refrain of this version is sometimes written for three or four voices.

Delphic Sibyl by Michelangelo

The author of The Song of the Sibyl is unknown. The prophecy was first recorded as an acrostic poem in Greek by bishop Eusebius of Caesarea and later translated into Latin by Saint Augustine in The City of God. It appeared again in the 10th century in different locations across Catalonia, Italy, Castile, and France in the Sermon contra Judeos, later inserted into the reading of the sixth lesson of the second nocturn of matins and was performed as an integral part of the liturgy.

This chant was originally sung in Latin and under the name of Judicii Signum, but from the 13th on, versions in Catalan are found.

These early Catalan versions of the Judici Signum were not directly translated from Latin. Instead, they all come from a previous adaptation in Provençal, which proves the huge popularity this song must have had in the past.

More information: The Song of Sibyl in Barcelona

Amongst the Catalan texts which come from this common root, there is a 14th-century Codex kept in the Archives of the Majorcan Diocese, which was rediscovered in 1908. Oral transmission and the lack of written scripts has caused the various old texts in the vernacular to suffer many modifications over time, which has led to a diversity of versions.

The Song of the Sibyl was almost totally abandoned throughout Europe after the Council of Trent, held in 25 sessions from 1545 to 1563, declared its performance was forbidden. Nevertheless, it was restored on Mallorca as soon as in 1575.

The Grandma in Sant Gervasi i Protasi, Bonanova

Originally, The Song of the Sibyl was sung in a Gregorian melody and, as it can be seen in the codex previously mentioned, the musical accompaniment that was played in Majorca, with the exception of some variations, was the same documented in other places across the Iberian Peninsula. Today, it cannot be ascertained when The Song of the Sibyl was sung to this Gregorian melody, but most likely until the 16th or 17th century. 

Oral transmission of the song caused, as it did with the text, the birth of different variations and models. The interest this chant produced amongst early Musicologists and Folklorists of the 19th century led to the transcription of the different known versions of the song. The versions still played nowadays take these transcriptions as model.

More information: History Learning Site

In the Renaissance, the Gregorian melody of the Song was set to polyphonic music by various composers, a common practice during that period. Two of these works, both for four voices, can be found in the Cancionero de la Colombina, a Spanish manuscript from the second half of the 15th century. The text in them is an abridged version of the Song, in the Castilian language.

The song was originally sung by a Presbyter, although this figure was later replaced by a boy. Even though the Song is supposed to be sung by a Sibyl woman, prophetess, for many centuries women were not allowed to sing in church.

Maria del Mar Bonet & Lautaro Rosas

Today, in most temples in which the song is interpreted, it is still sung by a boy, although in some cases it is sung by either a little girl or a woman. In the performance, the singer walks up to the Altar escorted by two or more altar boys carrying wax candles. Once there, the singer greets the crucifix, turns around, and begins the song. The song is sung a cappella and in a solo voice. In some churches, organ music or either modern choral interludes are introduced between one verse and the next.

The costume used to perform the song is rather similar in all churches, at least around Majorca, where it is performed. It consists of a white or coloured tunic, sometimes embroidered around the neck and the hem, and usually, a cape, which is sometimes replaced with a second tunic. The head is covered with a cap of the same colour. The singer holds a sword in his hands, which is held erect during the whole song. Once the song is over, the singer draws a cross in the air with the sword, turns around to the crucifix once again, usually bows, and afterwards is escorted away from the altar by the same boys.

More information: Maria del Mar Bonet

The song starts with an introduction, the melody of which differs from the rest of the song. In some performances, the song ends with the introductory melody as well.

The text is not standard, but late Medieval Catalan. Some verses are attributed to the 14th-century Mallorcan writer, Anselm Turmeda, who translated into Catalan the Judicii Signum, Book of the Final Judgement, on which the composition is based.

A Catalan version was recorded by Maria del Mar Bonet in 1979 on her album Saba de terrer, and by the vocal ensemble Obsidienne in 1995. 

 Great fire from the heaven will come down;
seas, fountains and rivers, all will burn.
Fish will scream loudly and in horror
losing their natural delights.

The Song of the Sibyl

F.SCOTT FITZGERALD: THE LOST AMERICAN GENERATION

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald

The Grandma is in Vienna. She arrived on The Orient Express and today she has been visiting the bookshops looking for a special book: The Gran Gastby. After walking across the downtown of the Austrian capital, she has found the book and she wants to talk to you about its author, F.Scott Fitzgerald.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896–December 21, 1940) was an American novelist and short story writer, whose works illustrate the Jazz Age. While he achieved limited success in his lifetime, he is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the Lost Generation of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote numerous short stories, many of which treat themes of youth and promise, and age and despair.

More information: History.com

Born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to an upper-middle-class family, Fitzgerald was named after his famous second cousin, three times removed on his father's side, Francis Scott Key, but was always known as plain Scott Fitzgerald. He was also named after his deceased sister, Louise Scott Fitzgerald, one of two sisters who died shortly before his birth. Well, three months before I was born, he wrote as an adult, my mother lost her other two children... I think I started then to be a writer.

His father was Edward Fitzgerald, of Irish and English ancestry, who had moved to St. Paul from Maryland after the Civil War and his mother was Mary McQuillan Fitzgerald, the daughter of an Irish immigrant who had made his fortune in the wholesale grocery business. Fitzgerald was the first cousin once removed of Mary Surratt, hanged in 1865 for conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

Fitzgerald died of a heart attack. Fitzgerald's body was moved to the Pierce Brothers Mortuary.

More information: Open Culture

At the time of his death, the Church declined the family's request that Fitzgerald, a non-practicing Catholic celebrated for his risqué and provocative Jazz Age writings, be buried in the family plot in the Roman Catholic Saint Mary's Cemetery. Fitzgerald was originally buried in Rockville Union Cemetery. 

Fitzgerald died before he could complete The Love of the Last Tycoon. His manuscript, which included extensive notes for the unwritten part of the novel's story, was edited by his friend, the literary critic Edmund Wilson, and published in 1941 as The Last Tycoon.

 After all, life hasn't much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald

VIENNA & CLASSICAL MUSIC: THE CITY OF DREAMS

The Grandma in Vienna, Austria

The Grandma has arrived to Vienna, the capital of Austria, this morning. She's travelling on The Orient Express. Vienna is an incredible city and The Grandma wants to share her visit with you.

Vienna, Wien, is one of the nine states of Austria. Until the beginning of the 20th century, it was the largest German-speaking city in the world, and before the splitting of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I, the city had 2 million inhabitants. 

The city is located in the eastern part of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Apart from being regarded as The City of Music because of its musical legacy, Vienna is also said to be The City of Dreams because it was home to the world's first psycho-analyst, Sigmund Freud. 

More information: Vienna / Wien City Hall

The city's roots lie in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed into a Medieval and Baroque city, and then the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is well known for having played an essential role as a leading European music centre, from the great age of Viennese Classicism through the early part of the 20th century. The historic centre of Vienna is rich in architectural ensembles, including Baroque castles and gardens, and the late-19th-century Ringstraße lined with grand buildings, monuments and parks.

The Grandma waiting the tram in Vienna

Evidence has been found of continuous habitation since 500 BC, when the site of Vienna on the Danube River was settled by the Celts. In 15 BC, the Romans fortified the frontier city they called Vindobona to guard the empire against Germanic tribes to the north. One of the earliest references to Vienna is from the Jewish historian, Josephus, who recounts that the king of Judea, Herod Archelaus (ca. 23 BCE–18 CE) was banished to the city of Vienna in Gaul by Caesar.

Close ties with other Celtic peoples continued through the ages. The Irish monk Saint Colman or Koloman, Irish Colmán, derived from colm dove is buried in Melk Abbey and Saint Fergil was Bishop of Salzburg for forty years, and twelfth-century monastic settlements were founded by Irish Benedictines. Evidence of these ties is still evident in Vienna's great Schottenstift monastery, once home to many Irish monks.

More information: About Vienna

In 976, Leopold I of Babenberg became count of the Eastern March, a 60-mile district centering on the Danube on the eastern frontier of Bavaria. This initial district grew into the duchy of Austria. Each succeeding Babenberg ruler expanded the march east along the Danube eventually encompassing Vienna and the lands immediately east. In 1145, Duke Henry II Jasomirgott moved the Babenberg family residence from Klosterneuburg to Vienna. Since that time, Vienna remained the center of the Babenberg dynasty.

The Grandma in Saint Stephansdom, Vienna

In 1440, Vienna became the resident city of the Habsburg dynasty. It eventually grew to become the de facto capital of the Holy Roman Empire (1483–1806) and a cultural centre for arts and science, music and fine cuisine. Hungary occupied the city between 1485–1490.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman armies were stopped twice outside Vienna. A plague epidemic ravaged Vienna in 1679, killing nearly a third of its population.

In 1804, during the Napoleonic Wars, Vienna became the capital of the Austrian Empire and continued to play a major role in European and world politics. 

More information: The History of Vienna

In 1938, after a triumphant entry into Austria, Austrian-born Adolf Hitler spoke to the Austrian Germans from the balcony of the Neue Burg, a part of the Hofburg at the Heldenplatz. Between 1938 and the end of the Second World War, Vienna lost its status as a capital to Berlin as Austria ceased to exist and became a part of Nazi Germany. It was not until 1955 that Austria regained full sovereignty.

The Grandma in a Christmas Market in Vienna

On 2 April 1945, the Soviets launched the Vienna Offensive against the Germans holding the city and besieged it. British and American air raids and artillery duels between the SS and Wehrmacht and the Red Army crippled infrastructure, such as tram services and water and power distribution, and destroyed or damaged thousands of public and private buildings. Vienna fell eleven days later. Austria was separated from Germany, and Vienna was restored as the republic's capital city, but the Soviet hold on the city remained until 1955.

The four-power control of Vienna lasted until the Austrian State Treaty was signed in May 1955. That year, after years of reconstruction and restoration, the State Opera and the Burgtheater, both on the Ringstraße, reopened to the public. 

More information: UNESCO World Heritage Centre

The Soviet Union signed the State Treaty only after having been provided with the political guarantee by the federal government to declare Austria's neutrality after the withdrawal of the allied troops. This law of neutrality, passed in late October 1955 and not the State Treaty itself, ensured that modern Austria would align with neither NATO nor the Soviet bloc, and is considered one of the reasons for Austria's late entry into the European Union.

Vienna is a handsome, lively city, and pleases me exceedingly. 

Frederic Chopin

PETER O'TOOLE: PASSION FOR WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

O'Toole played the role of King Henry II, 1964

The Grandma is in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. The weather is cold, -1ºC of average and it's snowing without stopping. 

She prefers to stay inside her cabin in The Orient Express reading something. Today, a biography about Peter O'Toole, one of the most important Irish actors who offered the best performances about the great William Shakespeare's characters.

Peter Seamus O'Toole (2 August 1932-14 December 2013) was a British-Irish stage and film actor. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began working in the theatre, gaining recognition as a Shakespearean actor at the Bristol Old Vic and with the English Stage Company before making his film debut in 1959.

More information: Bristol Old Vic

He achieved international recognition playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) for which he received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He was nominated for this award another seven times for Becket (1964), The Lion in Winter (1968), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The Ruling Class (1972), The Stunt Man (1980), My Favorite Year (1982), and Venus (2006) – and holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations for acting without a win. In 2002, O'Toole was awarded the Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements. 

O'Toole was born in 1932. Some sources give his birthplace as Connemara, County Galway, Ireland, while others cite St James University Hospital, Leeds, England. O'Toole claimed he was not certain of his birthplace or date, noting in his autobiography that, while he accepted 2 August as his birthdate, he had a birth certificate from each country, with the Irish one giving a June 1932 birth date O'Toole was evacuated from Leeds early in the Second World War and went to a Catholic school for seven or eight years, St Joseph's Secondary School at Joseph Street, Hunslet.

More information: Bristol Old Vic Theatre School

He first appeared on film in 1959 in a minor role in The Day They Robbed the Bank of England. O'Toole's major break came when he was chosen to play T. E. Lawrence in Sir David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), after Marlon Brando proved unavailable and Albert Finney turned down the role. His performance was ranked number one in Premiere magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Performances of All Time. The role introduced him to US audiences and earned him the first of his eight nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor. T. E. Lawrence, portrayed by O'Toole, was selected in 2003 as the tenth-greatest hero in cinema history by the American Film Institute.

O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, 1962

O'Toole fulfilled a lifetime ambition in 1970 when he performed on stage in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, alongside Donal McCann, at Dublin's Abbey Theatre. In 1980, O'Toole starred as Tiberius in the Penthouse-funded biopic, Caligula.

In 1980, he received critical acclaim for playing the director in the behind-the-scenes film The Stunt Man. He received mixed reviews as John Tanner in Man and Superman and Henry Higgins in Pygmalion, and won a Laurence Olivier Award for his performance in Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell (1989). O'Toole was nominated for another Oscar for My Favorite Year (1982), a light romantic comedy about the behind-the-scenes at a 1950s TV variety-comedy show, in which O'Toole plays an aging swashbuckling film star reminiscent of Errol Flynn. He also appeared in 1987's The Last Emperor.

More information: The Smithsonian

On 10 July 2012, O'Toole released a statement announcing his retirement from acting. O'Toole died on 14 December 2013 at Wellington Hospital, London, aged 81. His funeral was held at Golders Green Crematorium in London on 21 December 2013, where he was cremated in a wicker coffin.

O'Toole's remains are planned to be taken to Connemara, Ireland. His daughter Kate said: We're bringing him home. It's what he would have wanted. They are currently being kept at the residence of the President of Ireland, Áras an Uachtaráin, by the President Michael D. Higgins who is an old friend of the actor. His family plan to return to Ireland to fulfill his wishes and take them to the west of Ireland when they can.

On 18 May 2014, a new prize was launched in memory of Peter O'Toole at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School; this includes an annual award given to two young actors from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, including a professional contract at Bristol Old Vic Theatre. He has a memorial plaque in St Paul's, the Actors' Church in Covent Garden.

I woke up one morning to find I was famous. 

I bought a white Rolls-Royce and drove down Sunset Boulevard, 

wearing dark specs and a white suit, waving like the Queen Mum.

 

Peter O'Toole

BUDAPEST: MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS

The Grandma in Budapest. It's Christmas time.

The Grandma has arrived to Budapest this morning on The Orient Express and she has done a little tour round the city which is ornamented with Christmas details. The place is very beautiful and plenty of historic places but the most incredible for her has been to remember the last scenes of Music Box of her favourite films near the original place where it was filmed. 

Music Box is a 1989 American crime drama film that tells the story of a Hungarian-American immigrant (Armin Mueller-Stahl) who is accused of having been a war criminal. The plot revolves around his daughter (Jessica Lange) an attorney, who defends him, and her struggle to uncover the truth. The film was written by Joe Eszterhas and directed by Costa-Gavras.

Now, The Grandma is having dinner in a luxurious hotel in the downtown of the city and she's reading a guide. Here, you have some explanations about this wonderful eastern city.

More information: Budapest City Hall

Budapest is the capital and most populous city of Hungary, one of the largest cities in the European Union and sometimes described as the primate city of Hungary. Budapest became a single city occupying both banks of the Danube river with the unification of Buda and Óbuda on the west bank, with Pest on the east bank on November 17, 1873.

The origins of the names Buda and Pest are obscure. According to chronicles from the Middle Ages, the name Buda comes from the name of its founder, Bleda (Buda), brother of the Hunnic ruler Attila. The theory that Buda was named after a person is also supported by modern scholars. An alternative explanation suggests that Buda derives from the Slavic word вода, voda (water), a translation of the Latin name Aquincum, which was the main Roman settlement in the region and where it is believed that Marcus Aurelius wrote at least part of his book Meditations.

The Grandma walking on the snow in Budapest

There are also several theories about the origin of the name Pest. One of the theories states that the word Pest comes from the Roman times, since there was a fortress Contra-Aquincum in this region that was referred to as Pession by Ptolemaios. According to another theory, Pest originates from the Slavic word for cave (пещера, peștera), or oven (пещ, peșt), in reference either to a cave where fires burned or to a local limekiln.

More information: Official Budapest Tourist Information

The history of Budapest began with Aquincum, originally a Celtic settlement that became the Roman capital of Lower Pannonia. Hungarians arrived in the territory in the 9th century. Their first settlement was pillaged by the Mongols in 1241–42. The re-established town became one of the centres of Renaissance humanist culture by the 15th century. Following the Battle of Mohács and nearly 150 years of Ottoman rule, the region entered a new age of prosperity in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Budapest became a global city after its unification in 1873. It also became the co-capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a great power that dissolved in 1918, following World War I. Budapest was the focal point of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the Hungarian Republic of Councils in 1919, the Battle of Budapest in 1945, and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

 If you come from Paris to Budapest you think you are in Moscow but if you go from Moscow to Budapest you think you are in Paris. 

Gyorgy Ligeti

LED ZEPPELIN: AN ETERNAL STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

Led Zeppelin (From I love Clicks)

Crossing The Carpats on The Orient Express is a mystic experience, even better, if you are listening one of the best rock bands of the history. The Grandma wants to talk about Led Zeppelin and their most beautiful song: Stairway to heaven.

 
Led Zeppelin were an English rock band formed in London in 1968. The group consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham. The band's heavy, guitar-driven sound, rooted in blues and psychedelia on their early albums, has earned them recognition as one of the progenitors of heavy metal, though their unique style drew from a wide variety of influences, including folk music.

After changing their name from the New Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin signed a deal with Atlantic Records that afforded them considerable artistic freedom. Although the group was initially unpopular with critics, they achieved significant commercial success with albums such as Led Zeppelin (1969), Led Zeppelin II (1969), Led Zeppelin III (1970), Led Zeppelin IV (1971), Houses of the Holy (1973), and Physical Graffiti (1975). Their fourth album, which features the track Stairway to Heaven, is among the most popular and influential works in rock music, and it helped to secure the group's popularity.

More information: Led Zeppelin Official Site

Led Zeppelin are widely considered one of the most successful, innovative, and influential rock groups in history. Its music was rooted in the blues. The influence of American blues artists such as Muddy Waters and Skip James was particularly apparent on their first two albums, as was the distinct country blues style of Howlin' Wolf. Tracks were structured around the twelve-bar blues on every studio album except for one, and the blues directly and indirectly influenced other songs both musically and lyrically.  

Led Zeppelin (From I love Clicks)

The band were also strongly influenced by the music of the British, Celtic, and American folk revivals.

Scottish folk guitarist Bert Jansch helped inspire Page, and from him he adapted open tunings and aggressive strokes into his playing. 

The band also drew on a wide variety of genres, including world music, and elements of early rock and roll, jazz, country, funk, soul, and reggae, particularly on Houses of the Holy and the albums that followed.

The band began their first tour of the UK on 4 October 1968, they still were billed as the New Yardbirds, and played their first show as Led Zeppelin at the University of Surrey in Guildford on 25 October.  During the 1970s, Led Zeppelin reached new heights of commercial and critical success that made them one of the most influential groups of the era, eclipsing their earlier achievements.

More information: Led Zeppelin Multimedia

After the death of Bonham on 25 September 1980, the remaining members of Led Zeppelin decided to disband the group.

A 4 December 1980 press statement stated that, We wish it to be known that the loss of our dear friend, and the deep sense of undivided harmony felt by ourselves and our manager, have led us to decide that we could not continue as we were. The statement was signed simply Led Zeppelin.

Right from the first time 

we went to America in 1968, L

ed Zeppelin was a word-of-mouth thing. 

You can't really compare it to how it is today.  

Jimmy Page

BUCHAREST: SURVIVING ALL THE ADVERSE EVENTS

The Grandma in front of St. Anton Church

After four days on The Orient Express crossing East Bulgaria without any kind of connection, The Grandma has just arrived this afternoon to Bucharest. The weather is cold 1ºC and 89% of humidity. After visiting the most incredible cathedrals, The Grandma prefers to stay inside the train until tomorrow when the weather predictions are better than today. Meanwhile, she's reading some information about the capital of Romania before visiting one of the most beautiful and enigmatic places in Romania: Transylvannia.

Bucharest is the largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than 60 km north of the Danube River and the Bulgarian border.

More information: Bucureşti Administraţia Locală

The Romanian name București has an uncertain origin. Tradition connects the founding of Bucharest with the name of Bucur, who was a prince, an outlaw, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a hunter, according to different legends. In Romanian, the word stem bucurie means joy and it is believed to be of Dacian origin.

First mentioned as the Citadel of București in 1459, it became the residence of the famous Wallachian prince Vlad III the Impaler.

The Grandma inside St. Spyridon Cathedral

Partly destroyed by natural disasters and rebuilt several times during the following 200 years, and hit by Caragea's plague in 1813–14, the city was wrested from Ottoman control and occupied at several intervals by the Habsburg Monarchy (1716, 1737, 1789) and Imperial Russia (three times between 1768 and 1806). It was placed under Russian administration between 1828 and the Crimean War, with an interlude during the Bucharest-centred 1848 Wallachian revolution. Later, an Austrian garrison took possession after the Russian departure, remaining in the city until March 1857. On 23 March 1847, a fire consumed about 2,000 buildings, destroying a third of the city.

In 1862, after Wallachia and Moldavia were united to form the Principality of Romania, Bucharest became the new nation's capital city. In 1881, it became the political centre of the newly proclaimed Kingdom of Romania under King Carol I. During the second half of the 19th century, the city's population increased dramatically, and a new period of urban development began. 

More information: Romania Tourism

Between 6 December 1916 and November 1918, the city was occupied by German forces as a result of the Battle of Bucharest, with the official capital temporarily moved to Iași, in the Moldavia region.

In January 1941, the city was the scene of the Legionnaires' rebellion and Bucharest pogrom. As the capital of an Axis country and a major transit point for Axis troops en route to the Eastern Front, Bucharest suffered heavy damage during World War II due to Allied bombings. On 23 August 1944, Bucharest was the site of the royal coup which brought Romania into the Allied camp. The city suffered a short period of Nazi Luftwaffe bombings, as well as a failed attempt by German troops to regain the city.

More information: World War II in Romania

After the establishment of communism in Romania, the city continued growing. New districts were constructed, most of them dominated by tower blocks. During Nicolae Ceaușescu's leadership (1965–89), much of the historic part of the city was demolished and replaced by Socialist realism style development: the Civic Centre and the Palace of the Parliament, for which an entire historic quarter was razed to make way for Ceaușescu's megalomaniac plans. On 4 March 1977, an earthquake centered in Vrancea, about 135 km away, claimed 1,500 lives and caused further damage to the historic centre.

The Romanian Revolution of 1989 began with massive anti-Ceaușescu protests in Timișoara in December 1989 and continued in Bucharest, leading to the overthrow of the Communist regime.

To see far is one thing, going there is another - Constantin Brancusi.

MÍSIA & FADO: SENHORA DA NOITE'S SAUDADE

Mísia

Today, The Grandma is travelling to Bucarest, the capital of Romania on The Orient Express. The Grandma likes reading press every morning to know what is happening around the world. Her favourite tool is Twitter and she has been reading about a missing girl in Barcelona.

It's difficult to understand a teenager's brain. It's an age full of influences and they perceive a simple mistake like a great fail. Every case is a different story but, although The Grandma is sure that this pretty girl isn’t going to read this post, she would like to demand her only one thing: return home, return with your beloved family and friends. You need them and they need you.

In Portuguese, there is a beautiful word to explain how you feel when you’re far away your beloved people or your beloved country: saudade. There's also a beautiful kind of music: fado.

Fado was inscribed in 2011 on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

There are lots of incredible, popular and wonderful singers but The Grandma wants to talk about one of them, her favourite, the best in her opinion: Mísia.

More information: Mísia Official Website

Mísia  was born in 1955 in Porto, one of the most important cities of Portugal. Mísia is a polyglot. Despite singing mostly fado, she has sung some of her themes in Spanish, French, Catalan, English, and even Japanese.

Mísia's mother was Catalan, from Barcelona. She used to be a cabaret dancer, which accounts for many of the influences that shaped her music: tango, bolero, the use of Portuguese guitar with accordion, violin and the piano. Mísia’s father was Portuguese. Mísia lived some years between Oporto and Barcelona and grew up under the influence of these two different cultures.

Throughout her career, Mísia developed a new style: she modernized Amália Rodrigues's fado, shocking orthodox audiences by adding to the traditional instruments, bass guitar, classical guitar and Portuguese guitar, the sensuality of the accordion and the violin, and borrowing their finest verses from the greatest Portuguese poets.

The only thing that matters is to feel the fado. 

The fado is not meant to be sung; it simply happens. 

You feel it, you don’t understand it and you don’t explain it.

Amália Rodrigues

ISTANBUL, CONSTANTINOPLE, BYZANTIUM...

The Sultan Ahmet Camii in Istanbul

The Grandma has arrived to Istanbul on The Orient Express although she has decided to not visit the city. She's reading the travel guide and she wants to know about the different names of this historic city.

Istanbul, historically known as Constantinople and Byzantium, is the most populous city in Turkey and the country's economic, cultural, and historic center. Istanbul is a transcontinental city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosphorus strait, which separates Europe and Asia, between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Its commercial and historical center lies on the European side and about a third of its population lives on the Asian side.

More information: Istanbul by Lonely Planet

The city's biggest attraction is its historic center, partially listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its cultural and entertainment hub can be found across the city's natural harbor, the Golden Horn, in the Beyoğlu district.

The first known name of the city is Byzantium, the name given to it at its foundation by Megarean colonists around 660 BCE. The name is thought to be derived from a personal name, Byzas. Ancient Greek tradition refers to a legendary king of that name as the leader of the Greek colonists. Modern scholars have also hypothesized that the name of Byzas was of local Thracian or Illyrian origin and hence predated the Megarean settlement.

After Constantine the Great made it the new eastern capital of the Roman Empire in 330 CE, the city became widely known as Constantinopolis, which, as the Latinized form of Konstantinoúpolis, means the City of Constantine. 

More information: Historic Areas of Istanbul, UNESCO

The Maiden Tower in Istanbul

By the 19th century, the city had acquired other names used by either foreigners or Turks. Europeans used Constantinople to refer to the whole of the city, but used the name Stamboul, as the Turks also did, to describe the walled peninsula between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara.  

Pera was used to describe the area between the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, but Turks also used the name Beyoğlu, today the official name for one of the city's constituent districts. Islambol, meaning either City of Islam or Full of Islam was sometimes colloquially used to refer to the city, and was even engraved on some Ottoman coins, but the belief that it was the precursor to the present name, İstanbul, is belied by the fact that the latter existed well before the former and even predates the Ottoman conquest of the city.

Istanbul is inspiring because it has its own code of architecture, literature, poetry, music.

 Christian Louboutin

JOHN McCRAE & LEONARD COHEN: IN FLANDERS FIELDS

World War I in Montenegro

The day before yesterday, we could commemorate the anniversary of the end of the World War I.

World War I also known as the First World War, or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. Over nine million combatants and seven million civilians died as a result of the war, including the victims of a number of genocides, a casualty rate exacerbated by the belligerents' technological and industrial sophistication, and the tactical stalemate caused by gruelling trench warfare. 

It was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved.

More information: History.com

John McCrae

Claire Fontaine wants to talk about an unforgettable fellow citizen, a great Canadian poet, John McCrae, who created one of the most beautfil poems ever writter: In Flanders Fields. McCrae died of pneumonia near the end of the war. 

Though various legends have developed as to the inspiration for the poem, the most commonly held belief is that McCrae wrote In Flanders Fields on May 3, 1915, the day after presiding over the funeral and burial of his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, who had been killed during the Second Battle of Ypres. 

The poem was written as he sat upon the back of a medical field ambulance near an advance dressing post at Essex Farm, just north of Ypres. The poppy, which was a central feature of the poem, grew in great numbers in the spoiled earth of the battlefields and cemeteries of Flanders.

More information:  In Flanders Fields Museum

In 1855, British historian Lord Macaulay, writing about the site of the Battle of Landen in modern Belgium, 100 miles from Ypres in 1693, wrote The next summer the soil, fertilised by twenty thousand corpses, broke forth into millions of poppies. The traveller who, on the road from Saint Tron to Tirlemont, saw that vast sheet of rich scarlet spreading from Landen to Neerwinden, could hardly help fancying that the figurative prediction of the Hebrew prophet was literally accomplished, that the earth was disclosing her blood and refusing to cover the slain

Leonard Cohen

The Canadian government has placed a memorial to John McCrae that features In Flanders Fields at the site of the dressing station which sits beside the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's Essex Farm Cemetery. The Belgian government has named this site the John McCrae Memorial Site.

Some days ago, another Claire's fellow citizen died: Leonard Cohen. He was one of the best singers and writers who composed incredible songs like Bird on a wire, Hallelujah, Suzanne, The Partizan or So Long Marianne. In 2015, Leonard Cohen paid a tribute to John McCrae's poem in its 100th anniversary.

More information: The Official Leonard Cohen

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

 
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

 
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.

 
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

 Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, 

poetry is just the ash. 

Leonard Cohen