Happy Holidays!
Having come from a small town, with Christmas lights only on main street, I find myself charmed by the many and varied lights and Christmas decorations around Cluj.
shooting star lights
On my street and in my neighborhood is the ‘shooting star’ series.
long cascades of lights
Down near the center of the city are the cascade lights.
short cascades of lights
There is also a section of town with lights shaped like bells. I tried to get a picture of those but they turned out so blurry it’s not worth posting. You’ll have to use your imagination for that one.
the ever popular apple Christmas decorations
The one set of lights I can’t figure out are the ones in the park near the National Theater. The traditional Christmas apple?
In Piata Unirii is a lovely large Christmas tree.
Decorations in Piata Unirii
Next to the tree is an interesting pairing of decorations. Santa and his sleigh appear to be leaving after a visit to Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus in the stable. The stable has real animals!
Santa comming off the roof of the nativity stable?
Near the Orthodox cathedral are lights and a Santa and snowman.
Lights in Piata Avram Iancu
snowman making friends with 2 little girls and a dog
sparkly Santa
building the platform
cooling pipes of the ice rink
Other Christmas things have arrived as well. In November workers started building a large platform in Piata Unirii. It looked like a stage, but was very low and kept growing larger and larger.
When they built a low wall around the perimeter and put in pipes I figured out what it was, an ice skating rink!
ice rink in the central square
Santa Claus is coming!
I have not seen a lot of decorations for individual apartments or houses. The one exception to this is the climbing Santa. I’ve seen a number of these hanging off a variety of buildings.
Romanian Reflections 