Radio România Internațional

Tag: journey

  • August 8, 2024

    August 8, 2024

    LAW The government in Bucharest is today expected to endorse a series of legislative amendments aimed at stepping up criminal investigations in the case of sexual harassment in public institutions. The move comes after a series of sexual harassment cases have been reported in universities across the country. The new amendments are meant to ease the prosecutors’ access to notifications on this type of aggression, even if anonymous. We recall that criminal investigations have been launched against some university teaching staffers after former female students have denounced this type of behaviour. The government is also expected to amend the law on physical education and sports allowing the central public administration to earmark state funds to private sports clubs in order to support and develop their facilities for the training of the young generation. The government is also focusing on an a bill aimed at boosting the SMEs entitled Start-up Nation Romania 2024, funded through non-reimbursable external funds.

     

    SHIP ‘Romanian training vessel ’Mircea’ has been one of the most effective, smartest and well-trained ambassadors Romania has had in the past century, the country’s Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu’ said upon the ship’s entry into the military port of Constanta, south-eastern Romania on Thursday, at the end of a six-week training voyage around the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. 86 cadets of the ‘Mircea the Old’ Naval Academy and 8 cadets from partner academies in Bulgaria, Latvia, Poland, Spain and Turkey were on board of the ship during the voyage. ‘Mircea’ set sail from Constanta on June 26th and its voyage included stopovers in Piraeus, Greece, Livorno, Italy, Toulon, France, Palermo, Italy and Bodrum, Turkey. ‘Mircea’ is a sailing sip built in Hamburg over 1938-1939, and since its maiden voyage, it has completed 45 training trips through the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean.

     

    OLYMPICS Romanian athletes are today competing in four Olympic disciplines in Paris: athletics, rhythmic gymnastics, kayak-canoe and wrestling. On Wednesday night, weightlifter Mihaela Valentina Cambei won silver in the 49 kg. category. Also on Wednesday, Catalin Chirila, world champion in 2022 and world vice-champion in 2023, directly qualified for the semifinals of the 1000 m. single canoe race after winning the third tier with a fresh Olympic record. Romania has so far won eight Olympic medals, three gold, four silver and one bronze and is currently ranking 14th in the nations standings.

     

    FOOTBALL Two Romanian football sides are today taking on their opponents in the Conference League’s play-offs, the third inter-continental competition. The vice-champions, CFR Cluj, will be up against Israeli side Maccabi Petah Tikva in Sofia, Bulgaria, while Romania’s cup holder Corvinul Hunedoara will be playing FC Astana of Kazakhstan in a home game. In another development, Romania’s champions FCSB ended in a one-all draw their away match against Sparta Prague on Tuesday in the first round of the Champions League’s third preliminary leg. The return match is due in Bucharest on 13 August.

     

    (bill)

  • Prepared for the future

    Prepared for the future

    The Polytechnic University in Bucharest played host to SpaceFest, an event dedicated to the exploration of the cosmic space. It was a unique experience for the several thousand youngsters who participated in the event. Dumitru Prunariu, the only Romanian astronaut to have flown in the cosmic space, Nicole Stott, of the USA, the tenth woman who flew in space and Sara Sabry of Egypt, the first African, Arab and Egyptian woman who reached the cosmic space, came up with thought-provoking stories…



    Google Maps and the Weather Forecast are also the outcome of the cosmic space research as well as other contributions to terrestrial activities. The traditional approaches are no longer used, already, because of their inefficiency. These are domains where the Romanians play an important part, even though our official presence in space has not been recorded since Dumitru Prunariu.



    Attending the event, Dumitru Prunariu told Radio Romania International the following:



    “Here, at the Polytechnic University in Bucharest, in an auditorium with a seating capacity for 1,200 people, I had the chance of a very interesting encounter, with youngsters, with children, with students, and not only did they listen carefully to what the three astronauts told them, the people who are here today, but also they asked very interesting questions. We have regular meetings also as part of the Cosmic Space Explorers Association, it is the professional association of astronauts and cosmonauts, It is true that the woman astronaut from Egypt is not yet a member of this association, she was on a brief, ballistic flight, she spent ten days in imponderability, whereas we, the others, and Nicole Stott is one of us, travelled further and we flew more, ours is a different experience, yet any cosmic flight, no matter how short it is, opens other perspectives and anyone has unusual things to tell, things he experienced and about which his colleagues may not know, about their personal experience, about their own feelings, about their interaction they had with the people, after the cosmic flight. At the moment, apart from the governmental agreements between certain states, companies, organizations training astronaut, and they are only three in the world, the Americans, the Russians, the Chinese, as we speak, there are also private agreements. There are astronaut broker companies that have begun to send, for millions of dollars, it is true, people in the cosmic space, while spatial tourism has developed significantly. So we might have the surprise to see that a second Romanian may be a member of this category.”



    It is also from Dumitru Prunariu that we found out there are also plans we can call interstellar.



    “The Moon is an outpost for the flight to Mars. As part of the Artemis program, the American program that has already kicked off, which has already sent a test spaceship around the world and which next year will send a first human crew around the Moon in a bid to test the equipment, testing the spaceship, testing the environment where those people will work, all that is only the beginning. In 2025, the first moon landing is scheduled as part of the new Artemis program. And that is only a beginning. Because this time we are not going to fly to the Moon only to return from there to the Earth, but we will fly there to stay. It is a very important message, the fact that the human beings will stay there. Of course, they will roll some of the crews, with certain permanent bases that will be built around the Moons South Pole, there will be, in the foreseeable future a space station orbiting the Moon, at will be a permanent hub for the astronauts who come from the Earth and descend on the Moon, returning on the Earth. Also, there will be a scientific research base for the moon environment, and all that will prepare, for the future the flights to Mars. “



    Nicole Stott, the tenth woman who reached the cosmic space, told us that, although she spent a little over a hundred days in space, she would like to return there for one more day, at least, as joy, curiosity and delight are the emotions that are permanently experienced.



    “A hundred and four days in space, it was not long enough. I mean, I really felt like the time flew by, I could not believe it when it was the time to come home and I wish I could go back and have at least one more day in space, that would be nice. I was the tenth woman to perform a spacewalk, I didnt think about that at the time, I didnt know that was the number, I think the point is that a rocket-ship doesnt care if youre a boy or a girl, and so we all just have to be doing our best with the work that we do and I wish I could go back and have at least one more day in space, that would be nice. Weve shown our women may be capable even more on this mission and I think we just need to be encouraging more young women to pursue these kinds of things. Even when things were going, you know, when the alarm was going off, or, whatever, I think it was more anxiousness than a fear because we were trained so much how to deal with those kinds of things. I would absolutely repeat my space journeys, you know, on one hand I would be the way it was, you know, with the crews that I was with, the experience that we had, also to be able to fly again and experience maybe something a little different from a mission.”



    Sara Sabry of Egypt is the first African, Arab and Egyptian woman who reached the cosmic space. She attended the SpaceFest and shared with us the joy of signaling a change.



    “Its an incredible honor to be representing my country for the very first time in space and to be the first Arab woman to do this. It shows you how much things are changing. Finally, we have a transition. I grew up not seeing someone that looked like me that was able to do things like this, so for the very first time Im so honored and grateful. I am just happy to have the next generation see that people are capable of doing this. Women in our side of the world can do things, can do something like this. Seeing earth from space really changes your perspective on the whole world we havent biologically evolved to see earth from space or, like, from the outside, so when it does happen it breaks the reality. “



    And, if you have never thought of what it would be like to live or travel to another planet, it is high time you did that !




  • Romanian 20th century writers and their popularity

    Romanian 20th century writers and their popularity


    Prose writer Radu Tudoran is the author of the most popular and the most widely-read adventure novel in Romanian literature, All Sails Up !, Toate panzele sus!, in Romanian. Radu Tudoran was born almost 112 years ago, on March 8th, 1910, in the locality of Blejoi, Prahova County.



    All Sails Up! enjoyed a tremendous success; it was even turned into a TV series in the 1970s and, because of its popularity, critics and readership alike ignored the rest of his literary output, despite Radu Tudorans being a very prolific writer. Moreover, in terms of personal life, Radu Tudoran kept himself to himself and succeeded to stay away from the propagandistic tendencies of the communist-controlled literature, back in the day. So Radu Tudorans apparently unassuming personal life comes in stark contrast with the fame acquired by All Sails Up!. The novel is deprived of any ideological reference; surprisingly enough, it was published at a time when Romanian culture was under the strict influence of socialist realism. The author pursued his own path, which was rather neutral, and was not influenced by anybody, not even by his brother, Geo Bogza, an accomplished avant-garde poet and an author of literary reportages, who at one point was among the beneficiaries of the communist system. Literary historian and critic Paul Cernat gave us further details on Radu Tudorans biography.



    “He was born into the family of a seaman, actually a naval contractor. He was the youngest child in his family. His real name was Nicolae Bogza. He followed in his fathers footsteps as he chose his profession and went on to become a navy officer. Politically, Nicolae Bogza, the future Radu Tudoran, did not take to the radical left, which lured Geo Bogza, but he did not embrace the far-right either, a path which, for a while, his elder brothers, who were writers themselves, Alexandru and Ovidiu Bogza, took. Their sister, Elena, wrote literature as well. It was a family where books were written.”



    His passion for writing, as well as his passion for travelling, especially for the seafaring journeys, remained constant traits in the life of Radu Tudoran, who made his debut in 1939, the very year when World War Two broke out.



    Literary critic Paul Cernat:



    “His maiden volume was a collection of literary reportages, a book about Hitlers Germany, which caused a lot for dissatisfaction with everybody, irrespective of their political leanings, since it was being perceived as much too neutral. In the subsequent years, in his capacity as a navy officer, he contributed to the official press of the time and even had a stint in Bugeac, southern Bessarabia, where he was sent as a war correspondent. It was there that he drew his inspiration from, A Port in the East, arguably one of Radu Tudorans best novels, a wonderful book, which has remained a good read even to this day. At that time, he had already published a collection of short stories, The Town with Poor Girls (…) The writer would contribute a very interesting volume, in 1943, Seasons, a book that had already earned Tudoran the status of neo-Romantic and sentimental writer in the best sense of the word. That novel would be followed, in 1945, by a social novel, inspired from the extraction of crude oil, a world he was quite familiar with, since he was born nearby Ploiesti, in an area of oil refineries. The novel was entitled Flames and was reprinted several times. “



    Nevertheless, Tudoran did not take kindly the instatement of communism in Romania, so he tried to smuggle himself out of the country in the early 1950s on board a makeshift schooner. The attempt was thwarted, obviously, and most of the crew were arrested. Save for Radu Tudoran, thanks to the intervention of his brother, Geo Bogza, who was well-placed, politically. However, the adventure did have its literary follow-up, since in 1954 All Sails Up! was brought out, a novel also revolving around a schooner which was full of adventurers. However, this time, fate takes them from the cosmopolitan world of Sulina harbour in the late 19th century, where river Danube flows into the Black Sea, to South America. But how was that book spared by then the tough censorship, being reprinted several times and even being turned into a film?



    Literary critic Paul Cernat:



    “Ive got two explanations. One has to do with the support provided by his brother Geo. A second explanation has to do with the refuge he took in a province which was safer from ideologies than other such zones, even though the intrusion there was very strong as well. However, it came in handiest to write a book of adventures, set in the 19th century, rather than writing about more recent times. So that particular kind of refuge he took, on one hand, in history and on the other hand, in the adventure children and youth fiction, turned out to be providential. Radu Tudoran travelled extensively after the Stalinist period, when the tribute he paid to the regime was rather modest as compared to other writers, for instance, he did that by simply writing the novel River Danube Bursting its Banks, a social novel in line with the ideology oh that time. After that, he would travel a lot and write books inspired by his journeys. He was a man who really enjoyed travelling, he was also very nice and even charming. After 1961, when River Danube Bursting its Banks was published, he also wrote quality literature for children, a mix of travel literature and fantasy. In the last two decades of his life, he also had a very consistent epic project, which sadly did not enjoy that much coverage. Im speaking about The End of the Millenium, a cycle of novels made of seven volumes, brought out between 1978 and 1994, with the last novel being published posthumously. It is a sort of historical fresco of the 20th century. “



    A fresco the completion of which Radu Tudoran had the chance to witness, once the communist regime collapsed, since he died in 1992. To this day, All Sails Up! has been reprinted at least once. Radu Tudoran s other novels truly deserve to be reprinted, since they are really worth discovering by todays generations of readers.


    (EN)