Football and Medieval Art… Soccer and Stradivarius
In addition to beginning my courses this week (which mainly involved tiresome speeches on the evils of plagiarism and the spiritual benefits of good attendance), I busied myself with three activities: shopping and cleaning in preparation for the arrival of the rest of the Bacchae; playing soccer (ahem, “football”); and talking into a very expensive microphone.
First, the Low-Ball:
The language of football is the same worldwide, of course, and I didn’t need much Romanian to drag my 40-year-old body out on to the pitch and beg it to cooperate. I’ve been invited to participate in two very different pick-up games here in Bucharest.
The Tuesday night game takes place inside a kind of red and white circus tent that looms over an expensive, state-of-the art artificial grass surface. The participants are comprised mainly of young professionals—businessmen poised to make a killing as Romania’s economy propels itself toward European Union vitality. As a result, most of them stepped off the pitch now and then to answer their cell phones and type things into their new i-phones and Blackberry devices.
The Thursday night game is out in the elements, “under the lights” in a kind of concrete hockey rink in which some rather slimy, battered Astroturf was once glued down. The players are mainly in their twenties, which means they spend as much time sparring verbally as they do actually playing. Since this game doesn’t begin until 8pm at night, the combination of cold air and recent snow-melt makes the turf sloppy and slippery, leading to spectacular spills and joint-wrecking acrobatics, none of which am I much in the shape for performing.
Romanians are not very big on passing….but they all have spectacular dribbling skills and seem determined make the highlight reels with every touch of the ball. The fact that most of them do this on a slippery surface while wearing really bad shoes (imagine very buff men playing soccer in white Keds, those little slipper-like canvas things we associate with ladies in nursing homes….I have to take some photos of this for you), makes for a certain amount of hilarity.
After three weeks of sloth, what a relief it has been to attempt some exercise.
Then, the Highbrow:
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was asked to record the English-language audio-guide for the National Museum of Art here in Bucharest. In spite of my very rudimentary Romanian pronunciation skills, I was handed about six hours worth of art-historical text which I needed to perform in my best “God-voice” so that wandering pilgrims, tourists, and inquiring minds can stroll past the Medieval masterpieces while being educated about the exhibits. These recordings took place in a state-of-the-art recording studio on the edge of town; a heavy metal band had been laying down tracks before we arrived.
My task, in short, was to try to pronounce names like Constantin Brâncoveanu and Neagoe Basarab, and place names like Târgovişte and Mănăstirea Curtea de Argeş while sounding something like a native speaker. This was much harder than I expected it to be, but as a result I’m now reading street signs with a very different sense of the Romanian language, eager to find my way inside its Latinate grammar and Slavic pronunciations. All the Romanian words seem to have twice as many vowels as consonants; Greek words all seem to have more consonants than vowels….so, being as language-challenged as I am, these adjustments are happening rather slowly.
My payment for this service appears to be in two forms: in football (Alex, the director of the Friends of the National Art Museum is a former pro-soccer player and is the reason I found the Thursday night game) and in free tickets for all museum events. Next week they will “launch” the new audio system in the Medieval gallery with good champagne and the company of dignitaries (and me, hoping I don’t sound like too much of an ass on the recordings). The week after that the Romanian government will open the locks on one of the five Stradivarius violins it owns so that the greatest new Romanian violinist, Alexandru Tomescu (lauded by folks like Yehudi Menuhin), can use it to play a concert for us (Bartok, Sarasate, Rachmaninov, etc.).
Thank god my wife is about to arrive so I have a beautiful, brilliant date to accompany me to these events. I’ll surely feel less like an American hick that way!
Yours, in soccer and Stradivarius,
Christopher
In addition to beginning my courses this week (which mainly involved tiresome speeches on the evils of plagiarism and the spiritual benefits of good attendance), I busied myself with three activities: shopping and cleaning in preparation for the arrival of the rest of the Bacchae; playing soccer (ahem, “football”); and talking into a very expensive microphone.
First, the Low-Ball:
The language of football is the same worldwide, of course, and I didn’t need much Romanian to drag my 40-year-old body out on to the pitch and beg it to cooperate. I’ve been invited to participate in two very different pick-up games here in Bucharest.
The Tuesday night game takes place inside a kind of red and white circus tent that looms over an expensive, state-of-the art artificial grass surface. The participants are comprised mainly of young professionals—businessmen poised to make a killing as Romania’s economy propels itself toward European Union vitality. As a result, most of them stepped off the pitch now and then to answer their cell phones and type things into their new i-phones and Blackberry devices.
The Thursday night game is out in the elements, “under the lights” in a kind of concrete hockey rink in which some rather slimy, battered Astroturf was once glued down. The players are mainly in their twenties, which means they spend as much time sparring verbally as they do actually playing. Since this game doesn’t begin until 8pm at night, the combination of cold air and recent snow-melt makes the turf sloppy and slippery, leading to spectacular spills and joint-wrecking acrobatics, none of which am I much in the shape for performing.
Romanians are not very big on passing….but they all have spectacular dribbling skills and seem determined make the highlight reels with every touch of the ball. The fact that most of them do this on a slippery surface while wearing really bad shoes (imagine very buff men playing soccer in white Keds, those little slipper-like canvas things we associate with ladies in nursing homes….I have to take some photos of this for you), makes for a certain amount of hilarity.
After three weeks of sloth, what a relief it has been to attempt some exercise.
Then, the Highbrow:
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was asked to record the English-language audio-guide for the National Museum of Art here in Bucharest. In spite of my very rudimentary Romanian pronunciation skills, I was handed about six hours worth of art-historical text which I needed to perform in my best “God-voice” so that wandering pilgrims, tourists, and inquiring minds can stroll past the Medieval masterpieces while being educated about the exhibits. These recordings took place in a state-of-the-art recording studio on the edge of town; a heavy metal band had been laying down tracks before we arrived.
My task, in short, was to try to pronounce names like Constantin Brâncoveanu and Neagoe Basarab, and place names like Târgovişte and Mănăstirea Curtea de Argeş while sounding something like a native speaker. This was much harder than I expected it to be, but as a result I’m now reading street signs with a very different sense of the Romanian language, eager to find my way inside its Latinate grammar and Slavic pronunciations. All the Romanian words seem to have twice as many vowels as consonants; Greek words all seem to have more consonants than vowels….so, being as language-challenged as I am, these adjustments are happening rather slowly.
My payment for this service appears to be in two forms: in football (Alex, the director of the Friends of the National Art Museum is a former pro-soccer player and is the reason I found the Thursday night game) and in free tickets for all museum events. Next week they will “launch” the new audio system in the Medieval gallery with good champagne and the company of dignitaries (and me, hoping I don’t sound like too much of an ass on the recordings). The week after that the Romanian government will open the locks on one of the five Stradivarius violins it owns so that the greatest new Romanian violinist, Alexandru Tomescu (lauded by folks like Yehudi Menuhin), can use it to play a concert for us (Bartok, Sarasate, Rachmaninov, etc.).
Thank god my wife is about to arrive so I have a beautiful, brilliant date to accompany me to these events. I’ll surely feel less like an American hick that way!
Yours, in soccer and Stradivarius,
Christopher
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