...have to do today is to congratulate Sweden.

We watched the ESC finals yesterday evening - as you already know - and I have to tell you guys, that it was a lot better than the semi-finals.

For some reason songs that I hated in the semi-finals became quite tolerable now, and the show was actually quite entertaining.

As for the winner: this is one of the years that the song we wanted to win- won.

When I did the posts about all the songs that would be on this year's show I wrote about Sweden's song this: "They are another country who joined in the line of so many summer hits before. Loreen - Euphoria is in my opinion again one of those songs that will be remixed over and over again for the delight of the night clubbers. I'm starting to believe that this second semi final is all about songs I will repeatedly hear when we will be vacationing somewhere at a pool's side."

I probably didn't mean it in a positive way either, but back then I didn't see her live. And, ladies and gentlemen, she blew my mind.

I absolutely loved her - she was instantly one of my favorite this year as soon as I spotted her in the semi finals. She has an amazing voice, a cool song (it grows on you, believe me!), and her dance - their whole show, actually - was mesmerizing.

I just want to watch her dance and sing over and over and over again.

You can take a look at it here:



She was so good, I didn't even care that the voting was again what we expected - almost every country voted for their neighbors - or the fact that Hungary and Romania barely got a couple of points.

Anyways, yesterday Emő said that she loved old photos about the city, so I thought today I shall post some of those for your entertainment. I'm going to show you how Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) was back in the old times and how much it changed.

First off, I found a picture about the city from 1537.



Of course since then the whole place outgrew its walls.

This next pic is from 1542, and it says it represents the "Hungarian gate". I didn't have the foggiest where that was supposed to be, but as soon as I looked at the picture more closely I realized that I know that large temple-like building in the distance.

I read some while ago that the two-towered church was exactly outside the walls of the city, and since that temple resembles the two-towered church (I was christened there), I guess this picture must be from the times when the walls around the city were intact.























And a second one, for a closer look at it (by the way, this bastion was protected by the cooper guild):




















Here, take a look at the two-towered church too, and you decide if it's the same thing:
























Here's a picture from 1776 about the walls around the city:



























Sadly, by this time only a little fragment of it still stands - but it is one of the most well known tourist locations.

Another part of the old wall you can see in the next pic. This one is the "bridge-gate bastion" (in Hungarian it was called hídkapu, so I translated it word by word), and it was protected by the locksmith guild.




















The part of the wall I was talking about earlier is called the Bethlen bastion - or for the local people, the "tailor bastion". It was protected by - you guessed it - the tailors. This is the part of the wall that is till standing today. Here's a picture of it from the past:





















And from today:





















There is another bastion I found an old pic of - the "gunpowder bastion". This one was protected by the goldsmith guild.




































The old city had 20 bastions and gates in total, all of which protected by different guilds.

All right... these next pics are from more recent times. This next one is the city center, back in the times when having a personal car was unheard of.





















I couldn't find a modern picture from that exact spot, so I had to make due with a close-up to the Melody Hotel and the Church on the corner.




























And for your satisfaction here's an old postcard about that same hotel - back in those days it was called the "central hotel". (And for those interested the church is Lutheran).

The next one is the other side of the city center - the one we, Hungarian "kids" call the "Matyi square" (Matyi is the Hungarian diminutive of Mathias - the king whose statue is on the square). But if you want to get directions to it from a Romanian person, you might want to ask for "Piaţa Unirii" - which basically means Union Square.






















And how it looks like now:





















Here's a pic of when the Mathias statue was unveiled (I love the fashion!)





















This next one is - I think - of the street where the Post Office resides. I tried reading the sign on the left side of the pic to be able to tell what that building was supposed to be, but for some strange reason I don't understand it.






















And an even older pic:























So this is pretty much it for now, but before I go, here's one last pic: a postcard about how people back then imagined the city would be in the future.