A look back at 2022

 Happy New Year everyone! May the new year bring you joy and lovely moments to you and your family! If in 2022 we sought to provide you with the latest news about projects and events in Romania, today we look back at our shows broadcast last year.

We start our roundup with one initiative that combines sports and equality of opportunity - the Caiac Smile Association developed adaptive ski equipment for people with locomotor disabilities that enables them to go smoothly down the ski slopes. Ionuţ Stancovici, the president of the Caiac Smile Association, told us how it all began:

"We created the Caiac Smile Association in order to promote canoe-kayak slalom as a competitive sport. Working with children, I remembered seeing a video a few years back about a person with disabilities from the US who said he loved rowing. He was saying it's the only sport where he feels he is just like everybody else, because in rowing we mainly use the upper body. So, we started working with people with disabilities, and they all said the experience was great and became regular members of the club. Then winter came and the season of winter sports. The disabled members of our club wanted to continue doing sports over the winter and we started to look into ways of making it possible for them to ski. The adaptive equipment on the market was very expensive and we couldn't afford it so we used a normal wheelchair instead, removed its wheels and attached it to skis."

Switching registers, a book club addressing women dubbed "Mujeres livres", started its activity in Iași in 2020, bringing together women from all walks of life, who gathered around books.Here is what one participant, Lavinia Popescu, told us about the project of the book club.

"It is a reading club proper, we get together to discuss books as a book doesn't end once you've finished reading all its pages, it has a life of its own through the discussions it stirs and that is how you feel you honor its author for all that they offered, you want to discuss what you felt, with the others. It could be the pleasure of the text, the tenderness of the story or the self-discovery experience you had. When you read a book, you feel you are not alone. You feel you also want to share with the others what you felt, and, especially, you want to find out from the others what they felt. That is exactly the reason why this reading club was necessary. It is just as natural for us to feel inclined to be part of a community capable of providing a secure space, a space where you can express yourself and, especially, a space you can be part of. That is exactly why we have this group of women, which is a support group and, every time we meet, we really get our kicks out of listening to each other. "

 In October, president Klaus Iohannis ratified the law whereby peony was declared a national flower of Romania. Every year on 15th May, the Community of the Romanian Peony celebrates Romanian Peony Day. Professor and Romanian Academy member Florin Stănică told us more:

"In 2013, our colleague from the floriculture department, professor Florin Toma, proposed at the Days of Romanian Horticulture, an event we are hosting every May, that the peony becomes the national flower of Romania. Our colleague put forward about ten arguments to back his proposal. One is that Romania is home to five indigenous species of peony that are growing in the wild in Romanian forests and fields, across the country, from the Black Sea coast, in Dobrogea, to Banat, in Oltenia, southern Moldavia, Ardeal and even Bihor county. These flowers come into bloom in the second part of May and are very beautiful. They cover entire meadows, in places such as Zau de Câmpie, where we find the steppe peony, as well as in forests, where they grow all over the forest. There are even local festivals and celebrations dedicated to these wonderful flowers."

 And although winter is upon us, in November we talked about an original initiative - making ice cream in barrels, a special recipe we discussed with Adrian Mengheș, the creator of this brand:

"It was very hard because I didn't master the secret behind barrel ice-cream. I wondered about Romanian villages looking for recipes and their stories, but we got turned down. And so, from one mayor to the next, we ended up talking to Ion, a man from Vâlcea who knew the secret about making ice-cream in barrels. He was actually upset his own son wouldn't carry over the family tradition. He actually told us 'Dad, look, there's this stranger at our door, and I'm gonna tell him everything if you don't'. We attended all three editions of Men on Mătăsari festival, but this was the first time we made live ice-cream demos. As a rule, we come with ready-made ice-cream, but organizers asked us to make the ice-cream on the spot. We agreed, and I must admit we were very well received. We didn't expect to have such great sales on an October day".

And that concludes our roundup of the best moments in our show in 2022. Tune in again next year for more surprising stories. (VP)