Hundreds of people gathered near the bust of Mihai Eminescu on the Classical Writers Alley in the central park in Chisinau on January 15 to celebrate the 160th anniversary of the birth of the great bard. For the first time in the last eight years, Eminescu was commemorated at the Presidential Office, the Government, the City Hall, the Writers Union and all political parties except the PCRM at the same hour, Info-Prim Neo reports. As it was snowing nicely, the presenter of the event, poet Arcadie Suceveanu, opened the commemoration program with a carol dedicated to Eminescu. “God made it possible for us to celebrate this event together with the senior authorities of the state. All of them came at the agreed hour, not secretly as the Communists had done during eight years,” he said. Moldova's Acting President Mihai Ghimpu thanked the public for believing in Mihai Eminescu's creed and not giving up the fight for freedom and national identity. “Eminescu's poems expressed our thirst for the beautiful and freedom, our wish to assert ourselves as a nation,” he said. “Every time Eminescu makes us ponder over what we have to do next,” said the first vice president of the PLDM Mihai Godea. “God wished that Eminescu remained a symbol for entire generations of politicians. We will be never be able to full pay the debt to Eminescu. His works teach us a lot of things.” Minister of Culture Boris Focsa said he discoverers something new every time he reads Eminescu's works. “I think we will need many thousand years to understand this great man,” the minister said. Mayor of Chisinau Dorin Chirtoaca said Eminescu lived a difficult life, but he was constantly praised after his death. “Even in the Soviet period he had not been ignored. Our libraries always contained the poet's books, including in Romanian. Mihai Eminescu managed to assert and impose himself in the period of Communism,” the mayor said. Eminescu's poems marked every person who reads them. Hundreds of children form Chisinau schools came to render homage to the author of “Luceafarului” (“Evening Star”), “Florii albastre” (“Blu Flowers”), “Somnoroase Pasarele” (“Sleepy Birds”), “Calin” and other poems. “I like Mihai Eminescu's poems very much and brought him a flower on his birthday,” said Irina Voicu, third-grader of Gheorghe Asachi High School. “Mihai Eminescu's bust on the Alley of Classical Writers has always been a sacred place that gathered the people together, regardless of their religious or political beliefs or nationality,” said pensioner Ludmila Cotu. On his birthday, Mihai Eminescu will be also commemorated at the Romanian Language House “Nichita Stanescu”, at Mihai Eminescu Theater and at the National Palace, where there will be held conferences and recitals of poetry and music.