Almighty Night
We went to see Evan Almighty tonight. It's no philosophical movie, I'll tell you that. It does however provide a few moments of good easy comedy.
What happened after the movie was probably a lot better for our relaxation. After going to Piata Universitatii in search of a terrace (they all close at midnight) we ended up in Piranha. We basically sat and talked for over 2 hours. Nothing better than good-old simple fun and in good company.
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| Christian Nasulea - 25.07.2007 | |
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Hottest Day of the Century
Here I find myself stuck in Comarnic for the day, instead of being in Bucharest as I normally would be.
All I can say is: good for me! We're enjoying some relatively good temperatures here. I say relatively because they're good in comparison with Bucharest and other places. Between the 31 degrees Celsius forecast for Sinaia and the 41 degrees forecast for Ploiesti there's probably the temperature in Comarnic which is a hell of a lot better than Bucharest's announced 44 degrees... in the shade.
Attached: picture of our friendly local thermometer showing the shielded, isolated 28 degrees inside and the many more degrees outside.
What's probably even more horrible is that while I was searching for a good angle for this picture the temperature increased by 0.3 degrees.
To try to find a positive side to every bad thing, today isn't only the hottest day in, like... ever, but also Roxi's birthday. So, Happy Birthday!... and congratulations for another killer party.
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| Christian Nasulea - 24.07.2007 | |
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Paintball
Yesterday we went to Sinaia to play paintball. We played both in the forest and on the paintball field (under the scorching sun). Although we lost every forest round except one, we got back some pride by winning all 3 consecutive "capture the flag" rounds.
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| Christian Nasulea - 23.07.2007 | |
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Jepii Mici
On Saturday we went on a "little" hike in Busteni from the base of the cable car to the top cable car station on the Bucegi plateau. I had never ascended the "Jepii Mici" before and I had only descended them once. Great hiking (climbing) and extraordinary scenery.
The hike is normally estimated at around 4 and a half hours. Although we didn't measure it exactly we took less than 4.
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| Christian Nasulea - 23.07.2007 | |
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Midnight Strumming on the Beach
One of the highlights of my brief escape to the seaside was a little jam session we had on the beach. Perhaps "jam session" isn't the most accurate choice of words as we only had one guitar but you get the idea.
We went to the beach at the end of our street, as I remembered it from my childhood to be quiet and deserted. Not anymore. There were 3-4 groups of people listening to various types of music, dancing, partying, taking midnight dips in the sea. Fortunately the beach was big enough for all and we sat down and played guitar under the starry sky.
Definition of strumming in the free dictionary.
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| Christian Nasulea - 19.07.2007 | |
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Seaside
I am currently in Constanta trying to enjoy a bit of R&R on the beach. The water is kind of cold but bearable. The weather is OK.
Besides the usual beach-related activities this year I've also met with the people from Aktiv for some archery fun.
Last night we tried out a few of the clubs in Mamaia.
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| Christian Nasulea - 15.07.2007 | |
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Poetry
I've decided to add a new section to my website called (of all things) Poetry.
I am going to post fragments or entire works of poetry from various authors I like and try to get people's attention to them from time to time.
I'm starting with George Toparceanu's "Intrebare si raspuns" (Romanian)
The section itself won't be publicly visible, at least for a while. That might change soon and who knows... I might eventually publish some of my own scribblings.
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| Christian Nasulea - 10.07.2007 | |
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Red Mountain Camping
We did it! We finally, actually did it! This weekend we went camping to Muntele Rosu (en: Red Mountain), near Cheia. Besides myself, Ancuta and Costi (seasoned mountain hikers :)) we had a few of Costi's colleagues from work, some more seasoned then us, others having no seasoning whatsoever.
We arrived at the site on Saturday around 10:30 am and we started hiking up the trail around 11:00 am. We started things easy with a hike up a 45+ degree slope. We got to the top of Red Mountain (1766m) and then decided everyone felt up to continuing the hike. The highest point was the Gropsoarele Peak (1883m). The winds on top of the ridge were unbelievable. I got knocked off the trail a couple of times. Feeling that you aren't in total control while hiking on a narrow path on top of a relatively thin ridge can be a good source of adrenaline.
After passing the Zaganu Peak we started descending. When we reached Stana Zaganu we thought we'd take a shortcut on an unmarked trail. A very good idea as we descended into a large clearing just as planned and we just had to climb back up to the Red Mountain Challet. Things didn't go quite as well after that as we wanted to cut down on our climbing and go through the forest to save altitude. We ended up taking 3 hours to get back to the challet as we had to zig zag around every valley.
The good part was that being off the beaten trail we found a part of the forest filled with berries, near the second valley we crossed. I've never seen or eaten so many in my life. Unfortunatelly I have no pictures to show for it as I was hungry when I got there and I used my time for eating.
We eventually came out of the forest right below the challet at 7:10 pm. Like all "athletes" after a good workout we stormed the restaurant and ate for 2 hours.
I'm very proud of everybody, especially our friends who were less accustomed to mountain hiking, for pulling through the effort of an 8 hour hike.
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| Christian Nasulea - 09.07.2007 | |
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International Bulgarian Commerce
I just got back from Ruse, Bulgaria. Costi proposed a few days ago that we should go on a shopping spree to Metro... in Bulgaria. We had information indicating that prices on some items, particularly food, were significantly lower in Bulgaria.
We had to see...
Just to give you an idea of what shopping in Ruse implies here are the time/money costs we incurred. We left our apartment at about 6:00pm. We got a bit confused about the way to Giurgiu in Turnu Magurele (we had no GPS, no map). Just to set things straight, the way to Giurgiu starts at the City Mall in Bucharest, goes through Jilavele and then straight forward.
We got to the "customs" in Giurgiu. We paid the bridge tax, 23 RON, and crossed over into Bulgaria. By the way, if you see the truck in front of you stop on the bridge in the middle of the Danube just overtake it. Trucks seem to get special treatment. On the Bulgarian side they checked our IDs (not passports just the Romanian IDs) and waved us onward (30 seconds for the ID check).
We got out of the customs and kept driving forward for another 10 km or so. A bit after 7:30pm we were in the Metro parking lot.
We shopped for an hour and a half, until 21:00 - closing time. A detailed analysis of the invoice and a Bulgaria-Romania comparison should be available soon for anyone who's interested.
After that we didn't come straight back as we wanted to see if there were any sights to be found in Ruse.
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| Christian Nasulea - 05.07.2007 | |
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Archery in Comarnic
On Sunday we had Doru, the archery coach from Aktiv Club, together with other members, friends and family in Comarnic.
We started the day with an archery lesson on the football field near the Club. A few people came to try the sport, mostly from Mugur de Colt (our mountain hiking association). The lesson was cut short by the rain... pouring rain.
We then retreated to our house and had a barbeque with umbrellas ready in case the rain decided to come back and having eaten too much (as usual) we then proceeded to take a short walk up a nearby valley.
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| Christian Nasulea - 05.07.2007 | |
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