The beginning of a beautiful friendship

I met Andreea during the 2017 protests in Bucharest.

It was a really really cold evening and after hanging out at the protest for a while we just flunked to a cafeteria nearby to talk about art and other disasters. We quickly discovered we got a lot in common, including an ease to open ourself to each other.

Here’s a quick review of me versus her:

DRG	PNA
male 1.78m 67kg	female 1.83m 57kg
INTP-T	INTJ-A
green eyes	green eyes
brain, art and adventure	peace, love and adventure
pseudo vegetarian	any food is good food
psycho	mind reader
Brasov	Bucharest

You might want to read this lovely spam on INTP versus INTJ

We got to be friends unexpectedly fast and we started chatting online, we hanged out from time to time when I was in Bucharest, exchanged music and photography, visited some art galleries together, went to some pretty cool concerts.

My competitive spirit and her playfulness got us into some sort of a challenge, where we would challenge ourselves into adventures. Today I’m writing about one of these adventures.

Wanna go for a ride?

It all started with Andreea waking up late at a villa in Bran and me randomly texting her to say hi.

– Hey, I just got the Samurai PTI* checked this morning. Wanna go for a ride?
– All right, let’s go!
– Can you make me a vegetarian sandwich? Didn’t get to eat today.
– Let me see if there’s anything left… Smoked cheese, normal cheese, tomatoes, butter and bread. Done.
– On my way.
* PTI – Periodic Technical Inspection of vehicles

41 minutes later…

I picked her up from the villa in Bran and I gave her the GoPro to carry.
– I’ll be the photographer and you’ll be the videographer this time, all right?
– All right, where are we going?
– I don’t know yet 🙂

We left Bran towards Moieciu de Jos and immediatelly after the Moieciu town hall we took right on a not so mainstream “road” that I found some winters ago.

The track takes you through a beautiful landscape through hills and valleys from Moieciu to Magura, one of the most photogenic mountain villages in Romania.

Here’s the entrance to the track if interested: 45.500031,25.327598

We rode through a cloudy but lovely weather, with some late autumnal vibes in December. And we got to eat in the middle of hills with a flock of sheep nearby and jazz playing in the 1995 speakers. Not bad for a breakfast at 16:41.

Of course I carried my Canon 70D and shot like a trigger happy paparazzi.

The best hot chocolate in the world

Next time you get to visit Magura make sure you stop at the local inn, called “La ciocolata”. We did and you can see the no-time-no-stress-no-pressure micro universe that it rooms. Plus they have the best hot chocolate in this world.

The effect of best hot chocolate in the universe.

A friendly encounter and a photo shooting

We left Magura towards Zarnesti but when we got to the intersection it was still too early to call it a day.
– How about if we take a trip to Curmatura?
– Isn’t it too late for a mountain hike?
– Let’s just walk a while and we’ll decide on our way

And we were just walking through the Prapastiile Zarnestilor canyon and I was so happy I have someone around to carry my tripod 🙂 when we noticed some sporty guys walking out of the canyon towards us.

It was my good friend Albert and his mates. You can notice the surprise and the happiness to see me 🙂

Albert is one of the 9 people in the world I call friend and you’ll probably get to know more about this guy since he’s been quite often present in my TINP stories.

By the time we left Albert it got pretty obvious we should leave the hike to Curmatura chalet for another time, but we continued our walk looking for an end point to the story.

And we found it in the shape of a forestry hut where we stopped for an ad hoc portrait photoshooting and to make some use of the tripod we carried all this time.

Photography tip

When you have a headlight around, don’t keep it in your backpack.
See the magic it does below. And see how I used the headlight to draw my city lights adventure.

Until next time. And hopefully very soon.

The search for the best hot chocolate in the world (December 16, 2017)
A story by Rares Dragan, published on February 7th 2018