Hey, peeps! Feeling a bit inspired today, so I’m writing down what’s been on my mind lately. I hope you’re enjoying your summer! (This is me in 2007, in Ireland, at my friend Anna’s wedding) Continue reading
Almost July
Hey, folks, what have you been doing lately? I was in Bergen last week and although the weather was crappy and the trial drove me nuts- both the defendant, the lack of professional curtesy from the judge and the acoustics- it was good to see friends and catch up a bit.
Now I’m back home, counting my blessings, doing a bit of work, walking Sammy in the woods every day and eating strawberries for lunch. 😉 I have a tough time in store, with moving out of my apartment on the 1st of August and needing to sell/give away/throw away lots of stuff and then find a storage for the remainder of my things. I can’t even begin to think about it, it makes me sick to my stomach.
I’m starting to get restless about my job again, I’m working with so many twats (lawyers, prosecutors, judges and defendants) that I sometimes lose faith that I’ll ever be able to get the respect I need to feel professionally fulfilled. But then I usually work 20h/week, instead of 40-50, as many of my friends do and at least I have no boss, neither any reports to fill inn, so I shouldn’t complain. Still, it gets to me every time. Few people care about quality, everybody wants you to jump out of bed at any time of the day when they need you and as soon as you don’t, they trade you for a hungrier colleague. And I can’t live like that.
But first things first, we’re going to France on the 9th and I can’t wait. I just need some sun, a beach, French food and Mediterranean vibes. Walking hand in hand with my love on a cobblestone street, making plans about our new home, sipping coffee on a terrace, reading a good novel in the shade, need I say more?
I’ll be sure to take my camera with me!
xxx, Alina
By the Harbour in Kristiansand
Last week I was in Kristiansand for two days with a colleague of mine and we had the weather of our dreams! Evening walks, beer in the sun, fish and mussels and a giant ice-cream were on the menu.
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Summer of Desire
I wanted to go to NY so bad this summer, but it’s still not happening. I’m seriously bounded by my expenses until the end of August, when the apartment will be officially out of my hands, which is why I don’t really dare to start dreaming about the (big) summer holiday. But we are going to France and I can’t wait. We’re going to Paris for a couple of days, then Montpellier, where F has family and fond childhood memories and the town will be our base to visit neighbouring places like Collioure. Maybe we’ll go to Nice from there, maybe to Barcelona, maybe settle on a couple of day trips to Marseille and Nimes.
Scenic Bucharest
I read in a traveling blog about a tour with a local guide in Bucharest called Beautiful Decay and ordered one at once. Unfortunately, the tour was not available anymore, but I did manage to rebook it to Alternative Bucharest and got the world’s nicest guide, Mircea, to show me around the lesser known areas of Bucharest with some inside information of historic, architectural and urban character. Street art, murals, hidden gems, dilapidated houses, different ways of building and creative approaches towards social equity for Roma people were a few of the subjects we discussed while walking our boots off around the city center.
Trip to the Countryside
There are few things I love more than my mother country in summer. The poppy fields, lounging with bubbles in a beer garden, visiting my grandma in the countryside and eating all kinds of fruit straight from the source, coffee breaks with my friends, dinners with my family, the sweet scent of linden and honeysuckle, children playing in the parks, to name a few. 
Lunch at Energiea
Most times I come to Bucharest, I make sure I fit a lunch or coffee with Irina, a high school friend, in my “busy” schedule. 😉 It’s so refreshing to meet with someone so different and easy going in the “run, run, run” mentality of Romania, I can’t even begin to tell you. Things seem to be changing a bit though and the younger generation appear more hedonistic than my friends, more set on leisure time and freelancing, just like me.
So we met at Origo, my favourite place, both for the coffee, the people and the shade, where I’d just managed to empty half a cortado in my lap, on the same silk dress a pigeon had “blessed” a day before. Haha! I wasn’t even furious, I felt like a kid with an ice-cream, unable to eat it without smudging all over herself.
I’d asked the guy next to me on the bench if he liked Bucharest, since he spoke English and carried a huge camera, just like me. And he told me yes, it was his second time and he came all the way from Texas. When I told Irina she was like “I can get somebody straying once, but coming back to Bucharest?” Haha! I told her I totally got it, especially if you’re not into sights (like I’m not), and more into people and taking a city’s pulse with a camera on your neck.
We had a lovely elderflower lemonade to go with our pasta and salad lunch and raised the bar with a Prosecco by the end, since it was Friday and we only see each other once a year. 😉
Irina has a 3 year-old boy and we chatted about sleeping and reading routines, I mentioned my Diana one too many times and I might have slipped in Sam, too, even though he’s “just a dog”, since he’s my only kid. 😉
We spoke of other colleagues from high school, how some of them never seem to have time to meet, how others have secluded themselves and others again have just disappeared from the map.
I’m going to visit her at home today, so stay tuned for pictures of what I hear is a lovely garden and “maybe”, if I’m allowed, of a toddler. 😉
xxx, Alina
