Best Wedding Ever

 

 Lately, more and more of the people I know who are of "marriageable age" are very reluctant to do it. Not because my generation has any more commitment issues than the previous ones, but because the traditional way of getting married is becoming unacceptable for most. 

The extreme public exposure, the many embarrassing customs, the extreme pressure of having to do everything just right or else people will talk, the awkwardness of having to kiss over 100 people you don't know are enough to put even the most extroverted among us off a traditional, parent-imposed wedding. Oh, and the religious directives...don't even get me started on those!

Which is why our friends' wedding this weekend was a breath of fresh air. Spontaneous, sketchy, relaxed and very rock'n'roll. An example to follow.

First, there was the civil ceremony. Giggles, jokes, teary-eyed parents, all standard fare.

Then the less-than-standard fare: a live gig with a cover band consisting of 4 insanely talented young guys.

We were thrilled with their skill, they were thrilled at our response. I see a great future for these guys.

Then, in a matter of minutes, it was out of fancy clothes, into the usual gear and off to the mountains, where the party continued until the sun came up. There was gulyas...

 ... there was a camp fire,

...there was plenty of booze...and the rest is history. Which will remain unrecorded. For the sake of our reputations.

However unsteady and light-sensitive we felt the next morning, the glorious autumn sun made it impossible to stay indoors. So off we went on Mr. & Mrs. Coman's first hike as a married couple.

 

It was also little Cody's first hike ever (he did very well, except he didn't see much of the scenery, as he was asleep the whole time).

 Everybody had a whale of a time (or a sheep-dog of a time, to be in keeping with the monsters that attacked us at one point of the hike), and I'm sure that everyone made mental notes of how things will be done at their own weddings, inspired by our friends' choices. This wedding weekend was so relaxed, personalised, fun and original that it has surely become a trend-setter.

Good job, Mircea & Laura! May your life together be nothing but a succession of weekends like this one! And thanks for the pictures :)

Welcome to 2011!

Happy New Year everyone! Allow me to welcome myself back to my blog. I have slowly and painfully managed to pull myself out of holiday mode. It was particularly hard this time, as I had such a supergreat time over the holidays.

Christmas was normal: food, drinks, friends, movies and handmade gifts which I will brag about on my other blog.

But New Year's was abnormal in oh so many wonderful ways. First of all, it was abnormal of me to want to go somewhere cold with lots of snow. Second of all, it was totally unheard of for me to like it. Yes, dear readers, I liked the snow! Yes, I went out in it and I wasn't cold! (Granted, I had no physical contact with it, as I stayed safe within my polar fleece and Gore-Tex bubble.) Now I finally believe that Norwegian saying, that there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.

As is the way of wise people, very late on the morning of the 31st we decided to climb to the summit called Scaunul Domnului (God's Seat), the very one that's mentioned in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
All bundled up and ready to go:
We knew we had an 8 hour walk ahead of us and we knew we'd end up walking in the dark for at least 2 hours, but we went anyway. And boy was is worth it!

It was special for me, as it was my first (more or less) serious winter hike, and everything, even familiar places, looks so different when covered in snow.

The view from the summit was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. The pink sky made it all look like a painting, and the fir trees seemed more like computer graphics than real life.

It was Mutty-Mutty's first time in the snow too, and he had a great time:

On the way back, slipping, tripping and groping in the dark, we became sure that we'd be too exhausted for any kind of New Year partying. But back at the cabin we were met by the rest of the gang, freshly arrived from the city, who gave us no chance but to stay up. And party we did, until the wee hours of the morning.

The rest of the night contained a lot of this...
...some of this (sneakily)...
...and, for the less fortunate, some of this:

And you know the best part? Nobody was drunk! This is just our collective true self, coming out when we are all crowded together in one small cabin. It was another opportunity for me to realise how blessed I am with such silly friends.

As we all know that practice is very important if you want to become good at something, the hike-food-party-sleep sequence was repeated twice again in the following days.

I hope your holidays were satisfactory and that you'll have a great year. But if first days are anything to go by, then 2011 will be a blast!

To the batcave!

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to take this opportunity to declare the 2010 rock climbing season officialy open. Yay!

Last weekend was full to the brim with activities ranging from retail therapy all the way to cave exploration. Saturday afternoon, after a successful shopping expedition through the thrift stores of Alba Iulia, we went to the white rocks of Ampoita, 12km away from Alba, a location with a special place in the hearts of Romanian climbers. Most of the tracks there exceed our skill level, but we managed to discover one that was quite manageable, so that lead to a well spent afternoon, practising things we had learnt last season and forgotten in the meantime.

It was hard to choose between climbing and walking around to enjoy the view. It was such a perfect spring day, with everything around green and blooming and fragrant.
Down there, in the village you can see from this hill, one can eat the best pancakes in the world, served in the cosiest orchard in the world. Mama Lutza rocks! :)

Sunday morning, we got up at dawn on to embark upon what would become quite an adventure: going to visit the cave called Magura in the Apuseni Mountains. The trip started well: all 5 of us (plus climbing gear, caving gear, food and all the crap previously purchased from the thrift stores) jam-packed in the car, happily chatting away as we drove through the sunny morning.

A good omen met us as we were going higher up the mountain road: what seemed to be a man with his arms up standing on a rock outcrop proved to be a chamois goat. We get excited at the sight of any animal, but seeing a species that is now so rare and endangered was a special moment. So we stopped and burst out of the car with cameras and binoculars, while the goat just stood there surveying the surroundings, with not a care in the world.
At about 10am we reached the valley of Sighistel, where we were planning to leave the car and then continue on foot. The view was so pretty and fresh, that I felt like yelling, like the drugged guy in Death at a Funeral: "everything is soo GREEN!!!"
We left the car at the edge of the village, had a quick bite to eat and got ready for the stressful way up.
Why stressful? Because Mr. Lutzu Long-shanks, the eternally-in-a-hurry leader of the expedition, can walk uphill with speeds the rest of us can never dream of reaching. I was also forbidden to take pictures, which would have slowed me down even more. But I managed to sneak in the following ones, of the way up:
There had been a storm on the valley recently, and whatever path we were hoping to find had been washed away. In addition to having to cross the stream back and forth all the time, we had to slide over and under fallen, slippery trees too. I managed to get there with my feet still dry, thanks to Salomon :D
The valley has about 200 caves in the space of only 10 square kilometres. So questions like "is this the one?" were inevitable. But after getting a negative answer for about 5 times, we gave up and shut up until we reached Magura. At which point I understood why we had had to hurry. The cave is huge, and every single nook and cranny has something awesome to show. We spent 3 hours there, and that was barely enough.
The first hall has a profoundly Gothic feeling to it: grey rock, melted wax, gargoyle heads, pillars, the sheer height and silence of it...
Then comes the hall of the bats. In which one can find... surprisingly! lots of bats. They are endangered too, so we had to be nice to them: no loud noises, no flash pictures, and not too much time spent there. They had woken up from their hibernation and seemed very busy coming and going and swarming and doing all their batty activities. I saw guano for the first time in my life, it looks like poppy seeds :)
On we went, to find an old man with a pointy hat (a tomte perhaps?)...
...glimmering ceilings...
...glimmering floors...
...mouldy stuff...
...wavy stuff...
...and lots of macaronis! Yes, macaronis are small tubular stalactites which are hollow and translucent. They look so thin and fragile, and so weird hanging from the ceiling.
The floor was generally quite flat and comfortable, but with a lot of pools. Luckily most of them were dry, but the ones that had water in them could not be told apart from the dry ones, since the water was so clear. Like this one here:
Can you tell if there's water in it or not? Yeah, neither could I. End of dry feet; thanks alot, Salomon!

But on we went, to what is known as the Kangoroo hall. I really don't know why, that totally looks like a cat to me:
In the more remote ramifications of the cave we found bats who were still hibernating. Look at him, holding on with those tiny little toes, isn't he cute? This one was a particularly fat one, larger than the other ones we saw. He would have been about 15cm:
Even if we had a map with us, and we had used a Hansel-and-Gretel-type system, with leaves placed on the floor pointing to the exit, it was still quite easy to get disoriented. The ramifications have other ramifications which branch into other tunnels and passages, and you soon forget if you're supposed to turn left or right.
So you'll excuse me if I don't remember exactly where the following items were found:
the jellyfish...
...the alien oozing...
...the pillared pool...
...or this narrow canyon:
We did a little experiment at one point and we all turned off our head lamps. I realized that one never experiences complete darkness in the outside world; there is always some source of light close by. But not there: complete, utter, thick, silent darkness, save from a solitary drip here and there. Awe-inspiring.
But we were quickly on to happier stuff, like these baby stalagmites:
Oh, I almost forgot! We filmed the bats a bit, there you go:

As we were heading towards the exit, nature had another surprise in store for us. It had rained in the forest, and the entrance hall was now filled with mist, just another element to add to its Gothic-ness. It was so beautiful.

Out we went, and the heat and humidity felt tropical. Even if three hours were a short time to explore all the beauties the cave had to offer, it felt like we had been there forever. Being in the outside world seemed so strange and unusual. But the fun quickly returned when we saw how dirty we were.

The map didn't fare much better:

But that was not the end of the adventure, oh no. Now we had to go back down, again crossing the stream back and forth and getting tangled in the fallen trees. Except this time it was faster, since we didn't care about getting wet anymore. We reached the car, crammed everything back in it (wet dirty gear, wet dirty people) and were on our way home, half an hour behind schedule. But that was not so bad,we would still get home by 11:30 and be in bed by midnight and fresh for work the next morning. Yeah right! The road back to Mures was so bad we had to drive quite slowly. It was getting dark. It had rained. It was foggy in some parts. And when we finally reached the valley of the river Aries and were 25km away from civilisation, flat tyre! By the way, it was already midnight. And there was no phone coverage.

I'm sorry I didn't document that moment too, but that was the last thing I thought of. Everyone was too sleepy or angry to tolerate having a camera shoved in their faces. So the gear comes out of the car, the spare tyre is extracted, the gear is put back in, and the driving resumes, this time at 70kmph, the maximum speed the spare tyre tolerated on that terrible road. We finally made it home at 2:30am... and were obviously fresh for work the next day!

Weekend well spent... up until the very last minutes of it :D