Indian Summer Days

Last weekend, my friend Jenni generously invited me along with some of her other friends to spend the weekend at a vacation house that her parents have rented up in Calistoga. The house was out of this world, an incredible 60 acre wine country estate with a pool, vineyards and apple trees. I brought my digital SLR (Nikon D90) with a 50mm lens and spent the weekend taking a lot of photos. It felt good and reinforced the conviction that photography is my one and true passion, as well as fueled the desire to shoot more.

All the photos below are straight from the camera, completely unedited. I changed the light temperature and color balance in the camera to obtain this green-yellowish color cast.

Lists

So I made it to New York City. In the past two months here, I've acquired a new skill that I might need to add to my resume sometime soon: cat sitter. I've had two house/cat sitting gigs so far and I have two more to go. They're all for friends of mine, or friends of friends. I'm beginning to wonder how long I could bounce around from house to house, living out of my suitcase (which has multiplied to three), before I just completely lose it. I started this blog post months ago, and just haven't had a chance to wrap it up because I've been trying to pull my life together. It's gonna be a long one, so brace yourselves ... this post is a retrospective of our trip around the world, in the form of lists.

While traveling, I always kept a little notebook on me. It came in handy for writing down addresses, drawing calendars and jotting down notes to myself. I kept a few on-going lists that I added to throughout the trip. This blog post combines all of my lists and expands on them. Here is a list of my lists. Click to jump to section.

Oktoberfest,The California Way

On the last weekend of September I was invited at the very last minute to join a bunch of nutty Germans and some other fellow Europeans in celebrating Oktoberfest at a farm outside of Petaluma. I had no idea what to expect - but I ended up having a blast, meeting a lot of interesting people, laughing my heart out at kids being goofy and saying funny things, eating tons of delicious German food and drinking my favorite wine in the world: Grüner Veltliner.

Slow Food Picnic in Sonoma

Last Saturday I had the pleasure to be a guest at Slow Food's fresh food picnic, organized at the beautiful Ranchero Mark West farm tucked in the hills of Sonoma County. I would like to herewith extend my thanks to my two new awesome friends Jonathan Sutton and Tony Ferrari, chefs at Hillside Supper Club, a new slow food restaurant in Bernal Heights, San Francisco. I had a great time thanks to them and would like to share the moment and story with you all in this post.

 Above: some of the delicious food served at the event.

Home Sweet Home

Anne and Monica's trip "around the world" ended for me with 3 weeks in my home country, Romania. This visit was not part of the original itinerary, but since I had a lot of British Airways miles and were able to buy tickets on miles for a very small fee, I decided to extend my trip and go see my family and friends back home.

Going back to Romania is always an emotional whirlwind for me. Being constantly surrounded by people I love and who love me back, seeing my parents and grandparents, tear-filled goodbyes, the uncertainty of whether I'm going to see certain family members again... all of these lead to a very emotionally-intense experience. It's not about experiencing new things and seeking adrenaline; it's about going back to one's roots, traditions, customs, upbringing, societal norms and all the things that built me, yet feel so remote from who I am today.

With my strong-as-a-rock, sassy, stubborn, sharp-tongued adorable grandma in her backyard.