Old friends

Last week, instead of bemoaning the idiosyncrasies of the American school system, I should have properly introduced Stephanie and Joe, which I will do now. Here is the backstory in a nutshell, one week late.
The friendship between Mihai and Stephanie goes back to 1994 when they worked together at Salz Leathers in Santa Cruz.* Eventually Salz closed (it's now the Tannery Arts Center), and everyone moved on to separate careers but the friendship endured. In fact, not only did it endure, but it expanded to include the rest of their families which means the invite list for the annual Ionescu/Gogosanu/Kwan-Speaks Crab Feed, established in 2002, is nearly 25 people long.
Stephanie and Joe are seasoned travelers and they've made a couple of trips to Romania but somehow we were never able to coordinate their visits with ours. Finally, after 3 decades of friendship, we could at last share the Romanian experience together.
Most of their time with us consisted of conversation, eating, and drinking wine. We did manage to get out and do other things although those things mainly centered around getting more food and wine, such as the afternoon we drove to a fishmonger in Viștișoara to pick up the makings for dinner. On the way home we stopped at the river where we planned to swim but the water was too cold. Mihai managed to get about mid-thigh and then stopped before hypothermia set in.

One morning we forced ourselves out of bed extra early for a walk to the bakery in Drăguș. We didn't encounter any bears but on the way back we narrowly escaped attack from a pack of sheepdogs. I would like to mention that we were walking on the road, not in the field, and nowhere near the sheep, so from our perspective it felt rather unprovoked. I would also like to mention that the shepherd did nothing to intervene which in my book makes him something of a jerk.
The only picture I have of this outing is the pastries, which turned out to be the best part of the excursion.

After that scare, we decided to limit our walks to within the safety of the village borders. An evening walk in Romania often means slightly less walking and much more chatting with the neighbors who line up on benches outside their gates. Every Romanian village has these bench social groups which Relu calls "village internet."
Below you can see Mihai heading to the bench in front of Maria's gate.

One evening we got a special treat when we meet Pușa, Maria's eldest daughter who was visiting from Brașov. She and Mihai knew each other as kids when they used to run around Viștea de jos in the summer. They hadn't seen each other in more than 40 years and it was a bit of a tearful reunion. To celebrate, a round of impromptu drinks was called forth (both room temperature Coke and some homemade cherry liquor) as well as cake.

We also made a quick run to Făgăraș and stopped by a couple of second-hand stores where Joe was very pleased to find this stylish jersey for 5 lei (approximately 1 USD).

When we weren't scoring second hand finds, running from sheepdogs, or drinking in the streets, we were laying around doing the thing which all good vacations need—nothing.
A few days were hot enough that we laid around doing nothing under the shade of the walnut tree which kept us comfortably cool.

Commercial flight paths in Eastern Europe have changed with the war in Ukraine so we see a lot of contrails. In between meals and naps, we played the game of "guess where that plane came from and where it's going".

We wrapped things up with a quick trip to the city of Alba Iulia which I will share more about next week as I think this post is long enough.

If you have long-time friends you haven't seen in a while, maybe you can invite them over for lunch in a shady spot, or something more simple like a glass of soda and a slice of cake. If a visit in person isn't possible, maybe you could take advantage of technology and reconnect through a screen. Whichever option you choose, I think you'll agree that tending to old friendships soft-lights our lives and is good for our souls.
Thank you for reading.
Be well

*I was there too, but my introverted self took longer to bond like they did so I give them the credit for everything that came after.