Field Journal · Vol 01 · Romania
Nine days with two children, one car, and a country we thought we knew from pictures. Told day by day, as it happened.
Prologue
We came for the castles. We stayed for the quiet. Somewhere between the second mountain pass and the fifth bowl of soup, Romania stopped being a destination and became a feeling.
This is a working journal, not a guide. Every frame is from the road — shot on the same two cameras, edited the same evening in whatever room we were staying in.
We landed in Bucharest at noon and by three o'clock we were already deep inside a landscape that felt handwritten. The plains gave way, the Bucegi mountains rose on our right, and the children fell asleep with their heads against the window.
There was no music in the car. Just the sound of the wheels and the language of a country we didn't yet understand.
Sibiu at seven in the evening — the tower rose above the old square just as the light turned silver. A woman crossed with her bread. A cat watched from a doorway. For a moment the whole country felt handmade.
We didn't want the postcard version. We waited for the mist to fall, walked into the woods behind the property, and photographed the castle the way it was meant to be seen — through the branches, half-hidden, like something you were lucky to find.
The children called it the treehouse from the storybook. We called it our favourite night of the trip.
Coffee on the balcony at six in the morning, surrounded by nothing but green and the sound of something moving very slowly through the leaves below.
Kids running between the fences. A father lifting a daughter over a rope. A neighbour bringing cheese wrapped in a cloth. Nothing was staged. This is why we bring the camera.
You could hear it before you saw it. The last of the sun came sideways through the leaves, and the whole forest turned into a cathedral. We stayed until the light was gone and the trail was almost dark on the way back.
She wanted to keep walking. I asked her to stop for one frame. The gravel path, the tall trunks, the smile — one second of a very long day. Sometimes that's the whole trip.
A tiny restaurant with three tables and a grandmother in the kitchen. She didn't speak English. The food did all the talking.
Later — pistachio, honey, patience. Rolled while we watched. Served on a plate older than we are.
Thyme, ice, something red. The trip already turning into a memory before the glass was empty. We packed the car in the morning and drove south with the windows down, quiet the whole way.
End of Chapter One
“The country stayed with us longer than the tan lines.”