I’ve recently bought a Nikon D40, along with Nikon AF-D 50mm f/1.8 and Nikon AF-S 55-200mm f/4-5.6 lenses. Please make sure you visit it here: Stefan Isarie’s Photos.

For winter holidays, we had this opportunity to visit a friend of mine, Arnold Schindelar, who’s living in Villingen Schwenningen, Germany. Our holiday was from 22 December 2006 to 05 January 2007.

We left Iasi with Atlassib transporter. The trip to Romania-Hungary border was 24 hours, and we changed 4 buses. So, I suggest you to reconsider before buying tickets at this international transporter. The drivers are very rude and dispatchers are way off they duty knowing nothing of the buses we had to go up into! The total hours on the road, was 42 hours for a distance of 1900 kilometers to Stuttgart where my friend was expecting me. The trip in EU [ Hungary - Austria - Germany ] was painless because of the high speed roads and the quality of these.

We met our friend and his wife Adina, in Stuttgart bus station and we left to Villingen Schwenningen at once because we were very tired. I barely slept 1 hour from the total of 42 on the road and I was feeling quite bad.

I was very impressed by the quality of Autobahn and the fact that there are zones without speed limits where you could drive with as much speed as your car could do! We don’t have high speed roads in Romania…

Another thing which impressed me quite much, was the fact that Autobahn doesn’t cross villages or cities, but goes near them! This way, the speed limits are from 80km/h to unlimited. In Romania, all the roads are crossing villages and cities, making short trips to become very time consuming because of the speed limit of 50km/h!!!

We felt amazing in Germany! We made new friends and visited a lot of beautiful places! But, I will let the pictures speak about our adventure in Germany. We will definitely return to this country to visit more!

Flickr picture collection or Flickr slideshow

Some of you already know that we spent our Easter Holiday in Greece at Paralia Katerini. We are back, packed with amazing memories and pictures. To see some of them, please click on the banner below! The comments are in Romanian only. Sorry for those of you not understanding Romanian.

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Flickr Slideshow here!

A few facts in our trip:

• Our first time off Romania!
• The Romanian agency which organised the trip: Travis
• Transport to and from Greece was made with a bus. We had 2 drivers who proved to be heighly professionals! They were drive fast and safe, and they knew how to deal with Bulgarian authorities
• Total time on the road to Greece: 27 hours
• The country that left us with an unpleasant taste: Bulgaria
• Total time spent on the Greek duane: 5 hours. We stayed 5 hours because of the traffic [ houndreds of cars and tens of buses and just few workers - I have seen only 5-8 workers! ]
• The Greek agency which organised [bad] all the events and trips in Paralia Katerinis: Dolce Vita
• Number of optional trips we took: 2 - Meteora Monasteries and Skiathos Island
• Number of optional events we took: 1 - Easter Festive
• The biggest surprise I had in Paralia Katerinis: finding Edi Popa, one of my friends who lives in Iasi, like me, I have not seen for quite a long time
• The traditional food impressed me so much: Kalamari. We also had: Tsatsiki, Souvlaki, Baclava, Gyros Pita
• Olives found on the markets were impressive good and tasteful

Saturday, me, Mihaela, Petru, Adrian, Paul started the rebuilding of our new home. In a single day, we managed to buy a new entrance door, ceramic tiles for kitchen and bathroom, and we all cleaned the walls in livingroom and bedroom.

I made some photos. They are not great [there were a lot of dust in the air while shooting] but you can make an ideea of our new home.

My father in law, Petru, and Mihaela’s cousin, Adrian, are doing everything they can to finish both livingroom and bedroom so we can relocate on May 25. So far so good!

Pictures taken on 2004, August when we were in vacation at Casoca 14 Scaune, Buzau. We have had a great time and we return home freshed! Beautiful places, very good people and very affordable!

Launch the Gallery!