Shots from the side of the road

I never leave home without my camera(s). They are always there, in the back of the seat, ready to take them and shoot.

For this New Year's Eve we traveled something like 400km, and while that may mean nothing in the countries that own a lot of highway, in Romania that's a pain in the ass. Especially during the Holidays when all the cars are on the road. I knew that I will have things to stop for and photograph. During winter this side of the country (South) is miserable... but interesting.
It depends what kind of photographer you are. Are you the one that is only going to shoot the "beauty" or are you going to mix between mud and snow, rain and rust just to capture the reality? No matter how nostalgic it looks, a feeling's a feeling and if that shot moved something in someone, that's a worthy shot...

Slatina - a city without a ring road

The route you take in order to get around this city partially takes you inside the city. It's not dead center but hey, there are heavy trucks moving between buildings that were built more than 100 years before so I guess something's wrong over here. Where to add the fact that the asphalt is moonlike - I mean craters as deep as on the fucking Moon.

But right at the exist of the city, right after you cross over the river Olt, there's this interesting view with flocks of different kinds of birds gathering on the sides of the "flowing lake" the river forms here. On the side of the road the occasional fisherman, selling "fresh fish" to the greedy passer. You could get salmonella out of it but who the fuck cares when you crave for fried fish and this fellow just dropped in on your way?!

Communist propaganda doesn't want to die

It clings with its dirty claws on reality like a kid to the titty of his mother. You most probably know about the communist propaganda, going on even when the enemy was not there. Mostly it was used against own people, to keep them in order and to insert certain concepts deep inside their skulls.

Such is the case of this side building that apparently had been painted with extremely long lasting painting. Most probably the writing on it dates back before mid 1960s, when Ceaușescu came to power. It reads "Long live the romanian-soviet friendship". Didn't matter that they killed and raped Romanians by the thousands, when they came as "liberators". The idea to set inside the population was that Russians are our friends...

They were not.

Manufacturing clouds all day long

Burning coal or consuming electricity are the two main ways we, Romanians, use in order to heat our asses up during winter and the "cloud factory" below is one of our biggest "thermal agent" producers. It serves part of the city of Craiova and even though it is one of my main end users and I'm making money out of its ass, I despise it: the sole fact that it represents ways of the old after 28 year since we thought we got rid of them makes me wanna puke.

They say there was a tale of an old anti-communist fighter who lived in the mountains up until 1989. Then, he was contacted by the loved ones telling him that the communists are gone and he can come back home. The old guy asked:
-Did the king come back?
-No.
-Then you haven't got rid of the communists.

The shadow of it lingers high above us even today...