You Can Leave Your Hat On

Vintage and nostalgia go well together. Both refer to the past and, at least for me, the past has gained an aura of good, a good and beautiful lost forever. Next comes nostalgia for how it was and what we lost, followed by memories that I know are not very accurate and the brain that makes a selection, erasing what was ugly and keeping only an idyllic image for us. I am grateful for that and I am glad that I have to make a special effort to remember the ugly and heavy parts of the past and I realize that they have been erased.

Vacations have always been the most beautiful part of life.
Especially vacations at sea. I lived the most beautiful vacations of the last century with family and friends in Vama-Veche, on the Black Sea, in Romania where I live.

After 1990, the year in which we escaped the rigors of a communist and repressive state, for the next ten years all summers were spent in a small fishing village, the last village in the south, one kilometer from the border with Bulgaria. Vama Veche! Here I lived the freedom, the joy of the wild sea, and the lack of comfort specific to the seaside resorts. The freedom to stay with only a hat on your head!

Okay, for many this may not mean anything, but for us, who lived our childhood and a good part of our youth in a country where almost everything was forbidden, it seemed incredible. The place where this feeling of freedom could be felt to the fullest was Vama-Veche. Everyone was free to behave as they wished and no one was bothered by the others. My nostalgia also comes from the fact that that period of innocence did not last long, now everything has changed and become very commercial. This pushed us to move our holidays to Bulgaria and then to Greece after the year 2000, also to find that feeling of the clean and free sea.

This post is for Qurator's Photo Quest | Vintage Photography. Vintage also means Nostalgia, and nostalgia has become one of the first feelings I have on my fast journey to old age. The memory of the past, always better, with the help of photos. Vintage photography, for which I had the choice between transforming some current photos with the help of filters or applications or using old photos. I chose the version with the old photos, but not very old, only thirty years old. Photos that have an equally old and very nostalgic story for me.

My old Russian Zenit camera with which I took these photos at Vama Veche. I photographed the photos so I could post them here. I don't know if I made the right choice, but at least I had too much nostalgia!

The story of the small fishing village of Vama Veche and of those who populate it every summer is mentioned in the photos from thirty years ago!

The small village, built next to the road to Bulgaria, has a bay with a wild beach and a high cliff.

This beach has been chosen by connoisseurs since the 1950s, especially poets, writers, and intellectuals important for the country's culture. Everyone was discreet, almost no one knew about this place that I found out about long before I got there but I didn't have the courage to go and see because there were all sorts of rumors that they were being watched by the Romanian security and you could have a lot of trouble if you were found there and did not have a notoriety to protect you. For several years I spent holidays in another village, only 4 km from Vama Veche and still I did not approach the beautiful beach. Now I regret that I lost most of that place.

The Beach

The beach is quite large, with fine sand but often with lots of seaweed thrown by the waves of the angry sea. There was no one to clean them so I lived with them.

These algae were not a constant, there was also the part of the beach, further from the water, where the fine sand was very pleasant.

My son grew up on this beach, he was ten years old and the spirit of this place entered him. All day on the beach or in the water, with no fun other than real nature. He is now forty years old but only looking for such beaches, what he accumulated in his childhood has remained forever.

Walks

Walks on the deserted beach, looking for stones and shells. Walks on the seafront. These were our pleasures, away from stalls, shops, and amusement parks.

Our Host from Vama Veche

In the village, of course, there were no hotels. We each had our own host where we lived every summer, in houses with ground floor and uncomfortable, with toilet and shower in the garden. These conditions did not bother us at all, especially when we were not at the beach sitting in the yard of the house, where we ate or played all kinds of games, forced by children who always do something.

The Nonconformists

The uniqueness of the presence on the beach in a very natural mixture of those who practiced nudism and others who kept the swimsuit on them. All ages, from children of several years to adults over 80 years. No one was bothered by the presence of the others!

These young people with hats, only hats, probably a couple, inspired me to choose the title of the post. I remembered Joe Cocker's song and the 9 1/2 Weeks movie.