Following Christmas week in New York City, 2019 quietly came to an end with a relaxed New Year’s Eve dinner and drinks between two good friends. I was deep in my experimental cooking phase and had Alexandre over for a homemade, slightly burned, Greek moussaka.
A new year awaited. After the kind of year I’d just had, it was clear 2020 would probably be calmer. A step back. A year to build, not explode forward. As everyone now knows in hindsight, it would be far more than that — for all of us.
The New Semester Brought a New Victim to UQAC
With January came a new semester at UQAC. Alexandre and I registered for the two required PhD courses. Geology was always a small circle with barely a handful of students, most of them foreign. Among them was Pedro, a Brazilian PhD candidate who had just moved to Chicoutimi.
Welcome to the North. This is what you’ll see for half a year.
Pedro was one of those people who collects stories simply by existing. A guy who had never seen snow in his life moved to northern Canada in January, during a -40°C cold snap, with meters of snow and winter storms rolling in like clockwork. The story practically wrote itself.
After surviving the thermal shock, he endured months living with a questionable Québécois family. Among the gems he would retell: the time he opened the basement fridge to find his sandwich placed beside a box containing a dead cat. The owners were “waiting for spring to bury it” and didn’t want to leave it outside.
Pedro processed this information the way any rational person would — by moving out as soon as possible. With the amount of crazy stories he told us about his first months in Canada, he should honestly write his own blog.
The Rivière du Moulin during winter
He fit perfectly into our little circle of mildly disgruntled foreign PhD students trying to decode Quebec one snowstorm at a time.
The Quest for a Drivers License
For me, that winter felt like a tense calm before a summer storm. It was the first year of my PhD. That summer I was scheduled to do three months of fieldwork across Quebec and Ontario. Which meant one thing: I needed to renew my driver’s license.
The path ahead — Park du Rivière-du-Moulin
At the time I possesses an expired Romanian relic I hadn’t used since one lonely drive in Iceland in 2016. Naturally, it couldn’t be simple. Because my foreign license had expired, Quebec couldn’t simply exchange it. I had to redo the tests. Easy enough. Except I had barely driven in ten years.
Confidence low. Stress high. Instead of responsibly studying the driving manual, I decided to go in blindly. In contrast to my first driving exam when I passed both theory and practice on the first try, this time around I failed. Then failed again. The upside? Exam fees were cheap. Unlimited attempts.
The downside? A mandatory one-month wait between attempts. And of course, the regional SAAQ office was in Jonquière, not Chicoutimi. Which meant an hour-long bus ride each way through Saguenay’s bleak winter landscape every time I wanted to fail another exam. It was not a joyous era.
But with each attempt, I improved. Eventually I passed the theoretical. Then came the practical — rinse, repeat, stress, repeat. By summer, I finally had my Quebec driver’s license. Considering what was unfolding globally, this minor bureaucratic victory now feels oddly monumental.
My routine 10 km park walks to and from the supermarket and gym
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s rewind to winter.
Francisation
Another goal I had set at the start of the year was learning French properly. The university offered nothing useful in that regard. It was Pedro who pointed me toward Quebec’s government-funded francisation classes for newcomers. The Centre de formation générale des adultes was a ten-minute walk from campus.
When I went to register, the woman at the desk spoke exclusively French and had to evaluate my level. I stitched together broken sentences from memory. It didn’t come across as much. Beginner level it was.
But within a few weeks, something interesting happened. Fragments of childhood French combined with fluency in Romanian, a Latin language like French, roots began clicking into place. Vocabulary accelerated. Patterns emerged.
So I was bumped up a level or two. It felt like I was on the right path. Well on my way to adapt and integrate into my new life in French-Canada.
Routine into the Storm
Between language classes, Jonquière license expeditions, PhD coursework, and research work, I barely had time to breathe. But it was structured. Productive. Forward-moving. A couple times a week, Alexandre and I would make our “shopping expedition” — a half-hour walk through snow-covered streets to Place du Royaume, with a mandatory stop at Archambault along the way. Life was cold, busy, and routine. Until mid-March.
Sometimes the waterfall just completely froze
Another winter storm was forecast — strong winds, heavy snowfall. The university closed for the day. Nothing unusual. The next day I returned to find the campus in complete blackout. The storm had damaged major power lines. Parts of the town were without electricity. I made my way to our office using my phone flashlight. Inside, a few colleagues were sitting in pitch darkness, casually talking. Our office had no windows. This never bothered me much, but Alexandre hated it. We chatted in the dark for a while, laughed at the absurdity, then left. No work accomplished.
The following day was another write-off. I can’t even remember if it was still the outage, another storm, or just institutional confusion. The week was dissolving. At some point I joked to my friends: Just watch, Friday’s excuse is going to be a University shutdown because of that coronavirus thing. The news had been escalating into fear mongering. China. Italy. Numbers rising. Dramatic headlines.
Then Friday came. And with it, a state of emergency. The university closed. The province shut down. The world closed itself off. And just like that, routine evaporated. Me and my big mouth.
The New World Order — Life during the COVID-19 lockdown
Early into the first lockdown, I have to admit I felt a selfish sense of vindication. A quiet, petty sort of justice. For months I had been navigating life in a place where I barely spoke the language and knew only a couple of people. Isolation had been my baseline. And now, suddenly, everyone else was getting a taste of it.
Welcome to my world.
Time stopped dripping here. The world held its breath, and winter simply kept sculpting what was already still
At the same time, I secretly welcomed the abrupt pause. My schedule had been escalating into overload — PhD work, language classes, driving exam shenanigans, constant self-imposed pressure. The world hitting pause felt… convenient. I expected it to last a week. Maybe two. And then it just kept going.
Mask mandates appeared. Supermarket floor arrows dictated which direction you could walk, as if we were items on a conveyor belt. Entire stores closed. Curfews were introduced. News cycles amplified panic daily. Then came the toilet paper crisis. One of the stranger collective breakdowns of modern civilization.
Meanwhile, my mom in Romania described increasingly rigid restrictions there. At one point, people had to fill out official declaration papers justifying why they were leaving their homes. It triggered flashbacks for her — memories of life under Ceaușescu’s communist regime, when movement and speech were tightly controlled.
The longer the restrictions lasted, the more frustration built. The virus itself wasn’t what weighed on me most. It was the scale of disruption. The sense that normal life had been switched off indefinitely.
Remote Everything
The lockdown halted my French learning completely. At first, the school closed. Weeks later they began discussing remote options. But by then something inside me had shifted. My motivation drained slowly, almost imperceptibly. What was the point?
The surface freezes while the current moves on. Stillness and Motion.
University research continued from home. At that stage, most of my work involved literature review, so technically it was manageable. Psychologically, it was another story. For some of us, the university environment was essential — a mental trigger that said: now we work. At home, especially in small studio apartments, the boundaries collapsed. The same room that was for sleeping and relaxing became the office, classroom, gym, cafeteria. It blurred everything.
The university experimented with remote courses. It was… rough. At first, everyone tried. Professors adapting to Zoom. Students attempting to focus. But attention spans eroded quickly. Small distractions became irresistible. Changing backgrounds. Flipping someone’s screen. Eventually most students logged in, turned off their cameras and microphones, and disappeared into parallel lives while the professor lectured into the void. I often used that time to cook or clean. Assignments replaced exams. Everyone passed. I retained very little.
The longer the lockdown dragged on, the more pointless everything began to feel. The one concrete achievement of that period was my driver’s license. After all the failures and bus rides through frozen Saguenay, finally passing felt disproportionately triumphant. A small win in a shrinking world.
A Dead Campus
Fighting persistently on our behalf, our supervisor managed to secure limited access to the university for our research group. Strict rules, of course. Masks at all times. Only certain rooms permitted. Not our windowless office, but Lucie’s windowless lab-office. It was something.
The branches held their shape. Everything else waited. Frost simply finished what pause had started
When I think of UQAC now, I mostly remember it as it was during that period: a silent, cold building where you had to ring a security guard to enter. Empty hallways. Fluorescent lighting humming over abandoned corridors. It felt like living a post-apocalypse survival video game.
Apart from each other and supermarket outings, Alexandre and I hadn’t seen people in months. The streets were dead. The first time we saw our supervisor in person again, we talked for hours. Complained. Reflected. Laughed. It felt strangely profound — as if we had all returned from separate planets. Human contact had become a novelty.
The Slow Summer Shift
Weeks passed. Then a month. Finally, our supervisor pulled off another small miracle: approval for one month of fieldwork in August up north for her entire research group of four. Alexandre was relieved. Energized. It felt like movement. Progress. Normalcy.
I felt… nothing. What had begun as quiet vindication had slowly dissolved into indifference. I remember preparing supplies at the university and running into an old colleague, Tague. He was genuinely excited for us. “You guys must be thrilled!” I shrugged. Meh.
The cold had pressed pause so long the world forgot warmth. Yet here, on sun-heated rock, life tests its wings once more, slow and deliberate
In hindsight, I think something subtle had been settling in. Not dramatic, nor cinematic. Just a quiet flattening of emotion. A kind of functional numbness. I went through the motions. I did what needed to be done. But the internal spark, the ambition and momentum I had carried into 2020, had dimmed.
It would take a long time to recognize it for what it probably was. A slow, quiet form of depression.
Following my trip to Budapest I returned to Denmark to continue my unemployment streak. Around this time, I first dipped my toes into the waters of cryptocurrency investment. This was also around that time that I would take my second shot at New Zealand. Above all else, the end of the year would mark my return to Canada for a short family visit in December. I would soon get my first taste of a Canadian winter.
How did we get to cryptocurrencies?
It might seem like this came out of nowhere, but this moment was one of those fateful events in life that would have long term ramifications for me.
I had known about cryptocurrencies for years before 2018. I had seen the crazy surge of bitcoin in the past years and wished I could have gotten in at a good time. However I never had money to throw away on such a gambit. I also didn’t know of a safe and easy way for Eastern European citizens to tap into this young new market. If you remember those days, buying crypto meant wiring money to shady exchange websites — many of which, like BTC-e, ended up scamming their clients’ funds.
Or get scammed or hacked later… depending on your luck
By 2018, however, the winds were shifting, and this once-marginal asset class was gradually gaining acceptance worldwide. More secure exchanges with easy fiat on-ramps were springing up left and right, like Bitpanda in the EU. In this steadily growing pro-crypto climate, I found myself hanging out with a couple of friends when the topic of cryptocurrencies came up. After a few drinks and a shared blunt, I allowed myself to be convinced that this was the perfect time to get in on the action. The market had corrected for the most part of the year and enthusiasm for a multi-year bull-run was creeping back.
The next day I registered on a crypto exchange and deposited my first 50 euros with great financial hopes and dreams for the future.
Hopes and dreams…
Speaking of hopes and dreams, November arrived—bringing with it the one day each year when New Zealand immigration opened its working holiday visa portal to the world.
Strumming along and dreaming of sunny new horizons
I had made a list with my personal details for me and a few of my friends that were going to help me apply. The challenge was to fill out the immigration web-forms as soon as fast as humanly possible in hopes of getting me my coveted visa. The moment the portal went live, the website crashed. Like every year before, millions of candidates from across the world flooded New Zealand immigration servers.
Try as I might, I could never get passed the first page without it freezing or crashing, and having to reload the thing. One of my friends managed to advance to the next pages, but once again the website crashed and sent him back to the start. It was a complete shit show. Five minutes later the portal was closed and a disappointing message filled the screen—the yearly quota had been filled.
This second gut-punch would be my final attempt to move to the dreamy lands of Middle Earth. All hopes and dreams I had for New Zealand were now shattered for good.
Questioning my career path
More than a year had passed since I successfully defended my Master’s thesis, yet my job prospects remained as bleak as ever. I was seriously questioning my career path at this point. Clearly, the number of geology graduates each year far exceeded the available jobs in not only Denmark but the entire European continent.
Aside from a handful of countries like Finland and Sweden that had a more robust mining industry, the remaining countries were very limited in opportunities. To make matters worse, my experience with New Zealand showed that looking outside of Europe presented a whole new array of challenges. Mainly due to visa restrictions.
Moody photo during one of my visits to Hillerød
Somehow, I found myself applying for the most unrelated job imaginable—a telemarketer position in Oslo. It was just another entry in the weekly swarm of applications I sent out, now stretching far beyond my field of specialization.
To my surprise, I got a call back from their headhunter—and somehow, my honesty and determination over the phone won him over. After an equally successful interview, I faced a final mock-call test. All this was happening while I was preparing to fly to Canada for a couple of weeks to visit my extended family.
Oh Canada…
So… Canada. To really tell this part of my story, I need to rewind a little. It all started with my older cousin on my mother’s side, who moved there with his family back in the ’90s. He went on to become a successful geologist in the oil and gas industry, and watching his journey was one of the sparks that inspired me to follow a similar path.
Before my final year of high school, he invited me to Canada for a month. It was my first real experience abroad—my first flight, my first time in the far west, and my first time casually speaking English with native speakers. For teenage me, it was an incredibly positive experience—one I left with tears in my eyes, having to return to my miserable life back in Romania.
My first time in Calgary during summer of 2006
After finishing university, I set my sights on Canadian residency. But things had changed drastically since the ’90s—immigration policies were overhauled, and I had no idea about the new point system. I spent a year navigating the application process, only to face the harsh reality after talking with an immigration lawyer: without work experience, I simply didn’t have enough points to qualify. It was a tough, deflating lesson in the challenges faced by an inexperienced young graduate hoping to take on the world—one of many more lessons yet to come.
Six years later in mid-December, I was boarding a plane to Canada for the second time in my life.
The family
My Canadian side of the family consists of my two cousins, their spouses and their children. All of them living in Calgary. A few years ago their mother, my aunt, had joined them and became a permanent resident and more recently a citizen.
The oldest of my two Romanian-Canadian cousins is Lucian, whom I’ve mentioned before. He was the geologist working in oil and gas for many years. His younger brother Bogdan was a professional athlete and swimming coach for the most part of his life. By 2018, he had chosen to get into the trucking business and was driving around in one of those massive North American semi trucks.
My younger cousins old semi-truck
During the winter holidays of 2018, the whole family got together for the first time in decades. My cousins with their families, their mom, my mom and myself.
The big Christmas family gathering
It was a nice gathering with the typical dose of family goofiness and some awkward moments. For the most part, everyone was smiling. Including myself as I was expecting to hear back from the Norwegian company I had applied to and picturing my future life in Oslo.
A Canadian winter
One of the highlights of my time there was seeing snow that lasted for more than just an evening. Denmark’s winters had been too mild for that, and the last time I experienced multi-week snowy winters was back in my teenage years in Romania—winters that had since grown significantly warmer as well.
A snowy winter day in Banff
Canada still had snow though. Not a lot in Calgary, but there was plenty in the mountains. On my birthday we went for a drive to Banff. Nestled within Banff National Park in Alberta, Banff is a picturesque mountain town surrounded by the rugged peaks of the Canadian Rockies. With the numerous hiking, skiing and biking opportunities, Banff is one of the top tourist destinations in Western Canada.
Got to have that group photo with the sign, otherwise you weren’t there
Lake Louise
Another favorite tourist destination in the area is Lake Louise. The lake sits beneath the towering Victoria Glacier and is surrounded by rugged mountain peaks. The water stays cold throughout the year and boasts a vibrant turquoise color, typical of glacial lakes.
A snow covered Lake Louise
As always, I was eager to do more than a 10 minute walk around Lake Louise. So Bogdan and I left the rest of the family to chill by the lake and castle hotel and we went for a hike to Lake Agnes further up the mountain.
On the trail to Lake Agnes
The trail is a steady 7 km hike up from Lake Louise with roughly 400 m elevation gain. I remembered doing this hike back in 2006 too, so it was really nice seeing it in the winter over 10 years later. Following switchbacks through the forest, the trail offers some spectacular panoramic views of the Rockies and ends at a small tea house on the shores of Lake Agnes.
I believe Lake Agnes was buried under the snow there somewhere
I recall Bogdan telling me at some point that this was his sanctuary. In his own words, his “palace”. He had many troubles and hardships ever since moving to Canada and the mountains were always his peaceful retreat. I could certainly see why.
Calgary
Most of my time there was spent around the Arbour Lake neighborhood in Calgary, where my older cousin lived. The seemingly copy paste residential houses of the endless suburban landscape had become familiar and a bit dull.
Arbour lake neighborhood, NW Calgary
Separated by the occasional shopping complex with vast parking lots, the city seemed more like an overstretched small town with a concentrated downtown core. Speaking of downtown, we did pay it a visit a couple of times.
Peace Bridge crossing the bow river to downtown Calgary
Shiny steel and glass skyscrapers rose above the Bow River, a gleaming testament to the wealth the oil and gas industry had poured into the city. Yet oddities like a major freight train slicing through the downtown core, and the striking absence of historic buildings, revealed the youthful, almost unfinished character of this rapidly growing city.
Strolling around downtown Calgary after dark
At night, the glittering lights of the downtown skyscrapers gave the illusion of a grand metropolis, echoing the likes of New York. Yet the relatively empty streets, largely devoid of pedestrians, and the muted residential neighborhoods stretching for dozens of miles in every direction, told a different story: one of a quiet, tame, and rather uneventful city.
Back to the drawing board
The week after Christmas I finally got an answer from the Norwegian company regarding the job in Oslo. They weren’t offering me the job. I guess I wasn’t cut out to be a telemarketer.
The sun sank behind the Rockies, just as it had on yet another plan that never came to fruition
Although in hindsight it’s good that I didn’t switch careers just yet, at the moment it was another one of many blows. My mood had been soured once again at the end of the year. As much as I used to look forward to the holiday season in December, I was developing quite the streak of shitty Decembers.
With New Year’s Eve approaching, I looked forward to returning to Denmark and gathering my thoughts once more. In turbulent times, I always sought solitude—time to myself, time to regroup.
A layover in Toronto later I was just an ocean away from home
Fortunately, I rang in the new year in the warm company of friends at a lively house party. Surrounded by positive spirits and a welcoming atmosphere, I didn’t yet realize that this night would plant the seed for a pivotal change in the year ahead—a change that would gradually lead to the next grand chapter of my life.
In my previous post, I talked briefly about “The Park” in Baia Mare city and how it’s a gateway to easily accessible hiking trails. I mentioned that the path northeast, takes you to Roman valley (Valea Romană), which was one of my favorite regions to hike. This will be the focus of today’s post.
The Roman valley
Located about 7 km north of Baia Mare, the Roman valley stretches around 2 km, from east to west along a small river. The valley is flanked by forest covered hills and short-mountains (up to 850 m high). The river flows from the mountains eastwards eventually reaching Lake Firiza. Several hiking paths cross the valley, but the most common one follows the river direction. The main path is fairly wide and can also be crossed by bicycle, motorcycle or ATV. The landscape itself is beautiful and offers a great retreat from urban life, while being relatively close to the city.
Hiking in the Roman valley during February (2013)
Main path during summer, 2015
Mount Igniș (1307 m), viewed from the Roman valley (2014)
Mushroom season
Numerous pastures and fern-covered meadows dot the region and offer the opportune environment for one of the most sought-after edible mushrooms in Europe: the parasol mushroom. The parasol, also known as Macrolepiota procera, is one of the most easily identifiable edible mushrooms. Its cream-colored and brown dotted “scale-like” cap set it apart from other mushrooms species in the region. I am by no means an expert on mushrooms, but I find that the parasol is definitely one of the easiest ones to identify. It’s fairly common throughout European countries and it’s delicious!
Young parasol mushroom in the Roman valley (2014)
The parasol season starts around late-spring, during May and ends in October. Personally, I found that they spring up more during spring and autumn, and less so during the summer. This might be due to the more abundant rain during these periods. This is also the time that you are more likely to see other people walking on the paths, as locals often go mushroom-picking during the high season. You can read more here about how to identify the parasol, as well as some cooking tips!
How to get there
You have two options to get to the Roman valley from Baia Mare city. You can take a car up the 183 county road going northeast from the city. When you reach Lake Firiza, you will want to drive another 2 km (~3 minutes) from the Adventure Lake Resort, until you reach the big bend in the road, with a forest road heading west. There will be a barrier on the road, so you’ll have to leave the car there – don’t worry, there is enough space and everybody does this! Alternatively, you can take a public bus from Baia Mare, to Firiza and get off at the Firiza Lake stop. You’ll have to walk a bit to get to the forest road, so make sure you have a map, or someone with you that knows the area!
Forest road from Roman valley ending in the 183 county road (2013)
A more exciting options to reach the Roman valley, is to hike 6-7 km all the way from the Queen Mary Municipal Park in Baia Mare. You can do this by following Petőfi Sándor street along the park and continuing north up Usturoiul valley. At one point the road turns left just after the last power lines end at a private cabin. At this point you don’t want to continue on the road, as it leads to the village of Ulmoasa. You should instead go straight, following the tight valley going north. You can add to the adventure by having a compass with you to help keep you north-bound! This is kind of an off-the path hike, so don’t worry if it seems like you’re going nowhere. As long as you keep north, you will end up in the Roman valley.
I personally preferred hiking from the city, then following the valley east on the forest road. To get back, I would just take the bus from Lake Firiza to Baia Mare. If you want to extend your trip, you can also take the bus up north to Firiza and spend a night at a cabin. I will talk more about this region in my next post!
Curious dragonfly while hiking in the Roman valley (2015)
