Walks, Birds, People and Photos

I say thank you and I'm happy with what nature offers me now. This year we had many surprises, most of them unpleasant. A few, however, were extremely pleasant. Among them is this absolutely gorgeous autumn.

A perfect season for walks and photos. I meant to travel, but there may be other surprises, namely that Mrs. Winter catches us unprepared somewhere far from home...

Walks and Photos! I like this one the best and it's the easiest to make. For an urbanite like me, these two passions can and do come together and be consumed in the most enjoyable way in the parks.

Autumn nature photos are just as common and posted as sunrise or sunset photos. Some even consider them a kind of cliché, a subject tackled by everyone, often with less than happy results. Happily, the beauty of any autumn landscape covers even the biggest photo mistakes.

In Bucharest, the city in Romania where I live, there are some parks that I really like. I like that they are different from each other, each one has something specific, a certain unique attraction, which differentiates them. This uniqueness makes it easy to choose where to walk, depending on my mood or the need to admire something specific to a certain place.

This time we chose Circus Park, a place full of greenery in the middle of a very crowded area of buildings, cars, and people. It is a park far from my home and for this reason, I rarely walk here. The uniqueness of the park is the pond where lotuses grow. The only place where I can admire these flowers. The lotuses bloom in the middle of summer but I took this walk to see what the pond looks like without them and what the park is like in autumn...

Walking around the city where I live has remained the most frequent and affordable pleasure of my life for now. Trips to other places, in the country or abroad, are increasingly rare, only a few a year. The main theme of my posts are travels and because of this I am now forced to consider the walks as very short trips, and to keep them gathered somewhere, I chose a tag where to find them, #traveltomycity.

At the same time, I consider that any report of where someone lives is also a kind of guide and recommendation for those who might ever get to that place. A way to learn about a country, a city, or a village in a different way than from official tourist guides, which are designed to persuade you to travel there, often hiding the less pleasant things you may face.

Both the descriptions and especially the photos were taken by ordinary people, like me, and can show things that can convince someone to travel to a place or, on the contrary, make him or her bypass that place.

Now, I have to say that I think that a tourist who would come to Bucharest, the capital of Romania, a very big and complex city, with everything, would not waste his time walking in a park like this. In this situation, I think that posting about these small, unmarked and maybe hidden places can help the foreign traveler to complete his image of the country and the city he is visiting.

I came to the park to see what the pond was like without the lotuses. It is a small pond, formed by a few springs that once existed in this pit. Now the springs have dried up and the pond is artificially fed, the only way to keep it from disappearing.

I was surprised to see that the pond is now home to several waterfowl.

I saw a flurry of birds, especially agitated by the fact that passers-by in the park were bringing them food. These birds are taking advantage of the beauty and warmth of these autumn days.

Unfortunately, it won't be long before things change... Winter will make life much harder for the birds and the time when the pond water will freeze is not far off.

I walked away from the pond, leaving the kids to feed and enjoy the bird's excitement...

... and I continue my walk with interest now directed at the people who populate this park. I like to observe people and I like to photograph them, but this is more difficult to do because I don't want to bother them either and they are certainly not happy to see that they are being photographed by a stranger.

This makes photography a kind of image hunting, similar to bird watching... can I call it "people watching" ( #peoplewatching)?

This "people watching" can be done easily with the eye, but with the camera, I can take mostly images from behind the subjects. Here, at least I could show the dog from other positions...

I inadvertently included two trash cans in the photo. There are a lot of trash cans in the parks in Bucharest and this could indicate that the parks are very clean and the passers-by are civilized people. Unfortunately this is not the truth. Many litter cans are installed in parks because buying them has always been a good business for the mayors. As for the level of civilization of people, I am sorry to say that it is not very high, unfortunately especially among teenagers and young people who have fun in parks.

I forgot to mention that in addition to walkers, there are runners in the park, but I'm sure everyone knows that. Not to mention the people with bikes and scooters, happy people who make those with children or walking unhappy and that's because there are few specially laid out paths. That makes everyone get mixed up and there's a good chance of accidents.

These were the thoughts and images from my most recent walk, on an unforgettable autumn day, in one of the parks in Bucharest.

Inspired by Hive account@tattoodjay's #WednesdayWalk!

Traveler to the city where I live is what I've been doing for many years, that is, I try to show what is more interesting, more important, and not necessarily what is more beautiful in the city where I live. I don't bypass the ugly places or the sometimes uncivilized behavior that I try to explain through the history of these places but I focus especially on what I think a visitor would like to see when he arrives for the first time in Bucharest. Bucharest, the capital of Romania, a member country of the EU, is located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe. I'm going to use this tag #traveltomycity and then put these places on the Pinmapple map for those who want to discover them more easily!