Sand That Raised Me – Vama Veche Field Notes
the village that raised us deviant, and kept us free.
Borderworld
On Terra, we focus on reflections of life – the small details that tether us back to Earth: nature, memories, fragments of sanity.
Vama Veche sits on Romania’s seam with the Black Sea, a border town whose next stop is Bulgaria. A fun fact: I first stood on my own feet in its sand, back in 1995, and I’ve returned almost every year since – as a barely standing infant wandering into girls’ tents, as a teenager tasting rebellion, and now, as an adult looking back, then forward, then smiling.
The village keeps shifting around me, but that’s life no? Each time I went back home, the beach always kept a trace of a deviant, raised by the shore, still finding ways to feel free, to stay deviant. (Header photo: Theo at 15, on the shores of the Black Sea, circa 2010.)
Follow me, down to the waterline. If you want to feel the salty breeze and experience Vama Veche through my eyes, come along.
Chapter I: Ebb – Where It Began
1) Origins
1.1) Born of Borders
We’ll go really quickly through this story, as it has been told countless of times. Before it ever meant bonfires of freedom songs on the sand, Vama Veche was Ilanlîk (“Place of snakes” – perhaps a mythic nod to the marshlands?), a small Turkish-named border village founded by Gagauz families. The original identity was modest: fishermen, wind, with the Black Sea overseeing them all. 1940 redrew the lines on the map one last time, and Vama Veche remained on the edge.
Video: Aerial journey to Vama Veche, via Google Earth (2025).
1.2) The Loophole Shore
No commies, as far as the eye could see
What did remain: guitars, tents, and a blind spot in the system.
By the ’60s-’80s, the 2 Mai – Vama strip became a tolerated loophole for nonconformists: students, professors, writers, rockers, and assorted free spirits renting fishermen’s rooms or sleeping in cars and tents, talking till dawn and lighting discreet fires on the sand. It wasn’t “free” in any official sense – just less controlled, so freedom could happen in gradients. (Many veterans say the scene really began in 2 Mai and spilled into Vama; pre-’90 the tribes overlapped, with Vama the wilder edge. – source🔗)
My parents found it there too, via whispers of freedom from peers. Dad, just a teen around that time (junior deviant), would cram his prized Dacia 1310 Berlina with ten people at Mangalia – the nearest train stop – and crawl the last kilometers to the village. “Road police (Miliția Rutieră) rarely patrolled that stretch” Dad said, with the stretch being the road between Mangalia and Vama Veche. There wasn’t much to arrive to: beach and cornfields, a few villagers, a single commie-styled variety shop. My parents and their friends were heavy rockers and loudly against the regime; Vama gave them air that didn’t feel processed. They’d load up on stereos and moonshine (food being optional) and head to Vama Veche like it was a rite of passage.
The rest… well, you can imagine.
Even nudism survived here, despite the strictness of the regime elsewhere – another sign of how rules thinned out at the edge. Nudism survives even today, in reserved pockets of the beach.
Below are some of the few surviving photos from that era.
Gallery: Surviving snaps from Vama in the 80s. Sources: Facebook / Benny Jugaru; Adevarul🔗
Akra Aktion
Two generations grew up with the Akra Aktion, a wrecked ship, watching over us. Laden with steel laminate, it met fate in a storm on 19 February 1981. The waves threw it just a few hundred meters off Vama Veche’s shore, where shallow water kept it stranded.
The whole crew survived, rescued via helicopter over more than an hour, but the ship never left. For decades, Akra Aktion stood there: rusted, briny metal glowing in the sun, with more of the wreck visible at low tide. Experienced swimmers dared to venture close, listening to the sea creak against the old steel.
Today, the wreck has slipped completely beneath the surface, claimed by rust and storms. As we grew, it kept sinking. The cargo was salvaged, as far as I can remember from the stories. Every time I walk the beach I think about it – how it signified the passage of time. Here are some photos of its different sinking stages.
Lost Stories Along the Edge (Bonus Tales)
Lost Tale 1) When I was younger, I heard a story about Prince Tomis, whose pride dragged him under the sea in a storm, then he was rescued by a mermaid princess named Negreana. They say Tomis vanished into the waves for her, and that in heavy seas you can feel the echo of their love-rage swelling through the surf. (Actually found this one! here🔗)
Lost Tale 2) Old fishermen told stranger stories too, half-drunk around fires. One spoke of a man whose nets brought up nothing but spider silk, day after day. One night, he woke up with his shack overrun by fist-sized water-spiders. Scared, he vanished inland and was never heard of again. Others say that the spiders dragged him under the sea. They said he was cursed for mocking the tides.
Lost Tale 3) Old fishermen told about a mermaid not of flesh, but of air, like a spirit who moved through the breeze. She whispered luck into the ears of sailors, promising safe passage, or sometimes nothing at all. If the wind rose soft at night, you might hear her in the canvas of your tent or the creaks of the fisherman’s wooden shack. They named her somehow, but I don’t remember, unfortunately.
Photo: Fishermen’s homes in 2 Mai, Romania, with small boats on the shore, a caravan, and locals working by the water at dusk.
1.3) Salt Boot Sequence
The ’90s
The place was still magically sealed from outside noise, but freedom lived here. Our parents had already cracked the concrete commie spell; and some paid dearly for it. In Vama Veche, the music got louder, more foreign, RVs started appearing, car-battery powered cassette stereos coughing out once-forbidden riffs. One bar, one restaurant, and beds in villagers’ spare rooms; everything else was salt and rumor. Most people still placed their tents on the beach.
Not long after, your narrator blinked into existence on this odd rock called Earth. My parents didn’t hesitate – a few months later I was in Vama Veche. I remember tents on the beach: one had 3 girls crammed inside, and another with 5 (or more) guys. I was the center of attention as I was really young, and there weren’t many full families visiting Vama Veche at that time – it was reserved for rebellious teens & adults. I remember my first hotdog from a street RV, and my first corn on a cob, my mom bargaining while a hand-painted sign insisted: Boiled Corn on a Cob – 20.000 Lei. Very curious how we retain the strangest memories.
Gallery: Yours truly, on the Vama Veche Beach – around ’95 – ’96, along with some other early 90’s shots, found by Dan Niță🔗.
The ’00s
Then came Stufstock 2003, a big rock show meant to protest urban development and fend off mass tourism. You can imagine how that went. Read more about Stufstock here🔗.
I was standing on the cliff that leads to 2 Mai, looking over the crowd with some childhood friends. Our parents didn’t let us go down in the crowd, but it was enough. Here’s the only recording I’ve found of the first edition. The band E.M.I.L. plays here, raw punk energy with ska flavors. Let the groove hit you.
E.M.I.L @ Stufstock 2003
A few editions on, the terrain shifted. More and more people poured in, leading to more business opportunities. Many motels and restaurants came into existence, well known today, like Bazart (Read about it, or get a room here🔗), while most people chose to sleep in tents, on the beach. Petty theft became part of the folklore; but it’s not the story I’m telling here.
Fortunately, the freedom spirit remained, being pushed by the people that came. Wanderers, deviants, drop-offs, survivors. I was a little devil, too curious, asked too many questions for a kid: “Why’s your hair like that? Why do you have so many tattoos? Why are they naked? What’s that lady have under her belly?” -The answers were usually laughter and a shrug.
Below you’ll find some curated shots from Vama Veche, more or less around that period, and a fitting tune.
Gallery: Vama Veche in the 00’s. Photos of people are more recent – but the essence remains the same. At least, that’s how I remember it. VICE🔗, Chris Suspect🔗
This marks the end of “Origins”. My life-changing teens start below.
Thanks for being here so far.
2) First Tides
2.1) The Call of the Tent
When a background of your life becomes your stage. Late 00’s
A couple of summers later I was a teenager with a mouth full of curses for school, rejecting conformity. A bad little boy, laughing in the face of every Hannah Montana or Justin Bieber t-shirt – teenage arrogance at work (funny looking back now, I don’t hold it against anyone). In the summer of 2009, a friend called: “We’ve got a spot in a tent. You in?” I was. My parents, trusting me to manage, handed me a bit of cash, a packing list, and a ride to the train.
That first trip rewired something in me. Note that this is not a story about minors getting wasted on cheap booze at the first sign of independence. Instead, it is about going to a place which was guarded from the responsibilities of that period in our youth, free to do and choose as we pleased. Close minded individuals would say that we were sure to become the next drug fueled Zillenials🔗.
On the contrary, these trips opened our minds, made us be more ready for whatever life later threw at us and ever more resilient to false icons and consumerism – and, later, more able to not care and keep an open mind about each person’s tastes.
Next year I brought my high school crew. Then again. And again… We would either choose 2 Mai or Vama Veche for tenting/lodging, depending on what was the purpose of the trip:
- Short trip, comfy – Expensive, faster train (left Bucharest around 7am) + get some rooms at a villager’s house
- Long trip, economic – Cheapest train (left Bucharest at around 2am) + tents in yards
Gallery: The pack, the trip, the tent placement.
If you ask yourself “What did that first trip rewire in this odd narrator?”, well – with the vibes being immaculate, and growing there each summer, I saw it with different eyes, having no parents around. There was a mix of nostalgia and novelty that I’m sure you’ve experienced at least once.
The difference is that this hippie-rocker zone (even as it grew more overcrowded and expensive) enforced many of the values I still live by: simplicity over clutter, music over noise, loyalty over status. When you sleep in a tent with your clean t-shirts as a pillow, you learn quick that comfort isn’t about possessions but about vibes – or simply put: if you feel good, comfort doesn’t matter anymore.
When you wander the beach at 3am with nothing but salt, sand, and laughter, you realize that freedom is perception itself – fragile, shifting, yours to claim in that instant. For overthinkers, Vama Veche is a good example of a carpe diem exercise. The environment clears your head of problems from home, sometimes even planting the solutions. A clear mind is invincible.
That was the rewiring: the sharp lesson that life isn’t about stacking things or moments, grades, money, titles and fame… but about being exactly where you most wish to be, every day, with kindness and humility toward the whole world.
And so the tent, or the villager’s spare room, paved the way to a life with no clocks, only sunrises to count, if you even cared to.
Photo: It was about how each day felt when the sun came up.
2.2) Daylight Routine
Mornings were slower than the nights, and that was the point. Early 10’s and onwards
Wake up call – If we were lucky enough to sleep under a roof, or pitch the tent under a tree, wake-ups were merciful. If not, the sun punched through canvas around 8:30 am and everybody sat up, heads bowed over phones, doom-scrolling weird articles on a wheezing 3G connection, devices tethered to the pavilion wall sockets in the yard. Music came from an old Peavey practice amp mornings were usually reggae and truce-making.
Photo: Music in the camping didn’t need polished gear, just a battered amp, salt-eaten wood, and enough volume to carry over the sleepy heads.
Breakfast – Right after some freshening at the common yard restrooms, and 500 cigarettes later – we drifted beach-ward, all together if spirits aligned, in pairs if they didn’t.
Books, chess, backgammon. We didn’t have umbrellas and other beach gear, just slippers, smokes, and some money. If the camping-can stash ran low, we raided a kiosk for fuel on the way.
Gallery: Forced wakeups, common restrooms, chess, cans, cigarettes and campgrounds. Places to eat. A soothing randomness.
First stop – Every time: Stuf Vama Veche. “Stuf” as in reed – and, sure, “stuff.” Same playlist, different mornings; we could tell how late we’d woken by which track was playing. Kettle coffee that gave us arrhythmia but did its job wonderfully. A few swims, long stares at the water, dragging time as long as it would stretch. We did not move until lunch.
Gallery: A collection of daytime beach pictures.
Lunchtime – Would happen at one of the ventures near the beach, depending on how much money we had left. We would prioritize cigarettes and evening cocktails over food. After lunch, we would – of course – return to Stuf, for even more sea immersions and relaxed discussions. At around 6pm, we would switch places to a better view, up on the cliff, for a milder coffee with milk. Some would crash there for a few hours.
Photos: The place up on the cliff. Closed today.
Afternoon – After watching a soothing sunset, we would go back to camping, shower (if there was any hot water left in the sun-warmed boiler) and dress nicely, because the day was only an intro.
Photo: Evergreen summer seaside attire.
Sneakers bonus – End of a run? Sneakers gone bad? Don’t cry – they still had a final purpose. We’d knot the laces, pick a line, and send the shoes up – not as trophies, just markers. Little flags for miles walked and nights survived; a way to say “we were here” without carving it into anything. The wind did the rest.
Photos & Video: Dress nice, only if your sneakers survived.
2.3) Night Curriculum
The night rewrote the rules.
Dusk – The streets get crowded and the music gets louder. The bars fill up, as well as the boardwalks. Bohemians would gather up on the cliff, or sit cross-legged inside villagers’ yards, strumming their guitars and trading stories from the other corners of the country. Foreigners (in large numbers by 2010) would just stand there, watching, caught between disbelief and fascination at how raw it all felt.
The streets – You never knew what came next: a drum circle forming on beer kegs, a stranger passing a bottle, or someone breaking into a dance just because the night allowed it. Every sound blended, until the whole village became one long, chaotic song.
Photo: As the sun dipped, the strip came alive.
Nobody asked who you were, what you studied, or what job you held. The only measure was how present you could be in that moment, how loud you could sing when the chorus came.
Pirates – If we were really into it, we would start the evening by cracking a cold one at “Pirați” – Pirates. This crooked wooden shack was the unofficial embassy of motorcyclists, a place whispered about with warnings: “Don’t go there, it’s dangerous.“
Dangerous? Maybe to close-minded people. The big guys didn’t do you no harm if you didn’t start any trouble. To us – a bunch of teens with gentle faces that couldn’t cause chaos even if we tried – it was pure magnetism: gleaming bikes parked outside, riders swapping road stories, Slayer blasting from an overworked sound system that felt older than all of us. It was gritty, loud, and alive – the kind of place where you didn’t need to belong, you just needed to be, until your ears rang so hard you knew tomorrow would start half-deaf.
Sadly, Pirați isn’t around anymore. All that remains are the photos, the echoes, and the stubborn feeling that it was the truest way to start a night in Vama Veche.
Gallery: Pirates. We weren’t old enough to know better, but in Vama Veche no one cared.
Fire artists – The heartbeat of Vama Veche’s nights. They rewired the darkness – in the middle of crowded streets or on the sand, they carved circles and spirals out of flame, pulling gasps from strangers and smiles from friends. No ticket – everyone admitted. Some are still performing, every summer. Please see the presentation and attend the show of a good friend: OȚET Light and Fire🔗
Gallery: Fire Artists with their fiery games. Caught in the frame: Journeys🔗
Tagging along with them, I suddenly felt – unfairly – that the place was ours. Vama belonged to us then: we knew the faces, greeted strangers like friends, watched fire artists stop traffic as if the streets bent to the rhythm. That sense of ownership wasn’t about possession, but maybe about belonging. Today, with everything regulated, commercial, and crowded, that feeling has slipped away.
Somewhere, maybe, it still exists.
Video: A snippet from a video I captured when they blocked the main street.
Stuf – Yeah, even the nighttime playlist was on repeat, but at least it cycled weekly. The songs were curated to please everyone in Vama, which is why Stuf drew in most of the night owls and held them till sunrise. Sometimes they’d bring in DJs just to play the same tracks with some crossfades and effects, and honestly, that was fine. Drinks were sold at the bar, but everyone came with their own bottles; eventually a no-BYOB rule appeared, and of course, it was universally ignored.
Below you’ll find some photos from Stuf, plus a few snapshots of smaller, less-known bars that also colored those nights.
Gallery: Some Stuf stuff.
Videos: Some more interesting night stuff. Blue unknown substance shots on the house, jazz concert on the cliff, disco globe on the makeshift shack.
The Beach – For those about to rock (quietly), we salute you. Even at night, the sand was alive with campfires – so many that the practice eventually got banned. Circles of souls shared a guitar, a bottle, and conversations that felt far bigger than the tide. We usually ended up here when we were stubborn enough to resist sleep until sunrise.
Good thing the variety shops stayed open all night; whatever we needed was just a short walk away. BYOB was approved but never required – every circle welcomed you, no matter who you were, and every hand passed something your way.
Gallery: The Beach at night. A magnificent atmosphere.
Video: A fire I quickly captured with a Nikon J1 camera a friend gave to me. The crazy thing had built-in fade in/out to black. Great piece of hardware for these situations. I’ll let you enjoy the sea sounds.
The Sunrise – For those worthy, who survived the nightly vice battle, a beautiful eastern sun rises. Tired spirits would either crash right on the beach after experiencing it, or return to their lodgings. I remember choosing one night per stay which I considered really special, to stay up all night. That sunrise always felt like a reward, as if the sea itself was saying, “you made it.” Stuf would play the Boléro, every sunrise, kinda weird running the same sunrise song, daily, for tens of years. We would just go a little further, to not hear it yet again.
Video: A Vama Veche sunrise.
Rinse and repeat – By the time the sun was high up, we dragged ourselves back to camp – the routine felt less like repetition and more like rhythm. Each day was a variation of the same tune, but that similarity was exactly what made it eternal.
Closing note – Nights in Vama were lessons, trials, and rewards stitched together in firelight, music, and salt air. Each faved song, each sunrise etched itself into us, forever. Thanks for reading so far.
Next up, Flow – the chapter where I face the changed beach today, the dilution and the noise, but also the reasons I still return, to recalibrate and to find my compass.
Photo: The slow train home, carrying tired bodies and wide-awake memories.
Chapter II: Flow – What Remains
1) The Shift
1.1) The Beach Diluted
From plastic beer bottles and guitars to hashtag mason-jar lemonade. Late 10’s and onwards
This is where I’ll change the tone a bit, not into something dark, not at all – Vama is still amazing.
I’ll try to show you a bit of contrast of how today’s world often does more than just “make stuff more expensive”.
The beach that once felt like a loophole turned into a product.
Maybe this shift was planned long before, but I didn’t feel it until around 2015. Kiosks multiplied, EDM replaced folk-rock, and umbrellas sprouted like mushrooms where tents once were. Nudism and the last holdouts of the beach tents were pushed closer to the cliff, leaving the main sand strip to restaurant owners, who fenced it off with sunbeds – fifty RON a day in 2025.
A clear note: I don’t whine, it’s just that time forgives no one.
A decade earlier, 50 RON bought twenty cans of beer. Now it bought you a square meter of shade. Taxes, inflation, the times…
In Vama Veche, the theme is still there, but it’s sold – not purely existing out of simplicity. Everyone can feel it. Even my friends, who I haven’t seen back here in years. Wooden shacks that once blasted B.B. King at noon became massage joints. Cheap variety shops turned into fancy barista coffee stuff. Freedom didn’t vanish, but it got harder to find.
Vama still rocks for the veterans who never left its vibe, and for those who keep their head above ground.
The gallery below shows it: cracks of freedom still glowing, if you know where to look.
Gallery: If you raise your head from the sand, Vama still gives. 2024.
1.2) The Lost Pockets of Freedom
Who’s paying the price
And here’s the part that matters: I see kids today catching the same sparks we once did. They might find it in a night swim, a back alley jam, or in a circle of friends on the beach. I see kids with the big JBL bluetooth speakers blasting some quality reggae tunes on the beach, and still banging their heads on the same Stuf playlist. A true testament of time. There are no fires on the beach anymore, but we can live without.
The system isn’t designed to let us stumble into freedom by accident anymore. It became smarter, patched the cracks, and now sells us an “experience” instead. I don’t blame this new generation for anything they’re usually blamed for on TV vox populi.
They simply aren’t allowed to experience the raw freedom with the simplicity we did. They aren’t allowed to be happy. If you say that “Well, they grew up inside this patched system, it’s all they know.” I’m telling you – they don’t know it, but they’re feeling it.
And it’s not even that big of a difference. By the time I’m writing this I’m 30 – I’ve had internet for all my life, even more raw and uncensored, so to speak, so it’s not this. We’ve had way weirder brainrot content than today, where you can’t really say that it’s “curated”, but it’s safer.
Photo: Yours truly with good friend OȚET Light and Fire🔗, 2024.
Here’s the thing: The system tried to make us all-happy, all-enduring, tax-paying machines too. But they weren’t so efficient with us. That’s not the case anymore – and ironically, the cracks in the system are far more visible than they were when we were kids.
Life is more expensive, survival takes more. But I wonder: if they aren’t exposed to the authenticity, to the unpolished freedom of life – will they even know what to fight for?
Maybe that’s why the statistics scare us today. Maybe that’s why suicide rates and drug use are skyrocketing. Are people growing up more and more dazed and confused?
We will adapt. But will they?
Photo: Where the cliffs meet the sea – the road to 2 Mai, 2024.
2) My Compass
2.1) The Calibration Night
Before needing any “sleep apps”
In 2015, on one particular night, 7th of August 2015 – to be precise, I’ve slept better than I’ve ever slept in my life. Not in a room or hotel, but in my tent in a villager’s garden in Vama Veche.
It changed my life and my understanding of everything so much, that I remember every little detail from that one night: Nylon breathing, the mildest of winds combing the walnut tree above me, the sea flowing slow just two alleys away, a distant bassline from Expirat, like a friendly heartbeat. Somewhere, someone laughed; somewhere else, a bottle touched a glass. I closed my eyes and the whole village agreed to be quiet in the course of five to ten minutes. It was magical, unreal.
I woke to swallows and the sun shining, at around 9am. No alarms, just a body in which some ancient ancillary system awoke. That night became my north: since then, I measure places by whether they can give me that kind of peace. Here is the song with the bassline that I was talking above and the images I have from that very morning (well documented, to remember).
Photos: Premium five star tent experience: pillows from home, inflatable mattress, etc.
Vama is still cool, you just have to angle it right. Dusk swims, coffee on the cliff, even if you have to buy it from somewhere else. Leave your stuff in your room or tent, don’t get a sunbed. (they’re still forced to let towels on % of the borrowed beach from the state). Come over on off-season weeks. A walk toward 2 Mai when the village gets crowded. Say yes to the stray dogs; they know the best routes.
2.2) Memory as Armor
When the world says conform, recall the shoreline
These trips are my infrastructure. In a world that wants you polite, profitable, and quiet, Vama Veche taught me how to stay human. Since I was a child, I was shown the ways of simplicity and stubborn freedom: pack light, fix what breaks, share what you have, and follow the sea when life gets loud.
These memories are a toolkit that I carry. They remind me what to protect and what to ignore. They help me stay semi-functional inside a system that keeps asking for the parts that make you alive.
Photo: Southbound at seventeen.
After we all got employed, the scene shifted. But I’m still here. Not giving up, because it represents me. The village is me and I am it.
I don’t go back for the bars. I go back for the breeze, for proof that freedom can live in small pockets and still rewrite a day. That’s my compass.
Photos: Still here, forever.
I’m writing this on the same cliff where I watched the first Stufstock, in 2003, with the sea unchanged. I don’t know what life brings next; I know where to recalibrate when it does.
Field rules to sign off:
- Simplicity over clutter.
- Talk to strangers.
- Dawn fixes more than debates.
- BYOB kindness.
- Pack light, stay long.
- If you’re lost, follow the dogs.
- Leave places cleaner.
- Recalibrate often, preferably by the sea.
Thank you for reading. Writing this was both painful and wonderful – strange as that may sound.
Closing Transmission
Vama Veche isn’t a secret anymore, and that’s fine. I’ve lost count of how many amazing times I’ve had there, from the days when you only had one place to eat or drink, ’till today, when there are dozens of overpriced joints. I think that real freedom belongs to those who find the leaks in the dam, even if it costs time and the comfort of doing what society expects. Yet this is what I plan to do: adapt, shed what’s useless, and keep being free, keep being a deviant, even when I sometimes feel the sting of wanting to align with the others.
I return for the usual calibrations: sea air that resets the lungs and carries whispers of fishermen’s stories long-gone, 4 am conversations about the future of humanity, and the sea itself, still echoing with our teenage shouts of freedom – whether through Bob Marley’s words, Mark Knopfler’s guitar or Flea’s mad bass lines.
Between childhood stories and adult noise, Vama remains one of my checkpoints. A proof that simplicity, closeness and a touch of defiance persist. On Terra, we hold onto these things, reflect on them, and find ways to keep them alive.
Stay tuned right here, on Unbound Planet.
–Theo
Contact me🔗 with your stories, tips, or memories.