For 20 Years, Vama Hasn't Changed. I Never Stop. — Ioan „Click” Mihalca [Romania](https://ioanclickmihalca.ro/en/articles?category=romania) · 9 min · 15 July 2026 For 20 Years, Vama Hasn't Changed. I Never Stop. ================================================ The place hasn't moved in 20 years, so you can see how much I have. It's not nostalgia — it's gratitude: for the man who brought me, and for the ones on the blanket. Saturday morning, at sunrise, the sea was so still it seemed it hadn't woken up either. The place that hasn't moved in 20 years, on a morning when even the sea wasn't moving. I'm writing this on Sunday, still from the beach. We were supposed to leave for Bucharest today, but we didn't manage it — we're staying one more night and leaving tomorrow, at sunrise. From Monday I'm at the office, with the BizzOS team: this summer we moved to Bucharest, and we come here whenever we can. It doesn't happen every weekend — there are plenty of factors that decide for us — but we come. And it's exactly this rhythm that pushed me to put into words something I've carried with me for 20 years. It started with an ordinary thought, lying on the sand: this is why we wait for summer — because we're sick of four walls. It sounded good. Except for me it doesn't hold up at all: I built my life between walls I chose. The office where I write code. The studio where I make music. The gym where I coach. Three rooms I walk into willingly, day after day, for years — nobody keeps me there by force. And there's something else: Vama stayed in my heart even in winter, when the beach gives you nothing of what summer sells. Three words — "even in winter" — overturn the whole thought this article started from. It wasn't about summer and it wasn't about walls. It was about this place. The door Mr Boogie opened ------------------------- The first time at Vama I didn't come — I was brought. Mr Boogie, God rest him, called us to play a concert here, back when I was in Camuflaj. I came for a stage and I left with a place. The man who opened this door for me is no longer among us. The door stayed open for 20 years. And in those years I didn't stand still at all: from Cluj to Bucharest, from Bucharest to a kitchen in Mallorca, back to Bucharest, then home, to Maramureș. Cities changed, trades changed, lives changed. On this restless map there's a single fixed point, and it's none of the cities I lived in. It's a beach. Vama is the fixed point of a man who never stood still. And this summer, the fixed point reversed the roles: it moved us. We moved to Bucharest partly because from here this beach is a weekend away — from Maramureș, it isn't. When a place ends up choosing your city, we're no longer talking about a holiday destination. Every version of me ------------------- I've been here in every way you can be somewhere. I've slept on this beach with the sand under my head, and I've slept in the most expensive rooms in the village. One summer, Andreea and I wanted to be here from beginning to end, so we took jobs at Povestea Ceaunului, alongside our Bessarabian friends — real, decent people, the kind with whom work doesn't feel like work. I didn't come to Vama for work; I went into work for Vama. It was the first time this place rearranged our life so we could be near it — moving to Bucharest this summer is the second. And I filmed the video for "Speranța" here: just me and Cristi — a good friend, a talented videographer — and a trunk full of wine from Mr. Blaga, from Domeniile Blaga. That was the whole budget and the whole crew. So it's not comfort that brings me back — I came here when I had nothing and when I had everything I wanted. This place has seen every version of me, like a good corner. [The corner, in the ring](https://ioanclickmihalca.ro/en/articles/kickboxing-coach-developer), is the one who sees you both when you win and when you get hit — and stays the same, in the same spot, no matter how your round is going. Vama has been my corner for twenty years. The line that got its answer ---------------------------- In "Speranța" I sang: "make my life a dream, and from my dream make a life." I sang that line here, on this beach, back when I had little else besides it. Saturday, at sunrise, the line got its answer on the same beach. The life I asked for in the verse was drinking coffee next to me. Andreea — with whom I also worked on this beach, not just sat on it. Mihail, our boy, who turns 2 in October. He saw this sea for the first time last year, at 10 months — Vama entered his life before his first birthday. Now he's on his second summer here, at exactly the age when the first memories form: it's very possible that the oldest image he'll carry with him his whole life will be from here — this sand, this sea. I chose Vama 20 years ago. He gets it from the start: he's already on his second year. The circle doesn't close. It opens once more. And Hera — an Amstaff, sensitive and protective, with me for 10 years. Exactly half of my Vama years. She was by my side before the return to Maramureș, before the club, before Andreea and Mihail — she's the only one on that blanket who knew them both: the one who was searching and the one who found. And that protective instinct, the one she's had since birth, finally got the mission it had been waiting 10 years for: a nearly-2-year-old human, on the sand. The song is called "Speranța" — Hope. Hope is now nearly 2 years old and makes footprints in the sand, next to mine. It's not a nice coincidence for an article. It's its backbone. The spirit isn't in the sand ---------------------------- Saturday, over coffee, I looked around: the generations have changed. Not everyone here today is "from Vama" — many set foot on this beach for the first time this year, the way I did 20 years ago. But the spirit is here. You can feel it. Except this spirit doesn't live in the sand. You won't find it by digging. It's carried by the people who keep coming back, and the newcomers don't find it — they take it from the ones who keep coming back, with no ceremony at all. After 20 years, I'm no longer a visitor to that spirit. I'm one of the ones who carries it. Mr Boogie handed it to me, with a concert. I hand it to Mihail, with a coffee in my hand, without saying a word. Today I ran into Vasi again, a guy who sings in Vama with his guitar and his voice. I met him the summer I worked here — after work, his songs eased my heart. He has a rare talent, the kind that needs no stage: I first came to Vama for a stage; for him, the beach is enough. The years passed, and today I found him still here, with his guitar and his voice. I was glad to see him again. If the spirit I'm talking about sounds like an abstraction — it isn't. Sometimes it has a guitar. The band that carries the name of the place said this 20 years before me, in the line the whole beach knows — the one about the story that goes on, like the wind here. It came to mind on Saturday, after four hours sitting on the sand. And the wind really is the perfect image: the one thing that stays fixed by moving. Like the spirit. Like the people who leave in autumn and come back in summer. Like us, this summer: we leave on Sundays and come back whenever we can. The place that measures you --------------------------- That's what Vama does for me, and that's why I come back: the place doesn't move, so you can see how much I've moved. The beach has never moved. It only measures me. The same sand, every year. On it have sat, in turn, the young man brought to a concert, the man leaving to work in a kitchen in Spain, the one coming back, the one starting over at home — and, as of this year, a father watching his child discover the sea. The beach never asked me for anything and never gave me advice. It measured me in silence, summer after summer. This summer it does it more often than ever. And so this text isn't read wrong: it's not nostalgia. Nostalgia wants back what was, and I don't want anything back — I'm not looking for the young man from that concert and I wouldn't trade the blanket I have now for any old summer. This article is about gratitude. For the man who brought me. For the place that took me in, in all my versions. For the three on the blanket. Nostalgia looks back; gratitude passes on. This year's measurement fits into a single sentence. I said it to them, on Saturday, and I leave it written here: **You are my great love — *la mare*, at the sea, in Vama Veche.** This site will have English and Spanish versions, and this article will be translated too. The sentence above won't sound the same in any other language — the play between the two meanings of *mare* belongs only to Romanian and to this place. That seems right to me. Some things aren't meant to travel. They're just meant to be returned to. I'd planned a beautiful ending: the weekend opened with a sunrise and was going to close with another — the departure, Monday at dawn, with the calm sea behind us. Monday morning it rained. No sunrise. I went down to the beach anyway, one more time before the road, and the sea was beautiful in the rain too. This place doesn't need good weather to be mine, just as it doesn't need summer. Here I feel closer to God — in sun, in rain, either way. They say you leave a piece of your heart in the places you love. That line crossed my mind too, on the wet beach, and I corrected myself on the spot: I don't leave anything here. I take. I take a piece of Vama with me, in my soul, as I do every time — and with it we start the week. I come back every summer. [← All articles](https://ioanclickmihalca.ro/en/articles) Share If this article was useful to you, pass it on. [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fioanclickmihalca.ro%2Fen%2Farticles%2Fvama-veche-20-years) [X](https://x.com/intent/post?url=https%3A%2F%2Fioanclickmihalca.ro%2Fen%2Farticles%2Fvama-veche-20-years&text=For%2020%20Years%2C%20Vama%20Hasn%27t%20Changed.%20I%20Never%20Stop.) 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