Tudor Vintiloiu | Blog

The story of my great-grandfather (on my father’s side) was always a bit hazy even in the days of my childhood, when the elders of my family, people who knew him first hand, were still alive to tell the tale. But somehow all that I ever learned about him was how he left Romania at the turn of the century and made his way onto one of the immigrant boats that were taking people and dreams across the ocean, to America.

He made it there. I have no information whether by this time he was already father to my grandfather, or if he was even married. The only other (completely irrelevant) piece of information that I have is that he apparently called himself Vintilescu rather than Vintiloiu. I have no idea why. Maybe it was easier to pronounce.

Anyway.. As the story goes, he came back to Romania. Now, I have no way to confirm that. I don’t know if that was even possible in those days. Also I have no information on what his financial status was.

Last week, my mom came across this picture:

It seems that my great-grandfather made his way into the little town of Alliance, Ohio, where he walked in to the studio of William R. Nesbitt, photographer, to have his picture taken.

Now I found this intriguing. So I followed this new lead to see where it takes me. Luckily, the people of Alliance are pretty proud of their town’s history and have everything archived and available online.

Here is what a book called “Artists in Ohio, 1787-1900: a biographical dictionary” had to say about William Nesbitt:

So the picture was taken sometime in the first years of the 1900s. Digging a little deeper into the archives I came across some pictures of Alliance from that period. In two of them you can see William Nesbitt’s studio, with a large billboard that says: NESBITT – The LEADING PHOTOGRAPHER.

This image was taken during the great snowfall of 1901

A closer look

A different view

Now there is no point to this story. And no ending. I still have no idea of how things went for my forefather, or what he was doing in Alliance, OH, or why/if he ever came back. But looking at these images, and retracing his steps 100+ years later, I can’t help but wonder what it was like to walk down Main Street East, between Freedom Ave. and Seneca Ave.  and walk into Mr. Nesbitt’s studio.

We arrived in Quito around 9 a.m., after a flight change in Amsterdam and two other stops – one in Bonaire, in the Dutch Antilles and another in Guayaquil (port town in Ecuador). Total travel time – 22 hours.

We gained 7 hours travelling West, and although we felt like at the end of a day, here the day was just beginning.

To read the complete story, please click here.

Pentru varianta in limba Romana, dati click aici.

Starting today I will begin to post here the Ecuador travel diary. To make a long story short, we visited to Ecuador this year, for a whole month. We visited cities, jungle and the Pacific coast. Tea wrote down everything in the diary and I completed the story with pictures.

As a novelty, the diary will not be accessible in its entirety on the main page of the blog. Instead I have divised a special section for travel diaries which you can access by clicking on the “Ecuador Diary” button under the header of the home page.

Also, this year, the diary will be available in both Romanian and English.

EDIT: Some sort of error prevents users with Internet Explorer 6.0 browser to comment or view the page properly.

(Click on the map to see it larger)

The jungle part of the Ecuador trip has suffered a few changes due to unforeseen events. Thus we will be travelling from Coca on the Via Auca and then by motorized canoe to the Noneno community where we will camp for a few days. We will then return to Coca and proceed down river towards Peru for about 10-12 hours to the border town of Nuevo Rocafuerte. From there to the Kawimeno community.

We’ll take the same route back to Coca.

These changes also mean a logistic change, as we will be travelling with camping equipment and we will sleep in a tent instead of the more expensive (and comfortable) Jungle Lodges.

Hopefully this way we will experience a more realistic version of life in the Amazon Rainforest, staying clear of the touristy sites. Our new-found guide, by the name of Sandro Ramos, is an experienced guy, licensed by the Ministry of Tourism, who has done this trip many times before. He seems very nice and knowledgeable, but he will sure test my knowledge of Spanish language to the limit.