Total Solar Eclipse 2026. What a wonderful time!
Let me tell you the story behind this most amazing photo I was ever part of:
On december 15th 2025 I created a Signal chat to invite all of the friends I knew from TROM (mostly) to experience together a very unique and rare event in Europe: A Total Solar Eclipse.
I have been preparing for this for 1-2 years now. I bought a telescope around 2014 or so and since then I’ve dreamed about seeing a total solar eclipse with it.
Thing is the total eclipse would only be visible from here:
That purple band, just a patch of Spain. It was going to be in the middle of August. Super hot, super full of tourists. So preparing 1 year ahead of time was a must.
I was looking for places with Sasha to see where we can all camp. Somewhere where we could park the motorhome and others can rent some places. Oh I so loved when we planned for this!
If you told me in 2014 that in a decade or so I will go with my girlfriend, my telescope, a motorhome and many amazing friends to see the eclipse I would have said is impossible. This is too good to be true.
The traumatic start.
A year before the eclipse shit hit the fan for me and my family. My father had 4 strokes in 9 months. I had some weird abdominal pain that lasted for more than a year, and my sister was diagnosed with cervical carcinoma.
Same period of time something else happened to me. For 2 decades now I was able to willingly blind myself about something and then I opened my eyes.
What something?
I knew and learned, I learned and knew all I could about reality. From quarks to quasars, from society to science. I am not busy with a job or anything else. So these things are a daily part of my life. And in the back of my head I started to realize that fucking shit if I ever take this thing too seriously I will loose my mind. Cells, atoms, death, far away stars, quantum silliness, evolution…then combine with the stupid and silly world humans have invented: jobs, social classes, brands, money, countries, papers….and it makes no fucking sense to me. I was HONESTLY worried I will loose my mind over this at one point in my life. Because it is too much for a human brain to handle. There is this guy I see when I go for a walk here in Estartit where I live, he sits on a bench and talks to himself and I always wondered what happened to him and if I may end up like that. This is a terrible thought I have at times.
So the world my parents, friends, or I knew, is just a human fantasy and has almost nothing to do with the real reality. Almost like you wake up one day to realize that all you know is a computer simulation. How can you sanely handle that?!
But I managed to keep myself willingly blind to this clash of worlds in my head, by being busy with TROM. Books, discussions, documentaries, projects. That was like a pair of solar googles over my eyes to protect me from being blinded by looking at the Sun directly.
And for the past 1-2 years I kinda lost those googles. Since TROM was fading away as a project, then seeing even those close to the project being eaten alive by the society, I lost hope and motivation, and thus I was not as busy with TROM and had the time to look directly at the Sun. And it was awful. Because I started to realize my own mortality and how nothing will make sense in the end. All of the struggles, all of the friends and projects, all will have no meaning in the end. This society is a blackhole that eats everything, so my work for the project seemed pointless.
For the first time in my life I felt lost. So lost Sasha was really surprised to see me like that. I felt like I should not even create anything, no content, no projects. I was wondering why I even wake up in the morning. What is the point.
Sasha wasn’t anymore the Sasha I knew when we met, and that broke her too. Because she had to work and also seeing this shithole world, she also lost her way. That broke me so much to see. We were both broke I guess…
So that combined with these other problems with me and my family, put me in a nightmare mentally.
My only hope was Sasha at this point, and my relationship with her. Because I thought at least we have each other despite being broke, and we go through life together. We will find a way, is ok. Every time I felt like suffocating I thought about our relationship and that calmed me down.
Despite all this I managed to work in parallel on new TROM content and was seeking for a path out of this mental horror show. I was making some progress.
A month before the eclipse and when I was finally finding this path out of my head-problems, Sasha comes back from her Iceland trip and tells me she cheated on me and she wants to break up with me. No point going into any details since I wrote a big post here, but this was the hardest clump of sounds a humans has made and my ears and brain had to deal with. Some noise, traveling through the air, reaching my ears, and then my brain. That’s all it took to destroy me totally.
My life with Sasha was over, and so suddenly and unexpectedly, just one month before the eclipse. We already had plans together, we booked things, we … we had to go there together to see this unique event. My only hope in this world vanished in a few minutes.
A good friend told me that for him breaking up from his girlfriend of 7 years was a lot more difficult than dealing with his father’s death. And that stuck with me. From afar you may not think that I am dealing with the death of a loved one now, but in truth it may be a lot worse. When someone dies it is a closure. It is nothing you can do. If you get over it, then there is a path forward for you. Maybe. For me, with Sasha, is always that “hope” that maybe we can fix it. She is not dead, she is just not with me anymore, or does not want to be with me anymore, plus the cheating part…. But for me is like she died and I can talk to the dead. I can talk to her but never bring her back. That’s how it feels. And is so frustrating.
I am sure only those who’ve been through this understand how terrible it feels for me now. I feel like I have a cold that does not go away. I feel like this since she told me the bad news. Or you know when you are a kid and you do something really bad and realize it, and your parents are angry at you, and you have this awful feeling inside that is hard to describe….like even when you wake up in the morning and realize that you fucked it up…and feel like absolute shit. A mix of anxiety, sadness, being afraid or frustrated…and you want to make peace with all and yourself, so this is over, because is so hard to handle. Despite me not doing anything bad, I feel like this. I met with Sasha a few times since then, we talk, and idk how to find that “peace”. At times I wish she said “please forgive me and let’s try to fix this relationship because is such an important one”, at times I wonder if this would happen would it be a terrible idea and we could still not make it work!? Can I still trust Sasha? Can her solo-hiking life be compatible with any relationship? I do not know if there can ever be I and Sasha again. I wish it would…at least I wish we both tried and failed to make it work, and have a friendly closure.
In any case, for me to find happiness now is a lot of work. To be depressed it takes 1 second. One thought and I am down.
This was us when we were planning for the Eclipse in December:
How the fuck it went so horribly!?
So, needless to say, a month and a half before the eclipse I was in such a bad state mentally that I wanted to die. I honestly was ok with that. I felt like that’s it I want to go swim into the sea as far as I can until I get tired and then I will float, close my eyes, and wait and disappear. I had such intense burst of sadness and feeling lost that I felt like physically suffocating and needing to get “out” somewhere.
I saw a video with a guy who was attacked by a bear. He survived and was recording himself in the aftermath. Half of his face was missing, the shoulder was shredded, he was so shockingly damaged it was weird to see him alive and even able to record himself with bits and pieces of his body hanging like a movie prop. This is what happened to me emotionally that period of time. Emotionally savaged. Pieces missing, scars, suffering. Like that guy, I will never fully recover. There is no way. But I survived, still, and I need to deal with this now. Need to recover as much as possible. And is going to be hell for me.
Maybe I should also mention that my telescope broke just 2 weeks before the eclipse. And the motorhome did not pass the vehicle inspection BS just because the solar panels were not “certified” . I fixed the telescope a few days before we had to go for the meetup, but 1 day before the meetup I had to cancel my reservation since I could not legally take the motorhome.
My sister’s “boyfriend” also ditched her for the eclipse. The good part was that there was a free bed in her room so now I could stay there.
So you can imagine a few days before this amazing meetup both me and my sister were trapped in the blackhole of problems and stress. We were really fucked up mentally. My sister had to get the results from hospital to see if the carcinoma has spread, and that would be after this meetup.
Any-fucking-way, does everyone agree that I was anesthetized by problems? Good!
So we were unsure how my father is health wise and how to help my mom with this, my sister was waiting for some really important results from the hospital, I was a mess emotionally and now no motorhome. Everything was ruined for me.
I simply want to mention that we had 5 meetups so far. 4 of them were very problematic. Always some health issues or something bad happening. This last one simply blew them all out of the water.
BUT. But. BuT. but.
Friends are coming.
Aaron, Hanna and Joe came a few days earlier to Estartit where we live.
We spent some really good time together. At the pool, snorkeling, having fun conversations. We really needed some people around us to distract us from our problems.
I love this photo of Aaron with the rainbow reflected in the window. It fits his warm soul so well 🙂
We packed our stuff and decided to take my sister’s car. We barely fit but at least we had AC in the car. So hot in August in Spain. We had to drive 4-5h to reach Beceite. The campsite where we will all stay.
We are all there!
We were staying like this:
Like a community of awesome friends :). From top left and circle clock wise:
- Benji and Lenka
- Me, Georgi, Hanna and Aaron
- Guil, Noah, Alexio, Clara, Basti, Joe
- Roma, Natasha, and Roma’s parents
It was fabulous to all stay together in a camping like that. We would visit each other, like neighbors :). From the first day I forgot about all problems. I did not feel lost or alone anymore.
So cool to be in these mountany region, surrounded by nature.
Guil’s dog Betty was such a nice creature and we all loved her:
Lenka has a cool 4×4 converted into a living van basically. I loved to see that, I love these things:
I met Benji for the first time now, but for the past month or so we kept in touch closely. We had really interesting discussions and to me, Benji is such a discovery recently :). Like I feel so comfortable with this guy and I feel like we get along so fucking well. I think we could spend days talking and not get bored, maybe slightly hungry. We will continue to call each other but I hope he can permanently stay in Europe in the next few years so we can meet up again – more easily and faster.
I already met everyone else except for Basti, Noah, Hanna and Clara. Such nice people honestly! New faces, new minds, new people, new friends? 🙂
We went to a natural pool just 10 minutes away where the water was so fucking cold, but refreshing:
With a small waterfall:
We even tried to get Betty in but she did not like it 🙂
We got to see Aaron doing his joggling balls magic 🙂
And we mostly met at our place that had an amazing view:
We arrived on the 9th and the eclipse was on the 12th. Then we had to go back on the 14th some of us. So very few days. But we really made the best out of them.
Such wonderful discussions, we laughed a lot, had so much fun. We even went out to see the meteor shower and took some night photos with the Milky Way:
You could see the milkiness of the Milky Way with the naked eye even better than in these photos. So fucking cool!
The Eclipse!
Ok so what I realized 2 months before this eclipse is that we cannot see it from this camping. The totality was at 20:30 and from the campsite you can only see the sun till 20:20 or so, then disappeared behind a mountain. I spent some time to find a good location using this shadows maps that Guil sent me. Basically to see where around that area we can stay up to 21:00 to see the full eclipse. The eclipse would start at 19:30, full at 20:30, and be done around 21:00 when it was the sunset.
Found a field nearby on the maps, some 6 minutes away with the car. We drove there a day before to test it.
It was PERFECT. And nothing and no one around.
We started to test our gear:
We had binoculars, a small scope, and a big main telescope.
Here we are making filter holders for them:
That was the night before. Next day I tested the telescope one more time because the big telescope I decided would be used to record and stream the eclipse in real time for all to see.
You basically need some binoculars to see an eclipse. Sure, with a telescope everything is more clear, but is not a must. And I made a big mistake when I tested it…
Will tell you more, but now is the time. 18:00. We go to the location. Several cars, some 16 people.
I used my 50 Euros tablet on a tripod next to the telescope to stream the Sun. We had chairs. We had food and water. We were there to stay! 🙂
Alexio and Noah would play chess in Crabik’s shadow (Lenka’s car):
And so it started…
I can see the Moon starting to get in the way of the Sun. I press record and I get an error: No SD Card Available! FUUUUUCK!
When I tested the telescope that day I took the microSD card from the telescope camera and put it in my laptop to test stuff. And I forgot it. It was at the campsite. Fuck. We started to ask around heeey who has a microSD carddd???
Guil broke his phone case to try and get his. Eventually Joe had one in his phone. Gave it to me, I inserted it quickly into the camera, and pressed record. Ouuuh that was close!!! So much preparation and would have sucked to not be able to record.
In the meantime a Spanish car pulled close to us because they saw us many and with “professional” gear 🙂 so they thought likely this is a good spot to see the eclipse. Was a guy and his family likely. He spoke english. He is a chemistry teacher. So nice and friendly. They joined us.
Here is me taking a selfie with everyone from our crew 🙂
From here on we spent almost 1h to see the eclipse unfolding to totality.
Like a black hole eating cheese:
We were getting ready because at totality you can take your filters/googles off and observe it for a minute and a half directly.
Then here it was!
WOW! The black disc! So astonishing. And no photos can do any justice. To see the totality live through a telescope/binocular is totally different. We could see a GIANT red flair from the sun, it was soooo surreal!!
Even with the naked eye the sight was beyond this world:
The colors of the sky, the stars, that fucking black thing covering the sun!!
It was too short! I wish it was at least 10 minutes long. It was over. We applauded and screamed. Success!!! Such a unique event! Now we would observe a fabulous sunset of the Sun and Moon saying goodbye to each other.
And so it was going behind the trees…
So so wonderful….
But this was not all!
Same night grains of sand would rain down on earth from a far away comet, shining like shooting stars. We call that a meteor shower. It was the peak that day. Our plan: spend the night in this amazing place and look at the outer worlds!
I have no photos to properly explain to you how wonderful the next hours were. We had the telescope and binoculars, we spotted the Andromeda galaxy and discovered a few other nebulae. We could see a bazillion stars with the telescope and plenty of thousands with the naked eye.
To me this was even better than the eclipse. To spend time with your best friends, under the night clear sky, shout when you see a meteor, show others when you spot Andromeda, lay down on your back and talk about the Universe. It was like the best playground to me. So many people, so astonishing. THIS IS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN to me!
I almost cried at times thinking how STUPID, how STUPID that Sasha is not here. I wanted to be with her too, share this astonishing moment. We planned for this together and she was the one I wanted to share this moment with the most. Yes, there are other total solar eclipses you can chase, but some are more unique than others because of friends, location, etc..
We stay up to 3am or so. I could have stay my entire life there with these people. Sure, the night sky is always there, but to me sharing the experience with your closest humans beats staring alone into this abyss of wonder. At least that’s how I feel now emotionally.
One more day.
Next day, despite being kinda tired, we went for our last hike together to a nearby place that was really really wonderful. Here are some photos:
Same day Georgi got the best news she could get. The results of her cervix carcinoma came in. She was clear! They removed all of the damaged cells and could not find any carcinogenic ones at the edges. That was a MASSIVE RELIEF and a HUGE POSITIVE news for all of us. Wow. Considering the hell we all went through lately, this was a fantastic news!
We spent the last night together talking till 3am. I could have stayed all night. 🙂
Goodbye!
Time has come. A few of us had to leave a day earlier than the rest. Felt quite heavy to leave for me and I think or everyone else.
Is like your emotions boiling inside of you and you try your best to hold that steam in :D. We all had such an amazing time that I think it hurt a lot for everyone to leave. These are my best best friends on Earth, such interesting creatures, and it feels awful to only be able to spend a few days a year with them.If feels so unjust!
This is clearly the best meetup so far. So eventful, all worked great once we arrived there. All of the preparation was 100% worth it. From the campsite to the telescope setup. Here is a video I made about our meetup:
What now?
We are all back and I am a bit scared of the future. I am still messed up emotionally because of Sasha and I do not know how to let this 7 year old relationship go. Is like your parent, or best friend, or yah partner would just stop talking to you and move on to a different life. Or disappear. A sudden change you have to face without a person that was closest to you. It is a death for you, and it takes time to adjust. Some cannot. And I am unsure how I will move on.
I realized I have so many amazing friends. I think is rare to have so many wonderful people around you. This is my biggest help hands down. It is true tho that these friends have their own lives and are far away. But we also have the Internet and we can call. I created a Friends Friday Signal group chat and we try every friday to meet and talk, like friends.
But here’s the thing….life is short and a unique event, so we have to DO something to be happy. I saw everyone be so happy when we met, and I saw this before with other meetups. We should try to make these meetups more often, or do some radical changes. My wild idea is this: a bunch of us to buy a piece of land somewhere in Spain maybe, and make it almost like a motorhome parkup combined with a garden. And we have motorhomes and come there as often as we can. We have solar panels, a garden, water, a place for us to stay as long as we want, but have the freedom to take our motorhomes/vans and go explore other parts of the world. But have this as a home base. So that we can live more cheaply and happily. And that to allow us to volunteer, create events, content, etc..
This is my dream! I am partially there. I have a motorhome and I can go places. So many wonderful nature spots in Spain and elsewhere. I just need to learn to live on my own first. To be happy being alone and explore. To go meet friends and organize events. To do good in this world and be happy. I am inspired by some of the people I know who are alone and are fine with that. They are happy and ok. I want that too.
But for now I have to deal with living without Sasha, or if Sasha somehow changes radically the way she sees our relationship and think is worth giving it another try, we may give it one more chance. But I am unsure if this will work even if somehow we end up doing this. I wish this was 2 months ago, and we were together, and we did all of this wonderful meetup as a couple, as friends, and then decide if our lives are incompatible to split ways in a decent way. I wish….
I have several medical appointments the next weeks to figure out why I have abdominal pain. At least I have little to no such pain anymore so I am not stressed about it too much. Just the fact that I have to go to the hospital. I have to deal with the car and pass the vehicle inspection. Maybe I have to go to Romania a bit to help my parents. I also need to figure out how I will manage it all financially. It all sucks I don’t like any of it.
But I URGENTLY need to find my way in this world. Find happiness somehow. Find something that keeps me going. Without that I am like a zombie floating in an ocean. Is going to be so tough for me the next months, I hope I can manage it. I will for sure use this meetup and this article as a motivator, to remind myself that I have the most wonderful friends on earth, and perhaps the next months I should start to organize our next meetup!
Yes in the end all of it has no meaning. We will die. All will die. But these experiences that we just experienced, are worth for what they are. Momentary awesome feelings. The more you have of these, the less you may be concerned about the far away death of it all. Enjoy now! And so will try! If I can or not will see.
But regardless I had the most fun these past days. I needed that a lot! I felt happy again and forgot about most problems, be it just for a few days. I need more of this!
And guess what???
Last night, a bit triggered by Benji :), I looked into the next total solar eclipse more. I knew it was in Spain but this time very much into the South so I thought is not the best place to be in August 2027.
And then I looked closer and I realized no….I’ve been here with the motorhome before and there are mountains around there too. You know what else? This eclipse will last almost twice as long as the one we just saw. THAT’S IT! I go there no matter what!
Already told my friends about it and some were on board right away. I even found an amazing campsite in the middle of a natural reserve, surrounded by mountains, trees, rivers and natural pools. I am contacting the campsite and reserve a spot for me as soon as possible. This made me so happy. I want the opposite of swimming till I cannot anymore and float until I sink, I want now to be happy and chase these events because they are the most amazing on Earth. Alone or not, I will go. But I bet I won’t be alone.
So yah, I was so excited last night I could barely sleep :). And that’s great! At least I have something amazing to look forward for the next year, and in the meantime I will try to keep myself afloat and do more for TROM and myself. I want to go this winter in that area in Spain anyway and “test the waters”. Yuhuuuu!!!
This should give me enough to keep myself okeish for some time now.
Discover The Sun for Everyone with Shadowmap: your global 3D map for sunpath visualization, shadow analysis and solar planning for homes and projects.
app.shadowmap.org
4Robato
in reply to TROM • • •