It all started with an entry on one of the FB groups I follow from my friend Philipp, asking for possible locations to shoot at in Budapest. Being a fellow Automotive photographer I did help him by sending over some…what came after is basically going to be one of the best adventures I had this year.

After changing messages after message Philip asked me if’d like to join them, since after arrival to Budapest they have had a nice restaurant booked and I should be joining them to accompany the shooting.  I decided to say yes, cuz hey a nice restaurant and meeting up with a great photog friend could not be resisted right? 🙂

When I arrived he started with the following, that still echoes in my mind… “There is a small problem, the rest of the team is tired and they already drank alcohol so it would be only you and me taking the AMG GT C and the G500 4×4 squared to shoot” Yeah, right how terrible news is that? 🙂 no wonder than I was shocked. We went with my car to the Ritz Hotel (those who don’t know one of the most fancy hotels in Budapest) to pick up the two cars…getting the keys, giving the VW CC’s key to the  valet was kinda awkward moment, but than sitting in the GT C firing it up and getting the roof down, seeing the neon Green G500 in the mirror changed my mood rapidly from “sh1t his is awkward” to “damn, all eyez on us”.

We headed to an abandoned big storage building we decided to aim for, and we managed to sneak in. This was the place where we’ve been planning some light-painting and other stuff. We have been interrupted by young couples and by other guys who were wondering around but luckily we managed to pull out 1-2 nice shots…

…before 4-5 police cars came in and started to ask us to immediately pack our stuff and head outside where there are other police colleagues waiting for us…at this point I must admit I was quite scared what comes next with two guys, two really expensive cars and with no knowledge about the whereabouts of our cars with a German licence plate + having no idea about what the cops will want from us.

Well, it did not take long to find out, as they explained they are explicitly hunting that place occasionally as they have to because of the building being not that safe + lots of illegal racers visiting. After all hereby I’d like to thank to them that they were acting really nice and that they let us go with only a “warning”.

After this we got so “pumped up” we decided to hit the road again into the night and visit my second proposal, an old factory district. As we arrived we parked the cars to take a look around when we saw a place where people were still working with some sort of metal melting in an old hall. Both of us being a photog we looked on each others and almost immediately said “This would be a nice place to shot at”. We started to continue to look around and found an old man cleaning his car in front of the factory, we said “Hi” and he responded plus asked if we know what kind of work is being done there…that’s it, this was the moment I pulled Philipp away and told him I’ll give that old guy a little money and ask if we can get in. So I did…the old man looked at the money and immediately started to shout inside: “Open up the gates, someone will come to photo-shoot a car!”

After we’ve finished, we went back to the hotel. I had to exchange the keys to the VW’s and left with full of excitement and the memories of this almost surrealistic adventure.

If you’d like to see more about the GTspiritTour that basically was the trigger for the whole thing, you can read more here: http://www.gtspirittour.com/

Special thanks goes to my friend Philipp and Des for trusting me.