The edition for business builders, co-organised with Maria & Florin's „Ideas Chat!" — Cișmigiu, no microphones, no sales.
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I first met Endi Ungureanu at the Coworking Spaces Night, the first edition, on an evening in June. He spoke without a microphone, as he usually does, about how „Tura de duminică" — the Sunday Walk — had begun in December 2024, with a short LinkedIn post: „anyone heading out tomorrow for a Herăstrău walk — walking, not running?" — and about the two people who showed up that morning, Emil and Andy. „It was zero degrees. Emil had come to run, because he thought we'd be running, but he walked — walked at a slightly brisker pace..." Behind the mild self-deprecation, Endi was saying something more serious: that the secret of Radu Restivan, founder of the 321sport community, isn't that he gathers hundreds of people in Herăstrău every Tuesday morning, but that „he's been doing this for ten years, every Tuesday." Constancy, not inspiration. And that a rule learned early — „we don't do sales" — makes the difference between a community that grows through pressure and one that grows through what it gives off: calm and empathy. „The walk is always there for you."
A year and a half later, the idea has been adopted by five parks in Bucharest (Herăstrău, IOR, Tineretului, Lacul Morii, Cotroceni) and six other Romanian cities (Cluj, Constanța, Craiova, Satu Mare, Timișoara, Iași). Aggregated, that means 2,500 followers on LinkedIn, almost 5,000 on Instagram, around 1,200 inside a constellation of twenty WhatsApp groups organised by city. It means that, Sunday after Sunday, somewhere in Romania, people walk together with the simple intention of moving and getting to know the person next to them.
On 20 June, though, it was a Saturday. And not Herăstrău — Cișmigiu.
Cișmigiu, 09:45
The corner entrance — Bulevardul Regina Elisabeta, opposite Bucharest City Hall — is one of those that wraps you, in two minutes, into the dense shade of the centuries-old lindens and oaks of the park. The sun was already high, the weather pleasant and quite warm even early in the morning, but Cișmigiu keeps its own temperature: three or four degrees lower than the boulevard beyond the fence.
On the pavement in front of the wrought-iron gate, a group noticeably larger than you'd expect for an ordinary walk was forming gradually — over fifty people by 10:00 — with all the signs of an urban weekend gathering: light backpacks, tote bags, baseball caps, sandals, sneakers, a water bottle in one hand. A small fluffy white dog circled among the legs with the gentleness only Bucharest parks in June produce. A municipal sweeper, in a fluorescent vest, quietly went about his alley. Bucharest, normal.
This walk was different, and you could see it from the first greetings. Unlike the regular Sunday walks, this one had a theme: TURA x Ideas Chat! — a format launched by Maria and Florin, founders of the podcast „Ideas Chat!", co-organised with Endi. Ideas Chat! is a series of conversations with Romanian entrepreneurs who are, right now, building the microcosm of the country's economy. The project has over one hundred and fifty interviews behind it; Maria and Florin had noticed a pattern — „even though they're at different stages, in different industries, with different starting points, after 150+ entrepreneurs interviewed, the lessons are similar." The premise was simple: to bring want-entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs together in a relaxed format. Those who want to start, walking next to those who already know the Romanian economy and tax code from the inside.
At 09:45, the group was gathering in that lightly expectant quiet of morning events — nobody speaking loudly yet, everyone glancing at what the others were doing, introductions made sideways, hands swapped.
Endi was there, with his usual line — „walking, not running" — half a joke, half an instruction, with a coffee thermos in one hand and paper cups in the other, which he handed out to anyone who wanted one. In his orange t-shirt, surrounded by a compact circle of people listening through sunglasses and caps, he was running simultaneously the ritual of the coffee and the conversational agenda of the walk. Maria and Florin from Ideas Chat! were beside him. The three of them would lead the Walk together.
Florin had a tripod with a phone mounted on top — Ideas Chat! is a podcast, so filming is part of the job — and Maria, in a cream linen dress with a flounce, was smiling continuously. It's a detail that sounds unimportant but isn't: in an industry where founders present themselves defensively (arms crossed, business face), Maria stands open, cheerful, optimistic. And that sets the tone.
The philosophy that doesn't sell
To understand why TURA x Ideas Chat! matters, you have to go back to what Endi said at Cowo about what works — and what doesn't — in building a community: „People are tired of messages like only two hours left, only five minutes left, now, if not now then never. From the very beginning we've talked about the walk as the place that is there for you, like a friend, whenever you need it."
That is the exact opposite of the environment most want-entrepreneurs inhabit: pitch decks, demo days, „last chance to register", pressure tactics. The walk takes a group of people who, by the nature of being „pre-founders", live with a particular loneliness (global data shows one in six people feel lonely; in entrepreneurship the figure is heavier), and makes them walk, for two hours, through a park, next to people who have already crossed the dust of the first year.
It isn't networking. It's something older. It's village.
Endi doesn't shy away from saying so: „I associate the walk very much with the village, with that village life where people knew each other." He grew up in a village in Olt county, near Slatina, until he was seven — „I was Ilie al Valerichii's boy, and if anything was heard there, you knew right away who it was about." In Bucharest, after his first year of university, he rediscovered that „you feel truly alone. There's a great need to know people."
Three rounds of the park
At 10:00, the group set off. Cișmigiu, in the morning, is a park that helps you walk: the main alleys are wide enough to be walked in pairs or triplets without blocking runners, the trees give almost continuous shade, the lake opens up the perspective every few hundred metres.
Along the way, the group spread out into a long line. This always happens on a walk that works — the conversation fragments into pairs walking at the same pace, talking about the same thing, then changing partners at the next bend. Someone who heard a word they want to carry forward shifts two spots ahead. Endi walks now at the front, now at the back. Maria and Florin too. Nobody „moderates". Nobody has a microphone.
At one point, in the open space toward the northern edge of the park, the group stopped for a few minutes. The perspective there opens toward the boulevard façade, beyond the linden that marks one of the entrances — a moment in which, without it being scheduled, people drew into a quiet semicircle and looked. It's the kind of pause only an agenda-less walk affords.
Toward the end, the sun rose higher and the shade became more precious. The group did three rounds of the park — those who stayed to the end. Some people did only one or two; they left quietly, because that is another principle of the Walk: „if you can come back a year from now, when your schedule allows, that's perfectly fine." The Walk waits for you. Not the other way around.
At the end, the group photo. Those who stayed. Endi in the middle, with his people, with Maria and Florin, with those who committed to three rounds. Fifty-something people, faces warmed by the sun, a few hands raised, two or three peace signs. A group photo doesn't look like a group photo unless the group, after two hours together, has already become something other than it was at 09:45.
Coda — Pâine Goală, 12:00
A part of the group then walked to Pâine Goală — a café a few hundred metres from the park, with a name (*„Plain Bread"*) that functions almost as a declaration of intent for what comes next.
The space has a loft aesthetic — framed photographs on the walls, red metal chairs, wooden bistro tables, natural light coming in through the wide windows. People gathered in clusters, many still with their backpacks on, a sign that nobody had settled in yet; the conversations rose on tip-toe, shifted, re-arranged. There, sheltered from the sun, the conversations that had begun on the alley continued — „people going through similar situations or with similar needs can move through challenges more easily when they speak the same language", as the organisers had written on the invitation.
That is probably the most honest result to report: TURA x Ideas Chat! doesn't solve entrepreneurial loneliness in one morning. But it plants something. It lets you hear, without an agenda, voices that have been through what you want to go through. In 2026 — in a market saturated with coaching, paid mentorship and „cohort-based" accelerators — that is unexpected.
And if you follow the instruction from the start — „walking, not running" — that's enough.
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Photo gallery
„Tura de duminică" — the Sunday Walk — is an initiative launched by Endi Ungureanu in December 2024. It takes place simultaneously in five Bucharest parks (Herăstrău, IOR, Tineretului, Lacul Morii, Cotroceni) and six other Romanian cities. „Ideas Chat!" is a podcast about Romanian entrepreneurs, founded by Maria and Florin, with over 150 episodes.
