Blog of Romania

[read part one]

In the park, under the moonlight
No matter how clearly you can see the moon and how much light there is in the park, it’s not recommended to take a walk after 9 PM in Cismigiu park, especially in autumn. And if you’re unlucky enough to sit down on a bench, you’ve got a good chance to get asked for the time and end up without your wallet and with a broken nose.

‘The keys to the apartment’ are an item the individuals huffing paint and sleeping in the bushes always posses.

The very historical center
A bit further, in the Lipscani area, low-class joints find customers alongside trendy restaurants. Between a lounge and a flashy shop you can find a shoemaker or a glasses repair shop. You wonder who still goes there, where they get their customers. You remember that the buildings are too old for a high rent. Otherwise you can’t explain how come manele blare from the first or second storey of a building that, half a century ago, would’ve taken your breath away.

Among the garbage-filled trenches and cobblestoned streets, behind almost broken down doors, you can’t help noticing the bags full of garbage or the underwear hung out to dry. Next door, a restaurant. A bit further, a tailor’s shop with a communist look and smelling of mothballs. In the display windows, the latest collection of some foreign designer sits alongside a wedding dress whose model failed twenty or so years ago, and, even further, a couple of pairs of cheap shoes draw the attention of the drunkards in the joint across the street.

Two streets further, three policemen get out from behind their thermally insulated windows. Above the doors there’s an inscription saying ‘Police of the Historical Centre’. A few meters from them, a guy throws a garbage bag while swearing at his children, and a couple of steps to his left five individuals are having a heated argument. ‘Safety and trust’ [the motto of the Romanian police]. I start laughing. 100 feet further - Club Hermes, in a crumbling building, ‘I Love Bucharest’ says one of the walls. Though I should be seeing in sepia, the colors of the garbage make my eyes water.

Green. Balconies.
And yet, on the streets parallel with Dacia Boulevard, you can find green and clean places. A four-stories building catches my eye. Square and grey, with flowers in the windows. I can’t believe it. I thought things like this didn’t exist anymore. Quiet. The cars are either parked, either stopped.

On Stirbei, close to the Palace Hall, at the ground floor of a building raised between the wars, a huge neon sign says ‘Guitar Shop’. However, it is in good taste. I tell myself that I would like to live there. Afterwards, I realize I’m on the bus and that it’s been ten minutes since I’e been admiring the building.

A little bit of Calinescu
With some exceptions, a lot of areas of the city look like the slums described in the novels of Calinescu. Dirty and grey. Mos Costache and Aglae make their way around corners and you feel like they’ll greet you any minute. The Bucharest of Eliade is beautiful, calm and tranquil. The Bucharest of Videanu often looks like a page out of Calinescu: dirty and slimy.

At Armeneasca, while trying to step on a stone in the middle of a gutter, I slip and turn my green pants brown. Two steps more and the tip of my shoe slips into water up till the laces.

And a bit of Eliade
And yet, Bucharest is a beautiful city. Just partly, it’s true, but beautiful. Kitschy, yet beautiful. Grey, yet colorful. Crowded, yet monotonous. Busy, yet peaceful. I can only be glad I haven’t visited the neighborhoods of Rahova and Ferentari. Otherwise, I could go on forever.

Original post: here. (RO)
Alex is 23 and has been living in Bucharest for two years.