Bucharest was pretty dreadful, but I’ve had worse. Naples comes to mind – and that hellhole Andorra la Vella. Or that time in Los Angeles, when I drove from UCLA to Orange County… Nevertheless, I won’t be buying property in Bucharest soon or even investing in a 10-ride metro card. In many ways Bucharest is like a port town, but without the port. People arrive by plane and train, then promptly flee for more agreeable destinations.
I’ll grudgingly admit that there are worthwhile things to see here, but having visited every notable patch of grass in Romania, I can say with complete authority that anything and everything in Bucharest exists in much better form and surroundings at several other places in the country. If you’ve only got four days, fine, stay in Bucharest, if not, you’re doing yourself a disservice by lingering here.
Though not nearly as demoralizing as driving in Bucharest – which has unbelievably gotten worse in the past three years – five days on foot in Bucharest could break the patience and love of Gandhi himself. Hell, just sitting on a street corner can drain the hardest man’s will to live. The incessant car horns, the dense pollution, people screaming at each other, half-dead dogs and filth… Vlad Tepeş wouldn’t last 10 seconds in modern Bucharest. The first time someone drove by with a cigarette in one hand and a mobile phone in the other, splashing him with a totally avoidable puddle, he’d completely lose his shit. If only skewering wrongdoers from asshole to neck was still legal, people would probably have better manners around here.Cops are egomaniacal assholes and drivers are worse. I saw a traffic cop and a driver get into an absurd fight over a simple miscommunication, during which the driver nearly ran the cop over with distain while trying to move on. I didn’t know who to root for. I quietly wished that a freak lightning bolt would flash out of the clear blue sky and slay them both. Meanwhile, other drivers being delayed by nearly 10 life-threatening seconds displayed their displeasure with horn blasts that tickled seismometers in Mongolia.
On a positive note, general attitude, respect and courtesy has slightly improved in Bucharest since I was last here. Though, again, this may have everything to do with me interacting mostly with pedestrians and not drivers, 90% of whom deserve nothing less than instant death or at least an indulgent stab in the neck from a cattle prod.
Furthermore, with a few notable exceptions, the hostel situation here is surprisingly good – the old standbys are still going strong and continue to be likeable, while new contenders are attractive and run with traveler interest in mind, rather than aspiring to extract the maximum amount of money from each possible guest.
Restaurants too were better than expected, though the instant, across-the-board 100% price increase since EU membership for the exact same food was a little off-putting.
There’s a lot of “new money” swaggering around town. Shameless, sickening, unintentionally comical displays of wealth and/or feigned wealth are everywhere. Designer sunglasses, leather pants, ridiculous hooker boots, Dolce and Gabbana-designed mobile phones, official, tricked-out “50 Cent” brand jeans, … These people can’t afford to order more than a coffee in the swanky restaurants they pompously frequent after paying 150 euros for the red shoes they saw on Italian MTV (on a re-run from four years ago).
People habitually buy cars more expensive than their houses and peel out from every green light like pole position hangs in the balance. Stereos boom, engines rev, teenaged boys covered in acne caused by over-used hair gel yell insults out the windows of souped-up Peugeots at people responsibly taking public transport. Though drivers often race from stoplight to stoplight at 90KPH, walkers paradoxically arrive at their destinations faster than cars, due to constant traffic jams. The irony, of course, is lost on most drivers, who drive for an hour to get home, only to eat a big plate of plain mamaliga (polenta), which is all they can afford after filling up the gas tank.
I was the benefactor of several generous locals in Bucharest. Young Romanians are quite friendly, smart and anxious to change how foreigners see their country. Sadly, Romanians over 35 are still largely selfish, ignorant and boorish. Bucharest has the best and the worst of these types. People that you want to hug, like the young man that first contacted me through this blog, who led me around the city providing arresting commentary and little known history for a full nine hours (and I very nearly had to physically subdue him so I could buy him lunch!). There’s also people that you want to flog with a with a donkey whip, like the tour guide at the Palace of Parliament who treated me like a dangerous beggar even though I only had one stinking fact to check, immediately getting on her mobile phone so as to more effectively ignore me. Never ever snub a travel writer, bitch. You will be mentioned by name during carefully worded retribution in the book for all to read for years to come.
Miraculously, some of the millions of EU euros funneled into Romania were used to actually produce helpful signs around Bucharest rather than being used to pay for new cars and indoor pools at certain politicians’ countryside homes. When I was last here, I drove in circles for an eternity trying to find totally unsigned central and critical places like the main train station. Yet still, overall signage is pathetically inadequate. Each location of McDonald’s has more signs pointing the way to the door than the international airport. Street name signs are often microscopic or completely absent, along with door numbers which disappear for blocks at a time. Even employees at businesses do not know their own addresses. It would be hilarious if it weren’t endlessly maddening.
Despite stalking the streets of Bucharest holding a LP guidebook with my name and beautiful, beautiful face inside, I got very little respect. You’ve never seen a collective group of people that so desperately do not want customers. One tourist office boss veritably argued with me about why they shouldn’t be in the guidebook. In fact, they were already in the guidebook, but they most certainly won’t be in the next one. Certainly this has something to do with employees despising the owners, but hey, I’ve got my own problems so spare me the collateral damage of your hateful life, OK?
A Canadian journalism student that shadowed me for a day was aghast at how rude some people were to me, even as I vainly tried to collect just a little information so as to make their place of business wildly successful with western visitors. I was accustomed to this, having just gone through this veritable spanking machine of insult-and-injury just two years ago. I think her aspirations for guidebook writing have been safely squashed.
This was a far cry from guidebook research in Tuscany, where hoteliers, restaurateurs and the like can spot a guidebook writer from blocks away, meet you in the street and verily carry you into their establishments, offering coffee, their grandmother’s handmade ravioli, Brunello wine and their first-born daughter’s hand in marriage. Despite the fact that I usually don’t carry a notebook, sleeve of maps or any other paraphernalia (just an easily hidden Palm Pilot), their ability to spot me coming was uncanny. I sometimes imagined that each town stationed a young boy at the outskirts and, upon seeing a lone, exhausted-looking, unwashed foreigner drive by in a rental car (all telltale signs of a guidebook writer), he would race to the church to ring the special Lonely Planet bell.
An Irish guy that I bumped into in a restaurant who claimed to live in Bucharest for six years, but barely spoke any Romanian, felt I was not qualified to write the book because I had not lived there for six years like he had and went on to prove his point with a pop quiz about where to buy the best steak in town and how to take a taxi to a popular restaurant. My answer that simply saying the restaurant name to the driver – the restaurant in question is a local institution – was deemed ridiculously insufficient. It was about this point that I realized he’d probably been sent to live in Romania, rather than leaving Ireland voluntarily.
In any case, Bucharest was a hard and frustrating nut to crack, but I cracked that mother and I’ll never be lost in the city center again. I’ll be back here for clean-up research in July, at which time I’m setting aside a few hours to take the Palace of Parliament tour (again) so I can torment that fucking guide with 3,205 questions about trivial minutia and publicly muse about who her father had to bribe to get her that job.
My wife and I have been looking for places where our doleful gringo dollar might go farther and that we thought this corner of the world held promise.
After reading yet another one of your well-written missives, the promise here might be that this is not the destination of our desires.
But I think you are missing a true moneymaking opportunity.
I would pay cash money for your “guidebook writer” outfit that would effectuate free glasses of Brunello and assorted culinary perquisites.
I have faked meal-rating note taking in restaurants, hoping for a freebie, only to have the proprietor ask me to pay the damn check and avail the table to a better tipper.
Dear lord, I thought I was the only one that hated Naples. I kicked a cat, stepped over some trash, grabbed a slice of pizza to go (a girl’s gotta eat) and was out of there.
actully bucharest and napels have a lot in commune, that was my feeling when i was in naples(i’m romanian). If you woudl swith the locals form one to another they would adapt in the blink of an eye.
Aaaand this post just made my day. The more you complain about Bucharest, the more I want to go and see for myself–I love a good disaster.
I don’t know, in a few short hours, Naples lived up to Leif’s comments on the city.
Yet, there are moments I want to experience the insanity again just to verify it wasn’t some weird dream.
Bucharest sounds… like a challenge… Maybe one day… passing through… at high speed… ;-)
All of you, Naples haters: Naples might be going through a rough patch in this moment, but it is the most beautiful city in the world. Comparing it to Bucharest makes me laugh, with its couple hundred years of history.
Naples has the most beautiful Gulf in the world, it is much older than Rome, its was the capital of the only part of Italy that was united for centuries before the French speaking ignorant savoy kings conquered it. They only succeeded because King Francesco II did not want any more bloodshed. Its last stronghold could have lasted forever, Gaeta, home of great beauties and incidentally my hometown.
Have you seen Capodimonte? Margellina? Santa Lucia? The paintings of Caravaggio? Its wonderful churches?
After you do that, talk ill of Naples, if you dare.
Leif I know where you are. I have been there before. I hope your ass aches as mine did.
Wow. You and Anthony Bourdain both love Bucharest ;). So, despite all the locals might think, this isn’t the most beautiful place on earth, eh? :P
I have to wonder if visiting Bucharest for a couple of days is insane, then what being born and living 33 years in it might be?…
I gave up long ago to any hope that I’ll see this city – my city – transforming itself back to the Little Paris it was 70 years ago… I even am amazed that a sane tourist would want to visit it by foot.
High-speed trains are the best way to see Bucharest. Hopefully directed towards the West.
ps. and the best steak you can find in Bucharest is, of course, at Taverna Sarbului, near the Casa Scanteii building. Yup.
Hahahahha.. Sad but so true. I live in Buc for some 25 years but I still enjoyed your post:)
Well.. just don’t loose your patience and come back for more ..
I loved your review about Bucharest! It’s perfect! But Romania is not all about Bucharest! so, when you come in July, please visit some other cities, too! all the best and have a nice stay in july!
Thanks for the comments all. Too rushed to write proper replies. Chisinau awaits my detailed attention.
Hi to all my new Bucharest readers.
Most of these facts are an unhappy (unfortunately long) phase of the post communist development in Romania. There are lots of people who became filthy rich overnight by speculating one chance or another, and unfortunately they became role models for the rest. Main characteristic of such people is GREED and has really no borders. You can see outrageous facts in Romania, and the trick is that no authority will do anything about. Most of the time these people ARE the authorities.
While being positioned at the other end of the social value scale, in the past 19 years a lot of intellectuals have fled from Romania to the west, in order to escape the company of these scumbags (or “manelisti cocalari” in Romanian language). This happened also during the time of the Iron Curtain, only at that time you were running of the commies.
After all, what you have encountered here it’s nothing else but a matter of very poor mentality, (I call it the potato mentality) and the point is that the old generations cannot transmit to new ones anything else beside that. Therefore you have seen here ridiculous displays of wealth (even this was not real wealth) Changes will hopefully take place, as soon as some older generations will disappear, but only gradually, I think for the next 30-40 years.
Regarding the tourism agency owners who did not wanted to cooperate, forget about it, nowadays everybody is interested to make big (fast) money out of real-estate speculations, and no-one has really the interest for anything else. As far as I understood your guide-book is a way of long term business development, and will not return any income for the next two months… :-) Therefore, why shall they bother…?
excellent piece. I still want to go to Bucharest but at least we know your not taking freebies! :)
Naples is skanky. Bet there’s more Romanians there than in Bucharest.
Chisinau – Now thats a challenge!! Come back to Bucharest, stay here 1 day and then try to see Brasov, Sighisoara, Sibiu, Cluj:)
You will find different people and a different world. A beautiful world..
granted, bucharest is, to an extent, everything that you say it is. and, yes, it doesn’t take more than 2 days to actually see all there is to see in a shitty and off-putting town like ours.
but there’s some good in it as well, and some very small oases of calm and civilization.
thank you, come again :D
If you’re up for a beer in Bucharest after your travels, drop me a line.
ha ha I like your writing – I’ve been living in Bucharest for 2 years now and have a love it/hate it relationship. Yes.. the traffic’s terrible … people are rude…. it feels like I’ve entered a catwalk fashion show every time I enter my local coffee shop to grab a latte. But…. if you ever spend any time here and get to know Romanians you’ll see that once they grow to trust you (which is a big step) they will invite you into their home and lavish you with such huge amounts of delicious food and hopsitality that you won’t want to leave. Also – try looking up when you’re walking around – there are some beautiful old buildings that have remained intact despite the communist years.
I totaly disagree!
Bucharest is the place to be.
but it is not the place for people with tourist attitude.
In your visit try to be simple and ordinary…
Like you are in London or Paris…
Bucharest is not the capital of one more BANANIA…
They have culture and pride the people of Bucharest, even if some times they are rude like the people in New York in Rome in Barcelona…
Please try to be there like Bucharest be your home town and you have hell a lot to see
21 museums
communist era buildings
parks
lakes
and many many more
have a nice day all
PS
i was working in Bucharest for 11 years as expat so I know..
I shouldn’t have read this. made me feel as bad as 9 months ago when I left the darn place. after living there for 13 years. and helplessly watching its decay. and getting kicked in the ass for each and every time I tried to ( TRIED TO ) talk some civic sense into anyone – be it authorities, press or the plain urban dweller.
my say? keep the place, kill the people. and Leif, readers commenting here actually do have a point – go see the surroundings, poor old Bucharest is a bit more than Magheru and Herastrau. try Sintesti, Glina, Vitan. or maybe take a walk even closer – Ferentari and Rahova. beautiful places. leave your watch and wallet at home though.
All that has been said is true….But….Can you imagine what I , a Bucharest-born-raised-educated guy feel like when I travel to the west , or actually , pretty much any place excluding the ex-communist ,3rd world countries? I bet you can’t , and that’s the thing that makes me proud living in this city. Being used with this kind of life , I don’t take for granted what I see and explore in civilized ,rich countries , something that Romania will attempt to be in probably the next 50 years. Cheers!
It’s strange to see your city through the eyes of a foreigner. I guess you’re pretty much right. BUT, let’s not miss Bucharest for Romania. There are nice places to go, but it’s a difficult task to find out about them. You might give it a try sometimes…
A Romanian reader.
OK, I regret nothing that i wrote above, but I’ve just received a report that three Buch people kindly helped a friend of mine as she limped out to the airport with too much luggage the other day, including one guy that *gave* her a bus ticket, because the ticket kiosk had closed for the night. Kudos to these and all the younger people of Bucharest that are bringing a more helpful, generous light to the big, bad city.
Heh, your post was catchy and fun, even if you probably came across with the worse things about Bucharest.
Well, not the worse (trust me), but you were unfortunate enough not seeing the good, yet little things.
Good luck on your future visit, hope your review will be better and you’ll really enjoy Bucharest. :)
Hi
Even if it does sting , you’re right about most of the things mentioned above , but as you can find in every country, Bucharest has good and bad parts. To be honest , I wouldn’t recommend to any of my friends to visit Bucharest, unless they are interested in it’s history. But the rest of the country has magic and beauty. Just need a backpack , time and good will to discover it.
Cheers from Prague, Czech Republic
Actually, if you only have 4 days in Romania, then do NOT stay in Bucharest… immediately board the nearest train for Brasov (and spend your time there before being forced back to Bucuresti just to catch your flight onward).
I am amazed by the way you compare this town to Naples and as a port town, you “promptly flee for more agreable destinations”, because I feel exactly the opposite.
Those are really my favorite towns: Istanbul, Naples, Marseille, Barcelona, wow! What a shock. So much life, so many contrasts. Even Cork in Ireland is worth the stay.
Come to Romania people! you are missing a lot. We shall take care to erase bucuresti from Romania’s map. I would nuke it in a blink of an eye.