Bucharest Diaries

Well, it feels as if it's been a long time already but I've only been in Bucharest for two days. I've been working, eaten a good amount of mashed potatoes, something which makes me feel right at home, and explored the city on foot.  I'm staying right in the middle in Sector 1, which is a lot like E1 in London, only a bit more decomposed and with lots more traffic.  

What's it like here?  Take the nice old bits of Paris and compress until as big as the middle of Manchester. Do that about three times over. Compress a bit more. Let them fade gracefully for a few decades. Now take all of the traffic from Euston and multiply by 10. Stir in gently. Add some trolleybuses. Now put a 200 year old Gipsy lady on every 5th street corner selling things in small boxes. Take all of the clothes from all of the most fashionable fashion shows and dress the population. make sure everyone is holding a cheese pasty.

What's it like after dark? Well, you need an old leather jacket and to be a bit streetwise.  In this area at least, you will get followed about by pimps offering ladies of the night.  You have to say no three times at least and then they bugger off and annoy someone else. Transylvania really is I think a lot nicer than the capital in many ways, although I've only seen a small part of it. There are very few food shops, similar in that way to much of Yorkshire, or at least any town that ends in 'field', since the 'dales' all seem to have expensive bakeries.  A sweeping generalisation? This is what happens in hotel rooms when you drink beer in your underpants.

 Having not flown for 12 years, going through Luton truly was a pain in the arse, with it taking 5 odd hours just to get from the East End to be taxiing out on to the foggy tarmac, including a 2 hour wait, and some geeezer with a machine gun asking what I do for a living and saying 'well done' when I told him .  In 5 hours out from London I would normally be in Cologne munching on a  Metwust and mustard from Mr Bocks saussage stand underneath platform two.  Back at the end of the week.