Sunday, September 26, 2010

A different perspective of Bucharest

Despite my best intentions of coupling several administrative efforts (getting the Dutch MVV visa and other "required" paperwork) with participating to a Romanian R&D and Diaspora conference, obviously things did not worked out that (wonderful) way. Thus, I had to come back for the latter now, at the end of September; Still, I enjoyed it much more than my previous Romanian interlude. To be concise three reasons stand out: 1. weather (25 C and SUN felt heavenly after the stuff we get in the Netherlands) 2. beautiful women ("sweet Bucharest girls", as they are called in a famous Romanian song, all over the place, and despite not being in the market for such things, it just feels good to benefit from such geographic spillovers and 3.decently cheap and good food.) After putting together this ranking, i realized that basically I sound like a typical foreigner coming to Romania to stroll the country, get laid and eat well despite being bold and fat (as the majority of those tourists, later husbands --marriage tourism is quite large, I suppose-- are). Thank good that i don't fit at least from that perspective, girls still score me as 25-26 yrs of age, which always is flattering.:)) But getting back to the point, it was much nicer than before..and that because of one thing: i stopped carrying about it. And that's sad but relieving at the same time: on one side you kind of give up on the same stereotypes and deficiencies (complaints from all over the place --mostly justified but seldom just grievances for the sake of it) and take it as it is, just like being in Uganda or something like it. It is a bit cruel, but that's the reality. With all the crisis and the problems people have there it is hard to disconnect. But for a hybrid outsider like myself, it has just became easier. the whole big gloomy pictures (salary cuts, corruption, scandals, politicians that switch sides and fortunes all the time, protests, beggars, wandering dogs, gypsies and who-knows-what) they all blur away in a nice sunny late September in one of the central parks in Bucharest (Cismigiu).

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