Sunday 19 February 2012

The strange charm of dereliction

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This completely irresponsible article was first published in the Bucharest Daily News in November 2005.

"Bucharest has a lot to do in order to become a city worthy of the status of a European capital.' This headmasterly admonishment was made by Jonathan Scheele, the soft-spoken British civil servant who heads the European Commission Delegation in Romania, at last week's "Investment Opportunities in Bucharest" conference.


Am I alone in dreading the day when Bucharest becomes worthy of the status of a European capital? To my mind it's the nicest European capital because it is unworthy of Mr Scheele's esteem. What other capital in Europe is nearly so unself-conscious, so unlike the rest, so full of energy and shadows and yes so un-European, despite the spawning malls, hypermarkets, highly paid foreign consultants and other horrors of democracy? I know the streets become unfordable rivers when it rains. I know I should be pleased when the potholes and the broken pavements are renewed with EU pre-accession funding but I am not. Irresponsibly I am elated by a beauty I find in the dereliction and have been since my first visit in 1990.

The wooden Ottoman Bucharest of 1830 where the men wore turbans and kaftans was rebuilt in the late nineteenth century in stucco and brick, its architects paying homage to Paris and an imaginary Orient at the same time. Later came Art Deco buildings that are unequalled anywhere in Europe. Bucharest was up to the minute in architectural terms before the war and ahead of for example Paris herself. But the faux-French surface of Carol I's Bucharest has been badly cracked over the last sixty years.




Nothing in this city apart from a score of churches is old but those parts that escaped the 1980s rebuilding feel more than half as old as time. I haven't passed the Museum of Archaeology for a couple of years but then behind its padlocked iron gates half-lost amid tall grass stood a long row of Roman tombs and statues, protected from the rain by a rotting eave. It seemed to me whenever I passed as if the Museum itself were becoming an archeological object and I were the archeologist stumbling across it for the first time.

The decrepit fin de siecle villas and filthy Art Deco masterpieces are becoming one by one a real estate broker's dream of avarice as they are painted and varnished to look the way they originally looked. But for me at least the ramshackle way the streets look now, especially under a melancholy November sky, has a greater beauty than when they are new and shiny.

The old town when I moved there five years ago was not a museum but a slum and the one part of Bucharest where you felt you were in the Near East. The gypsies were part of the reason but it went deeper than than. Now especially that it has been pedestrianised it is on the way to being a complex of restaurants and antique shops. When Bucharest starts receiving tourists in numbers it will go the unauthentic way of the historic centre in every other European capital.

Dirty, disreputable, frivolous but gloomy, full of laughter and misery, mercenary and mystical, improvised, exasperating and serendipitous, Bucharest is a city which either repels you or steals your heart. The ubiquitous and completely unofficial kiosks, which made a Bengali friend of mine compare Bucharest to Dacca, have been eliminated at Mr. Basescu's command. So have the packs of occasionally ferocious stray dogs but it will be fifteen or twenty years before Bucharest ceases to feel Third World. When it does will it have become almost as dull as Athens? Very possibly but let us hope if Bucharest must emulate European cities she can become not Athens but Naples.

But one problem cannot wait fifteen years and cannot be romanticised away. The gridlock in the centre of the city gets worse at a tempo so fast that the deterioration can be observed on a weekly basis. Road-widening and road-building unless very sensitive to the city's architectural heritage will destroy Bucharest's semi-rustic character. What after all is the northern stretch of Calea Victoriei than a country lane? Luckily the solution to the traffic problem is easy. Charge motorists for entering the city centre between 8-6 weekdays and encourage Bucuresteni back to their city's excellent public transport system. It worked in London and would work here. Does any politician have the courage to adopt this idea? Mr. Scheele, what do you say?


17 comments:

  1. Oh Mister, you have played with my intimate feelings.. I've just discovered your blog and read your articles about Bucharest. I moved from Bucharest to ClujNapoca two years ago, but I increasingly miss it every day; in the fall I will move to London to study. Ha! Life's circles.
    I understand why you like the city so much, and I share your thoughts, but this seductive atmosphere is merely comfortable for us, the lovers, for a short period of time, will we be so in love when the old faux-french, byzantine, art-nouveau buildings will have been either demolished and replaced with ugly, shiny, "contemporary glass and aluminium architecture" wanna-be's, or repainted and brought back at life like those silicone-filled cadavers that are now on show at the Antipa Museum? Either way, I hope so : )
    I didn't say much in this long text, haha

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  2. Maria thank you very much - I love this comment. Please keep looking at my blog. Cluj is also a nice city - not spoilt by tourism unlike Brasov.

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  3. To me, Romania is just another state in the European Union. Romania is just as representative of the EU as South Dakota or Kentucky are of the United States. The fact that The European Union is allowed multiple soccer teams to compete in the world cup, I believe to be as highly unjust as its having multiple votes at the UN. As far as I'm concerned, when I enter Romania I am welcomed to the EU and not just to one of its member states. It might be of interest that in the years following the formation of the United States its citizens identified with their states rather than with their nation just as the citizens of the newly formed nation called the EU are doing now. It took close to 100 years for the citizens of the US to identify with being American. I wonder how long it will take for Europeans to follow a similar pattern.

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    1. It will never happen. Kentucky was never a nation, an ethnicity, a race, nor does it have its own language or its own church.

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. Surely your Bangladeshi friend was referring to Dacca, not Dakar. But that quibble aside, a lovely read, thanks for posting. Thomas Gibson

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    1. Yes sorry - and he was Bengali which apparently is not quite the same thing. He also told me he liked Romania because no one looked at him with hostility whereas in England everyone did.

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  6. It might be of interest to note that in the years (about 100) after the formation of the United States, its citizens were more likely to identify with their states rather the newly formed republic. I wonder in how many generations, citizens of the EU will follow a similar pattern and regard Romania no less odd than an American finds Kentucky or New Mexico. Of course you must stop this nonsense of having multiple soccer teams in the world cup. This is just unfair cheating if you ask me...alas, nobody ever asks me.

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    1. Where to begin answering this? I begin with De Maistre. Every Romanian quotes his maxim that every country gets the government she deserves, though they often attribute this to Napoleon. De Maistre also said a nation is not made of ink.

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  7. Bl@@dy fantastic post.

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  8. I think that cultural heritage should have been a priority for EU funding everywhere in Europe .

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  9. The dogs there are wonderful just people keep abusing them, what about all the whores. Bucharest is a dumpster because of Communism and how the people act. The dogs were perhaps my only pleasant experience in Bucharest some of the better citizens of that country.

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  10. Born in Bucharest, I also grew up here. I was abroad for about 4 years. Since then, I cannot accommodate here again. I love the empty old Bucharest, not what it became nowadays, when you have no place for a nice healthy breath, walk, ride and so on. I do not hate the city itself, but the way it was NOT MANGAGED properly FOR PEOPLE, not AGAINST THE PEOPLE. Bucharest is against human and animal and plants life. Cars and pollution suffocate our lives.

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  11. I spent 6 months in Bucharest in 2001 as part of a Joint Military Liason Team...Whatever Bucharest has become or will become...it will always be one the most memorable places I have ever lived in...

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  12. I lived in Bucharest for 6 months in 2001 as part of a Joint Military Liason Team...whatever Bucharest has become or will become...it will always be one of the most memorable places I ever lived...for only one reason...it's people...it's beautiful, diverse, hospitable, upbeat people...

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  13. "Dear Paul, despite all imperfections, Bucharest continues to change to better, while London, sorry to say this, it changes to much worse... don't really know where you lived in Bucharest, but there where I have my house, near Herastrau Park, things look much better than near Hyde Park. Really. But of course suburbs look like suburbs no matter whether in London or Bucharest. And you certainly know that our Gypsies are a branch of Indians, and so... not such amazing difference... isnt't it!? I saw London first in '94 and since then, it has been going down, in terms of everything: culture, charm, social life, probably due to the economic crisis..."

    Madalina Stanciu

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    1. I remember a silly very nationalistic man who would not listen to the slightest criticism of Romania by foreigners got very angry with Olivia Manning for talking about beggars in her books set in Bucharest.

      As if you do not have beggars in London! he said.
      A Quick-witted Romanian friend who was listening said: yes but they are all Romanians.

      I wonder if the reason why you like Hyde Park much less these days is because there are I am told – by indignant Romanians living in London – many Romanian gypsies there. In Lord Rochester’s time it was a very much more wicked place than today but this not relevant.

      By the way gypsies are in no way typical of Indians. In India there is a tribe or group who approximate to gypsies and I presume these are the cousins of the gypsies.

      My experience is exactly the opposite of yours. I find people in London noticeably more polite, more patient, kinder and friendlier than in the early 90s (there was a big recession then too) or in the middle or late 80s.

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