Bucharest from the inside

My mate has lived in Bucharest since 2003, when he fell in love with the city. He told me why he loved it so much.

“How could I describe Bucharest? Street kids and stray dogs? Tastefully dilapidated interbellic villas with washing hung out in the courtyard? Rows of faceless communist blocks? Perhaps the toppled statue of Lenin at Mogosoaia park? This is all cliche isn´t it?

To put it briefly, Bucharest is a horrible city. Its arteries are constantly clogged with traffic. The roads are abysmal. The infrastrucure is visibly crumbling. The vast majority of its resident live in grim, grey blocks. Public transport is terrible. House prices are inexplicably comparable to those in Vienna and Rome. Anything imported is hugely expensive. In the words of some backpackers I recently met, ´I can´t see why anyone would ever want to live here´.

It´s perhaps the fact that, on paper, Bucharest is such an unappealing place to live, which is one of its biggest advantages. It will never, ever become a tourist city like Prague or Budapest, which already feel like artificial cities entirely arranged for the benefits of wealthy Americans. It will never become the new Berlin, a hub for cultural creativity - house prices have already risen far too much for that to happen. I am not even sure that it will turn into a dystopian center for sex tourism, like Talin, a magnet for gangs of drunken lads on budget airlines. It still feels far too off-the-map, too instinctively tourist-unfriendly for all that.

Come here with a guidebook and a rucksack, and you will leave disappointed. Come with a friend who knows the right people, and you won´t want to leave. All the bad things about Bucharest might just be the reason that so many people love living here. Bucharest is, and might remain for some time, a genuinely hidden corner of Europe. It does not give up its secrets easily“.