Maybe more than anything else, Bucharest is about rage. The very moment one lands in town or arrives here by train / bus / car / bicycle / walking, it is impossible to miss it. People here are furious just as they are frustrated; actually this fury is their means of hiding their frustrations (and obviously they can never succeed in doing so). While in subway stations, passengers never respect the “walk on the right side” rule. Those that want to get on the train do not allow those wanting to get off go first. Those that stand in the doorway hardly move when others want to get off. In supermarkets, malls, large institutions people run into one another. Even if there are no cars parked on the sidewalk, people walk in the street, they cross large avenues on the red light. Drivers do the same, trying to sneak around the queue (there is even the odd SUV going on the sidewalk on Kiseleff Avenue trying to spare 5 minutes’ wait in line). Everything seems to happen on the run (or at least this is what everyone pretends), but we are talking about a country where things happen painfully slow, where it took them 20 years to build 4 km. of subway tunnels. People do not have patience and they are irrational, everything happens chaotically, so the running is useless, as long as there is no order, no respect and definitely no strategy for nothing. Down to the bottom, Romanians are furious for next to nothing. It is their very nature.
Some have said this status quo is a legacy of the Ottomans; something Oriental in SE Europe. After having traveled to the Middle East and even farther, I can say that the overwhelming bazaar there has nothing to do with the Fury in Bucharest. For in the bazaar of Herat or in the streets of Damascus there is a sort of chaos (even though I would not call it like that), but - once one blends in with the crowd, he/she can flow with it. People understand each other by just looking at each other. There is a mutual respect. There is no Fury except for very rare situations. In Bucharest there is next to no respect for anything. People run into each other for their being stupid, they look for any possible means of showing off and being egocentric. And this can hardly be changed, as its source is not (only) a lack of education, but mainly this society’s being fundamentally frustrated and sick.
