Look at the car in the picture above. Someone owns a 20 year old, poor quality copy of 1969’s Renault 12 and he / she finds it smart to brand it with a Logan sticker. Take no (or poor) filling, wrap it up in shiny, fancy, expensive package, then walk along the main avenue, showing it off. You could not get a better approach to the Fitze. Translate it as you may: egocentrism, megalomania, utopian fanciness, this is The omnipresent feature of so many Romanians.

Without being a rich country, Romania is one of the best markets in the region for top end, expensive cars. Even though they do not make the difference between a T-shirt and a classy shirt, many people here buy the most expensive car (preferably either black or white, to make a difference from the crowd) and dine at voyeur’s cafes just to be seen, to be noticed. Deep problems of personality are sought to be solved by cheap (intelligence-wise) means like this. The traffic in this city is so bad partly because people simply refuse to use the public transport to work, even though it sometimes is 3 times faster to go by the subway train or by bus. If asked, they will answer “ce-o să zică lumea dacă vin cu autobuzul?” (En. “what will others say if they see me come by bus?”). Even though Romanians are loud and seem to be very self-possessed, such a societal behaviour hides serious problems at the individual level. People are afraid of the others’ perception and they think that their image in the society is primarily a material one, being created mostly by the tangible. Add to this a very strong individual ego and a highly consumer society, and you are there.

Unfortunately these very reasons (especially the fact that people dine at a particular restaurant just to be seen and not for the quality of the service or food there, or the lack of cultural knowledge of the nouveau riche) have resulted in a huge disproportion between the price one pays and the quality he / she is rendered. You will often go to a nice restaurant and see that behind the facade the walls are (not on purpose) uneven, you have to wait for 20 minutes for the waiter to come and for another hour to be served some chewing gum-like pasta. You will see that the others face the same problem, but prefer to play with their Blackberry or shiny watch rather than complain. For their purpose there is neither tasty food, nor good service, but rather to be seen and appreciated for their spending money on stuff. The same happens with the price of many foreign products that are much higher in Romania (compared to Western Europe for instance) simply because people buy them for their brand rather than for their quality and practical use. Because the buying is influenced mainly by the fițe and only secondarily by the practical need for a certain product.

The worst happens when the show-off here above is met by a total disrespect for anything and anyone. You will often see people driving their cars and stopping right in front of the shop / office building they need to go to. It does not matter whether the parking there is full, whether there is any parking lot or there are cars parked on the sidewalk already. They will stop right in front of the entrance to the building, blocking both the traffic and other cars already parked. In the best case scenario, they will turn on the damage flashes (i.e. “be right back”). They will come back half an hour later. Otherwise, just like in the image here above (shot on Alexandru Philippide Street), they will park their cars in the middle of the street and then go wherever, coming back hours later and not giving a dime on “the idiots” or the traffic they have blocked. Kindly point to them that they should not have done this and you will get a curse or things thrown at. Looking for a proper parking place takes too much time, is irrelevant and shows one’s being weak in their opinion.

Without being a general situation (one could hardly generalize anything in this city), it is impossible to pass through Bucharest (or Romania for that matter) and not to notice the fițe.