This is not necessarily only about Bucharest, but rather about the whole country. Many Romanians go to church. Some of them only play the faithful, for they believe in a societal “comme il faut” (Ro. ca lumea) rather than God, others really are faithful. That aside, a lot of Romanians believe in this Holy Trinity: Manele, Beer and Football. Let me take them one by one.

The manele consist of some as stupid lyrics as one can get, joined by a mixture of Oriental-background and cheezy pop music, all put together on the computer (hmm, err, the computer part only applies to the “high class” manele). This is the lowest standard of music I (for one) have ever met anywhere in the world. However the lower it goes, the more popular it gets, and one can listen to such tunes on the city bus in Baia Mare, in downtown Bucharest or at a fancy terrace in Brașov without any problems in finding the “right” venue. Typical manele lyrics:

Oh, you life of mine,

Oh, you heart of mine,

Oh, in vain I weep,

For so upset I am:

I have wasted my life and you have stolen my heart [...]

From this point on, feel free to continue the lyrics with an as stupid story as you can think of, about women, money, imaginary friends you would have in jail or booze, and you will get your own, brand new manea. Congrats!

Beer is not as big an evil as the manele. Without being a beer fan (unless it is about the German dunkel), I like the atmosphere at the berăries (very lively terraces where they serve beer and sometimes also grilled mici) both in Bucharest and in the countryside around it. However, the uninspired, tasteless terraces that pretend to be fancy, serve cheap (quality-wise) beer and play loud music from a dum local radio station (or even the manele here above) are far from my taste. There are many foreign brands (Tuborg, Stella Artois, Becks, Gosser etc.) which are brewed locally, as well as good (friends say) local brands (such as Silva, Ursus, Timișoreana, Gambrinus), most of which have been taken over by the big foreign ones.

Football gets big and wild in Romania. This is the country of Hagi, Popescu and Mutu. Then, Romanians are loud, inquisitive, they like a lot the ‘panem et circenses’ thing. So it is easy to imagine that there is hardly a bar, terrace or restaurant without a TV plasma when there is a match, and that the respective night is not going to be a quiet one if teams such as Dinamo, Steaua or Rapid (if not the national team) are playing. They will debate over and over, shout, drink beer, argue and shout again, the TV will be turned louder and louder.