Once I was in Cracow and I wanted to go to Warsaw. For some reason I did not understand at that very moment, local people kept on asking me why, of all cities in Poland, I was keen on going to the worst. Eventually, I followed my will as opposed to theirs. I found Warsaw to be straight, more sincere and... alive than Cracow. More natural and human, with far less claims referring to some glorious past or to a distant point of reference. Maybe because a city is far more than the amount of bricks, stone, plaster and paint its buildings are made of.

Being acknowledged by strangers as a bad city with nothing to experience (well, nothing other than stray dogs (see later), thieving taxi drivers and Communist architecture), Bucharest, respectively its inhabitants do not claim to be any better than that. Quite to the opposite, ask anyone in Bucharest and they will point to the chaotic traffic (they are also part of), destruction of the old buildings (which still goes on), local corruption (they also feed) and dirty streets (they do not do anything to clean or keep clean). Paradoxically, this turns in the city’s favour, because it does not pretend to be something else just to please the others. Politicians and local authorities might be corrupt and total frauds, but the city could not be more sincere about itself. It is enough to have a ride across the city with one of its inhabitants and he will tell you how sick - if not outraged - he is of this place, its grey buildings and disrespectful people. There is no egocentrism in Bucharest, as it is in, say, Sibiu, Cluj or Timișoara the inhabitants of which will next to always make comparisons and point their finger at something else but themselves.

Things in this city have no order; there is no reason or rule according to which A follows B which results with C. Just like the Ganges in Varanasi, Bucharest’s Dâmbovița River flows across the plains, taking with it rubbish, delicious mici, heartly curses, odours, prayers, bunches of odd and even flowers, dog and human crap, reflections of medieval inns and churches, mărțișoare, interwar houses and Gypsy music. All of them are so mixed and stuck together that it becomes next to impossible to take them separately. And, thankfully, nobody in the city pretends any of them do not exist. Or that the sky is always blue. For it is not, the fucking bastard.