Hate it, love it, curse it, enjoy its street food and bars, try to ignore or to understand it, do whatever you want, but Bucharest will not leave you alone. Not even one freaking minute. The streets are noisy and crowded, people living here are noisy themselves. They laugh out loudly, shout instead of talk, there is no “may I”, but “got it”. Everything that happens in this city must do so with a sort of show, stage lights and loudspeakers turned at maximum. You might have guessed it already: no, they will not leave you alone and hell no, they will make no exception for a foreigner.

Portions in local restaurants are huge by some standards, the local cuisine is too fat and too pork intensive by other standards. People eat a lot, talk a lot, drink a lot of coffee (hmm, not only) and smoke, you have guessed it, a hell lot. Life goes at a very intense, even excessive pace and the more you try to avoid it or to express your refusal to this lifestyle, the less it will leave you enjoy your day. There is no rule the city obeys to, it is wild, it grabs the visitor with a precise move and takes him away in its rush across the fields. Dislike Bucharest and it will laugh at you; hate it and it will hate you even more. But then, dare run with it or dance in its rhythm and you will feel a certain... joy. A wicked, childish almost kind of joy. But damn, it feels so good.

People eat while walking down the street, put too much perfume on, listen to music on their mobile phone while on the subway train, crowd instead of queue. From a certain point of view, a party might look like a scandal. People talk they heart out, while next to every phrase seems to contain some sort of curse. Any reason can be used to start an argument, while love and hate have never been closer, more mingled and exteriorized. Before you even know it, you have learnt about your new acquaintance’s decision to divorce, his reasons and his wife’s parents, his neighbours’ nasty children and his problems at work.

But why the hell did I post this under the “The Good” line? Well, let yourself be taken away by Bucharest’s life beat and you will see why. Try to swing among the cars parked chaotically rather than be outraged by this chaos, laugh or cry out loudly rather than keep it inside, grab some pastry and eat it while walking, contradict the residents to see how passionate they turn. Accept their invitation for a glass of “the best țuică ever” (it is always like that), get an odd number of flowers for the lady of the house (for she is the one cooking those sarma). To put it short, common sense rules aside, take life for what it is and enjoy it. In the end of the day, this is where Italy meets the Balkans, some backstreet rhymes on top.