Bucharest

My whole day being reduced to a half day, I actually made a half-hearted visit of the city. Enough to witness a dispute in the supermarket where I intended to buy supper, which concluded by the intervention of security staff in SUVs, bullet-proof vest and truncheon -I don't think they were policemen-, to walk to the Parliament -the second biggest building in the world, after the Pentagon-, and to see a few streets.

If Sofia struck me as sad, there was still a kind of pride in the city. More black and white, the building being either run-down or violently well-maintained. Few in-between.

But what I have seen of Bucharest is worse, instead of sadness, it was shame I felt from the building. Because most of the building and houses used to be elegant, coming from a wealthy past, and too many of them are debased -laundry lines running between pillars, or in what used to be elegant drives, grey walls, tags...-, inter-spaced by houses obviously newer, but imitating ineffectually a charm now past.

Where Sofia proudly displays its ugly housing, Bucharest is awash in cheap imitation of charm.