Before you begin reading this week''s diatribe against Romania, and its dreadful capital city in particular, I would like to point out that you do not actually have to read it. However it may be that you have accessed this article - ZF webpage, search engine, blog or simply by reading the ZF newspaper - I should point out that you do not have to read it. Nobody is standing with a gun at your back forcing your eyes to move over the words; you have made a conscious choice to read this article.
I make note of this for a fortnight ago I received an email from a reader who told me that ?"I read your column every time it appears, and every time it makes me angry. You shouldn''t say the things you do about Romania, people don''t want to read about them.'' Hmmm. I politely suggested to him in response that anyone - including himself - who didn''t want to read my columns shouldn''t actually read them, so that no offence would be taken. So if he''s reading this I warn him to turn away now, for this week I am even more disparaging about Bucharest than ever.
The theme of the week is this: When Romania fudges its way into the European Union (EU) next January, Bucharest should officially be declared Europe''s Worst Capital. Perhaps then, and only then, will the city''s leaders be shamed into actually deciding to take a few, small steps to make Bucharest a better place in which to live.
I am not talking here about spending billions of euros on massive infrastructure projects, which is all it appears the current mayor of the city, Adrian Videanu is interested in. Indeed, he has spent much of his tenure unveiling grandiose visions of the Bucharest of the future, including all sorts of subterranean car parks, tunnels, high-speed airport metro links, high-rise office buildings, entire new residential districts and even a port down at Oltenita on the Danube for the day when Bucharest becomes the largest of all Europe''s metropolises: I kid you not (Romania''s libel laws are too strict for jokes). All of the above have been presented by the mayor or his staff as viable projects for the development of Bucharest, and for many of them he has set out to raise the necessary funds, either by tapping up the EU or by putting the squeeze on local business. And all the while the standard of living for the vast majority in the city - be they rich, poor or somewhere in between - has got worse.
For while Videanu talks about high-speed metro links to the airport, plenty of his citizens are talking about the need for sewerage and paved roads. It may be rude of me - and uncomfortable for some - to point this out but there are vast districts of Bucharest (parts of Chitila, Bucurestii Noi, Colentina and Andronache especially) that are little more than shanty towns. Many streets in these areas are mud-caked hell holes with no running water, no gas, no heating and a less than entirely reliable electricity supply. That is the kind of city that will be joining the EU as an alleged equal.
The cost of providing these areas with the most basic of services is not prohibitive. In the grand scheme of things laying sewage pipes and connecting them to each house in the area is not a costly endeavour. It also exactly the kind of thing that EU pre-accession money was designed to be spent on. That it isn''t is criminal. Perhaps Videanu''s plan is that if these God-forsaken districts of Bucharest are ignored they will go away. So be it; let''s pretend it is. But where does that leave the rest of the city? Even life in the most pluche of districts is no bed of roses.
Litter is a problem everywhere. The fact that people should have a little more civic pride and not actually drop litter is a story for another day. What is needed first is a prolonged clean-up campaign. If people actually saw their city clean for once they may think before throwing McDonald''s packets out of their car windows (though then again, they may not...) We also need an anti-dog campaign to once and for all rid our streets of this plague. The half-hearted attempt of Traian Basescu to deal with the problem when in the mayor''s office must now be registered as an utter failure. A new and intense campaign to round up all stray dogs - offering them for adoption and then exterminating those not adopted - is urgently needed. It will not cost the earth to do this, just as it will not cost all that much to clean the city on a regular basis, and both things will, in a small way, make life a little better.
There is much else that can be done at little cost too: Bus lanes on major thoroughfares; more frequent metro trains; clampdowns on illegal driving - especially speeding and driving on the wrong side of the road - and illegal parking; and a tougher approach towards outdoor advertising. For more on this subject see the website of Save Our Walls (www.beepfashion.com/index2.html) a campaign to rid the city of its oversized and carelessly placed billboards. None of these projects would be all that unpopular with the population at large (as opposed to the entrance fee that the council wanted to charge drivers entering the city centre: hurriedly shelved at the first whiff of public opposition).
Yet let''s pretend (something we''re doing a lot of today) that all of these things were put into practice. All of them would need policing. And that''s where the biggest problem of all comes in... The Romanian police force (unquestionably Europe''s worst). The success of the speed cameras on DN1 (more than 50,000 motorists fined and 3500 driving licenses revoked in less than two months) is in large part thanks to the system''s automation: the police have very little to do with it. Cameras cannot be bribed. The lesson here is clear: if you want something done properly in this country, make sure the police are not involved.
Craig Turp is the author of a number of books on travel in Central and Eastern Europe. He is also the publisher of In Your Pocket, an independent series of locally produced city guides. He can be contacted at editor@inyourpocket.com.
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