Dateline Bucharest

Think shallow. Think light. Think sun. Think summer.

watch?v=NV3bhppxAU4

We are interrupting our normal coverage of foreign events for a piece of breaking news. According to highly reliable sources,  Bucharest’s Second District is the site of some serious guerrilla warfare. The two camps are, on the one side, the local government, led by General Neculai Ontanu [incumbent mayor running for re-election], and a group of unidentified rebels fighting for his overturn [which may actually be linked to Al Qaeda, although Osama Ben Laden has yet to release a tape confirming this].

Here are the events so far:

1. the rebels stage a surprise attack on the unsuspecting mayor, using stencils and black spray cans. The images depict Mr. Ontanu, with HONTANU [in Romanian, 'hot' means thief - if you don't get, please stop reading now] written underneath them.

2. after having recovered from the initial shock, Gen. Ontanu swiftly deploy a troop contingent in the conflict zone, and engages the rebels using black spray cans:

3. encouraged by the success of the initial counterinsurgency operation, government forces intensify attacks, this time using unconventional weaponry, in the form of glue and posters of Mr. Ontanu:

According to unconfirmed sources, the valiant government-led response to the rebel threat has been able to restore some order in the district. Even so, the situation remains tense. Eyewitnesses have reported seeing the rebels fleeing into caves labelled with a capital ‘M’, which are presumably used to stage a counterattack.

For the time being, we encourage all foreign residents to refrain from travelling to the Second District of Bucharest, as the security situation remains dire. Of course, we will keep you informed of any major developments as they unfold. In the meantime, PLEASE check BBC News, as there is some seriously disturbing stuff going on out there!

Each signature matters.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kVlssD8kTc&hl=en]

May Day should have been a day of celebration for Gordon Brown’s Labour Party, as a reminder of its trade union roots and past connection with the blue collar industrial heartland of Britain. This year’s local elections pretty much spoiled Labour’s party. And things are not looking to get better anytime soon.

The May 1 local elections saw the worst defeat for Labour in 40 years. To add insult to the injury, yesterday’s elections for London’s top post ended the era of Ken Livingstone, who lost by a somewhat narrow margin to Boris Johnson, the Conservative posh boy.

That was a hell of a cold shower for Gordon Brown, if he ever needed one [which is unlikely, given his country of residence]. Labour voters pretty much stayed at home or worse, voted for the opponents. Tories in London mobilized in record number and cast their votes in favor of Boris Johnson.

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Most people around here [including myself, although for entirely different reasons] are counting the days till the local elections [with the first round scheduled on june 1]. What about a totally different kind of countdown? A countdown to Euro 2008?

According to the official site, we are now at D - 35. And counting. Just to whet your appetite, below is the official anthem of the swiss national team [courtesy of my friend OB]. Once you get past the fucked up German and the strange French, I have to admit it is a pretty cool football song. Allez les gars, gagnez-la
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQdnNLZ3_G4&hl=en]

Every day, you think of one word more than a hundred times. [ok...] And it’s not sex [actually, i dunno about that...] What is that word? [sex, you idiot!] It’s “Maybe,” [riiiight....]

Below is an ad. Your task is to establish:

1. The type of company the ad is for

and, more importantly

2. The nationality of the person who came up with the ad is.

The correct answers will be published in a later post. Maybe.

Bucharest, 1st of may, 24 degrees celsius, sunny, national flags hanging on all major streets and on buses, very little traffic. This afternoon in Bucharest had a lot, if not all, the ingredients, for a perfect afternoon.

And yet something was wrong. Do you remember that movie where the main character wakes up in NY to find all streets deserted and the city empty? Creepy huh? Well, Bucharest felt a bit like that today. Actually, I felt like being thrown back into the dark ages of the mid 90s. With virtually all the ‘corporatisti’ away at the Bulgarian seaside, all the semi-rural lower middle out in the woods for a nice ‘gratar’ with ‘pet’ beer and ‘manele’, it almost felt like the city was invaded by an entirely new category of citizens.

For the sake of simplicity, let us call them the underworld. They are made up of a number of subcategories:

1/ the cocalar [chav] teenagers wearing jogging suits, wearing tight white wife-beaters, wearing their cheap sunglasses on their forehead, blonde highlights in their hair.

2/ the rural fake prada jeans, Borat-style green-and-white suit fresh from the bazar.

3/ the elderly senior citizens, very modestly dressed, enjoying a day out in the sun. Otherwise a not so sore sight, if it weren’t for their obvious penury.

4/ the moneyed provincial fancy cars bearing outside bucharest license plates in for a tour of the city. lame.

Right. For one day, I felt like I was thrown back in the mid 1990s. And it was pretty depressing.

Just so you get an illustration of what I’m talking about, here is some photo evidence [albeit taken with my camera phone, set to a remarkably low resolution due to my stupidity]:

1. menu at ‘Tropikana’ casino/bar, smack downtown next to Architecture Faculty, who graciously serves Carlberg lager for a mere 13 RON [EUR 3.7] Perfect for the first-time visitor fresh off the plane.

2. concert ad for Ion Laceanu, the guy who shook hands w/ Kennedy [!] one month before he died. Mr. Laceanu is accompanied by his own personal band, aptly named ‘The Rhapsody of the Carpathians’. Still not convinced? You should know, then, that Mr. Laceanu has performed for no less than 17 heads of state.

Picking up on Adi’s comments re the recent elections in Rome [I will get back to the more general topic of the Italian political scene in a later post], I must say I share his concern over the most recent developments there.

To sum up, Sunday’s local elections in Rome saw an unlikely winner emerging - his name is Gianni Alemanno - a member of Berlusconi’s Party and a former fascist. Initially an underdog, he ran on an anti-crime, anti-immigration ticket, vowing to curb crime and to expel all illegal immigrants caught committing offenses. He was undoubtedly helped by a recent wave of crime perpetrated by Romanian immigrants.

I am concerned because this means that Italians are fed up with immigrants [and I am not going to question their justification here], and that may lead to a rising wave of intolerance.

Without further ado, let me give the floor to a person with much more insight than me on this issue, an actual Roman, who has agreed to give an ‘exclusive interview’ for datelinebucharest.com

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