Andrei Codrescu on Bucharest

“I went out onto the streets, expecting to see a nervous city that had recently been at war. But something didn't add up. Bucharest was no Beirut. If anything, it was narcotically peaceful, in a deep green midsummer way. People strolled lazily in the warm evening.”

“In days too long ago now to remember, Romania was a breadbasket and among the largest corn producers in the world, and Bucharest was lush with fruits, vegetables and every delicacy. But the bankrupt economy of the Ceaucescu had stripped the city of private markets and virtually everything green, for that matter. It's all been replaced by by a sea of concrete tenements webbed over with television antennas.”