We have departed. Our Bucharestian adventure has come to a close with big doses of the good and the, well, evil...The good: with Kerry gone to Serifos, I went to Neptun on the Black Sea with A. and S. They combed the beaches and stormed the pool and we all had a grand time (see the photos above for evidence of that). I was surrounded by wonderful poets and writers from all across Europe, including Orhan Pamuk, who was given a prize by the festival; meanwhile, the kids were basking in the glow of their beloved Andreea, who kept them busy from dawn till dusk most of the days.
The evil: indeed, the final confrontation with Lady Tenescu, our insane landlady, turned out to be a nightmare. She arrived at our negotiations determined not to give us back a cent of our one thousand euro security deposit, arriving with a laundry list of invented reasons we owed her money. I'll spare you the gory details (all absurd, exploitative, and embarrassing for her), except for one: she wanted us to give her 200 euros for the plastic shower curtain we replaced (remember the one covered in mold from an earlier blog?) . Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that's nearly 300 U.S. dollars for a shower curtain made in Eastern Europe! In the end, thanks to the negotiating powers of the Fulbright Commission (e.g. Mihai Moroiu), we got back about a third of our deposit--morally insulting, yes, but that should keep us in tiropita for the next few days at least. And we paid only 75 euros for the shower curtain. With that money, the slum-lord of Lahovari can buy herself twenty rubber shower curtains....ahem...
The night before we left Bucharest, Sophia asked me to take her to the balcony. When we got there I understood why. At the top of her lungs, Piata Lahovari buzzing and lit-up before her, she shouted at the top of her little lungs: "Goodbye, Bucharest, I'll miss you. Pa!."
Perhaps we'll toss off a missive or two from Greece. Stay tuned (and thanks for tuning in these past months).
Christopher (in Athens)
3 comments:
Sounds like Bucharest has not changed as much as I thought. I was first there almost ten years ago and last there a couple years ago. The landlady is par for course but I'd have thought the customer service -- and the pizza -- would have improved.
Q. What do you think about the opportunity to open a HIGH END pizzaria in Bucharest? You know, with gourmet pizza, good customer service, and locally grown organic ingredients?
I'm interested b/c I own a small farm on the outskirts of the city and am thinking of a good way to use the land. And it seems you know something about pizza.
Aroundtown:
There are so many pizzerias in Bucharest, alas, that I think it would be a matter of marketing it...and creating a place with very, very good service would also set you apart. Funny how few people there seemed interested in organic and local foods; that seems to me like an un-tapped market.
I stayed for about 4 years in Bucharest, in many apartments for rent and I got to meet quite a few landowners. Some of them good, some of them bad. But mostly bad :) I remember a landlady that refused to give us the guaranty deposit back on the reason that the carpets were more used than before :)) And belive me, I had 3 persons cleaning that apartment before she came in. It was as if we had never lived there. Anyway, I guess our society has to evolve, along with our economy. I also recalled a nice landowner that kept the rent constant, for about 5 years, for a friend of mine. Nowadays she is paying 100 Dolars a month for an apartment with 2 rooms, the same as she din 5 years ago, even if the rents went very heavely up. That apartment should be now at about 350 -400 Euros per month. In conclusion, I am sorry for your bad experience with the mean landlady, but you know what they say: whatgoes around, comes around :)
Good luck!
Diana
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