Today, on the way to my workplace I've stumbled on a newly polished crosswalk. It was fresh white and shining under the sun.
Bucharest has blossomed these last few days... Actually the flowers sprung out of nowhere. We now have newly painted fences and road markers, newly planted trees and flowers. Newly remade anything you can think of.
I'll bet that from space you can see a shining route all the way from the airport to the People's House.
What's the catalist of this accelerated and fascinating thansformation? 2008 NATO Summit. Everybody is doing the best they can to make the city look pretty, to make us look pretty. The foreign officials will get a warm welcome and they'll have a little patry surrounded by this pretty, artificially grown flower. They won't know it's just a mask; they won't see beyond the shiny path that's been laid down for them. They'll leave deceived by an illusion.
And when everything will be over we'll throw away the flower and keep living between the roots and thorns like we always did.
Everybody says that we've changed after '89. That the European influence made us better. But it didn't. We're the same as we were before, we're just as we've always been.
You don't believe me? I just got an idea for an experiment!
Stay tuned!
Bucharest has blossomed these last few days... Actually the flowers sprung out of nowhere. We now have newly painted fences and road markers, newly planted trees and flowers. Newly remade anything you can think of.
I'll bet that from space you can see a shining route all the way from the airport to the People's House.
What's the catalist of this accelerated and fascinating thansformation? 2008 NATO Summit. Everybody is doing the best they can to make the city look pretty, to make us look pretty. The foreign officials will get a warm welcome and they'll have a little patry surrounded by this pretty, artificially grown flower. They won't know it's just a mask; they won't see beyond the shiny path that's been laid down for them. They'll leave deceived by an illusion.
And when everything will be over we'll throw away the flower and keep living between the roots and thorns like we always did.
Everybody says that we've changed after '89. That the European influence made us better. But it didn't. We're the same as we were before, we're just as we've always been.
You don't believe me? I just got an idea for an experiment!
Stay tuned!
Posts
3 comments:
Hey, better get started on that project... the results may be really fun!
Now that the summit is over, I am replying, so...
Blazer, I am quoting you, watch out! "[The foreign officials] won't know it's just a mask; they won't see beyond the shiny path that's been laid down for them." -> I don't think they care what's beyond the shiny path. As long as they got back home safe enough to say "Those crazy Romanians, they gave me teh palica and I got so wasted I actually... signed that...oh.", as long as they visit that huge "i-don't-know-what-they-call-it-but- it-was-huge" building, they don't care.
What troubles me is the thought that the "mask" would replace what little face we have left. Bucharest has been wearing too many masks for foreigners.
And you know what they say about staring too long into the abyss...
Yeah... this reminds me of what I've heard about the communist period: whenever Ceausescu visited a farm or a village, people would put fresh big apples in the trees (and took them down when he left) and borrowed nice looking cattle for the farms, so everything looked as it was going perfect :)
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