Bucharest

This is not my home town, but I feel closer to it than to the actual one.
I find myself unsure of finding a definition for Bucharest, I prefer just the naming of the, The Big City.
Most people I know (or just people that I had heard talking) think badly of Bucharest. I think they are rather used with small towns, with a concealed way of life. In a large city, that sustains over two millions, it is rather hard.
Everything becomes public, but in a colder way, because you are forced to share the space with a large number of people, strangers, that you will probably never meet.
As I said, I was not born or even raised as a child here, but I see things differently.
Usually people complain about how crowded it is – on the sidewalk, but also on road, how there is no parking space, about the lack of green spaces, the homeless people, thieves.
Of course, this is just a small fracture of the whole problem.
But you have to look at them from different angles: most of them are universal problems. Just think of the busy, swarming streets of New York, the packed up cars from Paris, or at the fact there are one billion people on the planet who lack adequate housing, while around 100 million have no housing whatsoever.
So, who are we to judge this one city?
When I think about Bucharest, I see a lot of potential. And I am not a hypocrite, neither am I a overly optimistic person. It annoyes me that surroundings are dominated by concreet and not grass, and most of that concrete buidings need restoration – either apartment buidings or museums.
But a city means more than streets, buidings, parks, and so on. A city is a live organism, people can be seen as cells, at least from a personal point of view.
So a city is as beautiful as their inhabitants alow it to be.
As I said, I think this is a city with high potential, with a misunderstood beauty and latent greatness. I find everyday life, with it’s ups and downs, with fancy streets and bad smells, everything that surrounds us very beautiful, even if at first sight it might apear unpleasent or even disgusting.
There are many cities or towns I have visited, but I cannot say that I linked with any of them, no matter how much they impressed me, mostly through (regardless of the fact that now I am a architect student).
Remarking for Bucharest I find it’s eclecticism, the lack of a single whole – even in the old city (comparing with Sibiu, at least).
I cannot and will not say that the way I look at architecture is revolving around Bucharest, it would be a lie.
The iconic image of the big city is given by some of it’s imposing buildings, but also by some of it’s worst.
The first ones are more emblems of respect for the past, not as much sources of inspiration, and the second category is obviously a emblem of “never do this, never”.

I must say Bucharest is a wonderful town, but it lacks in people to make it shine.