The Bucharest odalisque.

22nd August 2010. 12 pm. It started as a rather plain day that bent concave towards the evening. The night was hot and the mosquitoes ferocious so we walked by the river half-naked until late, sharing a bottle, watching kids do crazy jumps from the bridges into dubious dark waters.

Other half-naked folks gathered around the 24 hour corner shops smoking, laughing, drinking beer and spirits from evil-looking bottles. A melon-sized moon sprinkling the flaking belle-époque buildings with pale powder, making them look stately, weary and disconsolate.

Next morning I get up, boil my coffee pot, drink my coretto. By the time I’m out of the door the Pill is still sleeping, knickers in a twist from the overnight spit-roasting, ravishing. Bleached skies, burning pavement, traffic.

I walk in the shade whenever possible munching on a hot cheese pastry, all the way to Muzica. They have some synths on display there and I go to play them a bit. If I think of a new song I need to repeat it in my head until it’s a mantra, not to lose it. If I also play it a few times, with luck my fingers will remember it later. Plus, with this tour being so packed, I need the practice.

They kick me out fairly rapidly today and I end up in the Lipscani area. It’s been infested by yuppies for a few years now but manages to summon a bit of decrepit charm, like a tired, ill smile: some shops that sell light bulbs and worn out furs and second-hand wedding dresses and drilling machines and lurid ‘sexy’ knickers and weird vodka bottles and plastic shoes and technicolour busts of Vlad Tepes with blood spilling out from the corners of his mouth.

They should be able to put these little gems to death soon, replacing them with chain shops selling trendy trainers or antiques. Gentrification reminds me of of Fellini’s 'Ginger and Fred'. Most bucharestois seem to abhor whatever is left un-gentrified of this area in deep ways; their sore imagination sees it as a bubonic pustule where Rroma pullulate in dilapidated buildings. In fact, the most respectable members of the local bourgeoisie hate the city altogether. Poor Bucharest, an odalisque growing melancholic and lascivious as she waits in the worn-out velvet and silk boudoir, lost in solitary erotic fantasies, reading French Vogue, eating syrupy baklavas and sipping muscatel. Ok, make that Baileys.