Obnoxious Austrian and Irritating French in: “Out of Balkans”

22nd August, 2 pm. This Austrian fellow stops me in the street to ask if I want to buy one of his home-made postcards ... pressed flowers and satin bows... charming, straight out of the Salon of Dull Domestic Decorative Arts. He’s selling them for 5 Euros each to sponsor his trip around the world. My, some of these overstuffed Western-European youth are tank-full of aplomb; they’re the 9th avatar of cosmic self-entitlement, the galactic embodiment of self-righteousness, infernal shamelessness incarnate, a 7th circle diabolical discharge of self-importance. Is he really expecting Romanians to finance his ego-tripping by purchasing overpriced debris Clinton Cards would find too insipid? I imagine for a second what would happen to a Romanian doing the same in the streets of Vienna, then tell him to go shit in his Tyrolese hat, buy a beer from a 24h corner shop and drink it in the shade, lounging on the steps of a flirtatiously crumbly house.

Across the road is this posh ‘Crama Domneasca’ restaurant; Dracula founded it, like every single restaurant in the country, and a French is circumspectly eating an overpriced salad while talking to her 2-year old daughter, gravely, like a professor debating the philosophical legacy of post-structuralism with a colleague. Her attitude towards the whole ignominy of having to be in Bucharest reminds me of Meryl Streep in ‘Out of Africa’: the compassionate plantation owner. It’s a classical role: enduring with patient grace exile among the primitives; keeping contempt and disgust at bay by focusing on the amusingly exotic quirks of the place; maybe even kindly educating them savages. And, of course, this one is savouring the unjustifiable attention colonizers receive over here as if it is her right of birth. I stare at them ostentatiously from behind my shades for a while, spreading my legs so that she sees my dubious pants leering through the crack in my jeans. I have big thighs - did I mention that already? - so my jeans always rip between my legs. I like to think I made her a bit stiffer as she walks out of the Crama, dragging her obtuse offspring behind.