(OR: Can you buy ashtrays in Bucharest?)

A Bucharest ashtray, yesterday. Note how no cigarette butts are in it: they are all on the city's streets.

We live on the ground floor of a small Bucharest block. It has four floors in all, and while it’s not in the most salubrious or sought-after parts of the city, we’re happy here.

The neighbours are by and large fine. No noise (you can hear a pin drop in the evenings), and absolutely no manelisti, which is quite remarkable given president Traian Basescu’s statement on Monday that 99 per cent of the Romanian population likes listening to manele. (Basescu himself loves manele: and the manelisti love him: they came up with a manea for him during last year’s election campaign). Our block must be part of that one per cent of Romanians who do not like manele.

In fact, all is fine and dandy, with one exception, or but. Or, butts: cigarette butts.

If you walk in front of any block in Bucharest you will see a familiar sight: cigarette butts. Thousands of them. They litter the areas in front of blocks for the simple reason that far too many of the capital’s smokers eschew ashtrays, instead throwing their cigarettes (and their litter in general) out of their windows onto the street below.

The front of our block right now, however, is as clean as a whistle.

Why?

Because the same fellow who throws his cigarette butts out of the window comes and picks them all up again once a week. What you might call a nesimtit de bun simt.

We have tried pointing out that he could cut out the middle man as it were and simply stub his cigarettes out in an ashtray, but such advanced, joined-up thinking appears to be beyond him.

Bucharest’s authorities have once again put the cart before the horse with the appearance around the city of recycling bins, such as those pictured above, which appeared at the end of our street last week.

Now, the debate about recycling per se is one which rages elsewhere. What concerns us is that we think, once again, Bucharest’s authorities are getting ahead of themselves.

I mean, huge numbers of this city’s inhabitants don’t even know what bins are for. And you are asking them to stop and sort out their rubbish before putting into the bin? Do me a favour: first start a ‘put rubbish in bins’ campaign. When that bears a little fruit, and only then, will it be safe to move on to the recycling bit.

Guerilla's Pitipoanca. View the full image and learn Romanian to read the text.

The thinking man’s radio station, Guerilla, this week launched an ‘anti-mitocanie‘ campaign. For those of you who gave up on Romanian a long time ago, mitocanie can be translated as ‘anti-social.’

Basically, Guerilla has launched a campaign against anti social behaviour.

You may remember that the newly elected Labour government in the UK tried something similar back in the 1990s, with the introduction of the ASBO (anti-social behaviour order). Anyone indulging in anti-social behaviour could be served with an ASBO by a judge, and though often the misdemeanours covered by ASBOs are not in themselves crimes (repeatedly playing loud music, unlawful assembly, keeping too many domestic animals etc.), defying an ASBO is.  Technically, if you play music too loud, get served an ASBO, then continue to play loud music, you can do time.

Bucharest could do with ASBOs. The types identified by Guerilla could do with ASBOs.

Offensive sunglasses? ASBO.

Got your cap on back to front? ASBO.

Manele at full volume? ASBO.

Eating sunflower seeds? ASBO.

Spitting? ASBO.

Smoking where you’re not allowed? ASBO.

We could go on…

Don’t know who Alex Galmeanu is, but he has a blog, and a site, which deserve your urgent attention. If I ever meet him I will shake his hand and buy him a drink: these photos of Bucharest in 1964 are (probably quite literally) priceless.

I know not where he got them from (and unless I missed something he is not giving that information away), but I hope they make him if not rich then at least famous. Visit his blog and his site at least.

As for Bucharest circa 1964… How clean it is! How well dressed people are! What fantastic cars! It’s enough to make even progressives like us nostalgic. What we like best of all is the complete absence of outdoor advertising… Imagine blocks without banners the size of Bristol.

Paradise lost…

A while ago, we used to write an occasional column in Ziarul Financiar. Nothing spectacular, just the usual man in the pub rantings of a chippy expat. The archive, should anyone be remotely interested, is here.

Anyway, someone who is interested is someone called Maria-Cristina Serban, who keeps sending us emails with little comments, the main point of which appears to be that Naples is a far worse place than Bucharest.

Here’s last night’s email:

Naples is far more plagued by litter than Bucharest.

That came in response to my article in ZF where I said:

Litter is a problem everywhere. The fact that people should have a little more civic pride and not actually drop litter is a story for another day. What is needed first is a prolonged clean-up campaign. If people actually saw their city clean for once they may think before throwing McDonald”s packets out of their car windows (though then again, they may not…)

So, Naples has more litter than Bucharest. Never said it did not. In fact, we fully agree. But it doesn’t mean that it’s OK to litter the streets of Bucharest.

Or does it?