Walking the streets of Bucharest and of a whole bunch of other cities/towns/communes/villages I have reached this conclusion: Romanians love their garbage so much that they have a hard time letting it go, so hard that they have to practically live in it every day.

We spit on our streets, we urinate on them or worse, we throw papers, food, cigarette ends, plastic bottles, other types of bottles, clothes, condoms, shoes, everything is good to throw in each corner. Each little amount of land that does not have building on it and round the clock guards is the new trendy garbage stashing place…

And it is in our blood already! If a girl is giving people flyers in the city centre, then on a 10 square meter area you will find differently folded versions of that particular flier thrown away. In a supermarket, if they give glasses or small plastic bottles of free drinks, you will then find them left lying around everywhere…

One would think this behavior is caused by the fact that we do not have enough garbage bins. Oh, we do…Lots of them. Well, half of them are destroyed by good-willing people and are constantly replaced (in high exposure areas) or not… So you might actually do the gesture of throwing something into a bin and find it will still get on the street…

So who cares that the air around you smells like expensive perfumes, both men’s wear and women’s wear…Just look down for a second and you will get a feeling of the real atmosphere, full of garbage, spreading a strong, disgusting smell.