Walk with me - through the streets of the past
‘What are you doing here?!’ The cat’s unspoken question is legit - for I don’t have the slightest idea what I’m doing in this neighborhood. Technically, part of the city I’ve lived all my life, yet these are streets I’ve never walked.
I’m practically in the center of Bucharest, with its busy roads and fancy stores, yet this place - only few hundred meters away from a major boulevard with a subway station and a SubWay shop- seems to exist in a different time. Ruins of a past when these streets were vibrant, full of shops and the houses themselves looked decent.
The whole area is a mix of old and new - and it’s just a question of luck that some buildings got a complete makeover and now house coffee shops, a hair-dresser that seemed quite expensive or nice airy acting school my son is attending at the moment, while others are home to poor people, many of them undoubtedly squatters. I don’t scare easily, but I must say I didn’t feel comfortable walking around in this neighborhood.
No, the dog waiting in line at the store had nothing to do with my feeling of unease!
To give you an idea of to separate timelines meeting in this place. The building below, the one in the middle, in a pretty bad shape used to be a fur shop, that’s what the sign says and only a certain class of people could afford real fur. (My Mom still has an ancient fur coat which was moth-eaten even back when I was a child, yet she thinks it to be valuable and is considering selling…)
Just a couple of houses down the street is a completely different kind of store, selling rock T-shirts, goth clothes, metal-studded leather wrist bands. It’s probably @honeydue’s favorite shop in the whole town. (It was closed, unfortunately).
Walking through the area I discovered something I’ve never seen in this town, shoes dangling from the power lines, a modern tradition I’ve heard of, but only vaguely.
Apparently, this urban tradition occurs in Europe, North and South America, but there’s no clear explanation for what it means. Some say shoes dangling means that drugs are sold in the area (I wouldn’t be surprised!) or that they might be a memorial to a friend who died in gang-related violence. It might be a symbol of bullying, the victim’s shoes being tossed in the air and left hanging out of reach. The explanation I liked best is that it’s way of marking the loss of virginity or an approaching wedding. Better than drugs and gang wars, in any case.
Maybe it’s not as good as wandering the street of some famous city and taking pictures of historical buildings, but a Steemian’s got to do what a Steemian’s got to do. Why spend an hour in a stuffy room waiting for my son’s class to be over when I can enjoy a beautiful autumn day and take some pictures!?
Tahnks for reading
I for one am soooooo happy that you took us with you on a really cool #walkwithme. Your surroundings may not seem like much to you, but it's alllll new and wonderful for me!!! Even when people take us on walks in their suburban neighbourhoods and they say, oh this is so boring, Not To Me!!
I've never seen that before. The graffiti was interesting, I love the shots of the shoes on the wires too, been a long time since I saw that irl...
Love the pics of the old architecture. It saddens me to see graffiti staining those once venerable walls. What history is hidden within the boundaries of those streets. It would be interesting to have a year by year snapshot of the same view over the course of a hundred years or more.
First time am hearing a myth behind Dangling shoes, just thought they wanted them to..you know, dangle.
Pics are lovely. One of my favourite motors is "Get up, get outta the house, go somewhere and do something". It'll lighten up even the most boring days
They did have a waiting room, but it felt way to peopley for me...