Halfway down the Danube

It's really strange that such a thing happened! I mean, surely everyone else noticed it too, and if no-one bothered to pick it up, then shame on them (and good on you for picking it up :)

Things like this could happen anywhere and lately people are becoming like that - it's sort of like the tragedy of the commons - they're sharing the playground, therefore they think to themselves "Why should I be the one to pick it up?" and then they wait for everyone else to do it, but everyone thinks like them, so the rat remains! I don't think it's a Romanian-only problem though... incidents like this probably happen just as frequently in other parts of Europe.

In today's world, it seems everything is everyone else's problem. And that attitude is not what the world should be about. I think society works best when everyone approaches things with a positive attitude, and if they can help someone, if they can be nice to someone, then why not?

It's great to see though, that there remain people who do a good deed to help themselves and help others around them!

At the end of the day, life's a struggle, and if we can get through that struggle by helping each other, then it will be better for all of us. That doesn't mean self-sacrifice or anything, it means helping each other for mutual gain. And the playground situation you described is a great example of that.

Lastly, I'm glad you enjoy Romania! It's really great, as a Romanian, to read your blog and all your experiences that you've had with Romania. It's a good gauge for us to see what others think about the country.

You found a dead rat in the playground, and until you picked it up nobody did it. Then you wrote about it on Internet. Very nice.

So what you want to say is, romanians are nice, they have a beautifully country, but look... It is like saying "You now I have nothing with homosexuals, but ..." (there was a joke in Seinfeld about this), or "I like black people, but ...", or "You know I like germans, they are civilized, clean, probably a little much too obsesed with purity and order, you see we just have commemorated the Dachau eliberation ...".

In some, or near to, playgrounds in US I have seen quite a number of rats, its true alive, some dead squirrels (once I put one of thesse in trash myself), dead birds and plenty of homeless people carrying their belongings in shopping carts, and sleeping in cardboard boxes or on the benches. I love America, nice people, beautiful country, but ...

Mm. So you mean, basically, that we aren't allowed to write about bad things happening to us in Romania if those same things could, possibly, feasibly, happen to us somewhere else in the world as well. Only genuine, proprietary Romanian badness could be talked about.

And then, if we find some real unique Romanian badness to write about, we cannot mention that we like Romania at the same time.

Did I get this right?

You should've seen the national road from Constanta to Mangalia after May 1st. There was a dead animal every couple of kilometres.

That rat there might be just a macabre joke made by some older kids. It is more likely that the rat died somewhere else and was brought there, then it fell dead right on that spot from where you picked up. I remember, when I was a kid too, some kids were having fun doing things like this (with dead cats). The whole thing is to watch and see who is the sucker that touch it first (or the one who cannot stand it any more), and see also the faces of those cute little girls, or of their horripilated mothers.

No, you don't get me right. You can write anything you want, but be a little cautious when rushing to teach other people lessons. And that is what you are doing in the last sentence. The hypocrisy has a good side too. Besides, if you read romanian newspapers, or magazines (like "22", "Dilema",...) you will see there is no shortage of self-criticism, and issues like this are supra-acknowledged. Any time you can find yourself in position to be taught a lesson, too.

I have to agree with Marian. It sounds to me like a typical playground sick joke, not unlike the one I described in the "Really for geeks only" thread.

Hm. Shifting grounds in a discussion is bad form. The attack Marian launched on us was not about how the rat came to be there in the first place, as this was not what Doug's post was about. Marian did say exactly what I paraphrased in my reply to his comment.

Marian, saying that leaving dead rats lying around the playground is bad, is a good lesson to teach anybody. Romanian or no. Nobody should pass this up. It's unhealthy, potentially dangerous if you have any idea of little boys. Ignoring it is BAD.

What kind of hypocrisy are you accusing us of, exactly?

I really didn't get the reasoning behind Doug's second-to-last paragraph. Perhaps I have become blase about odd lapses in civic-mindedness while living in NYC (or rats), but it seemed like a non sequitur to take this occurrence and derive some sort of general statement about Romania from it.

To take a less obnoxious example, say you're riding the subway, and someone transfers from one car to another and leaves the door open. It won't shut, and the noise is deafening. No one is getting up to close it, even though the car is not particularly crowded and there's no danger of losing a seat.

Me, I get up and close the door. Usually I am greeted by smiles and the occasional "thank you" when I do this, or at least a nod.

Would I write, "You know I love New York, but... that's basic", implying that New Yorkers are passive indolent noise-lovers, at least compared to me, a virtuous Midwesterner?

I mean, I used to think that. But now I think that would be a very very incomplete view of New Yorkers.

The working hypothesis I have about New Yorkers now is that they have so much other crap in their lives that subway noise barely registers on the annoyance scale. I diffidently offer this as an explanation regarding Bucharest, should Doug see another dead rat at the playground.

Carlos

PS Why am I awake?

Hm, bad analogy, Carlos.

This is not about a sheer annoyance. This is about a potential health hazard to your own child. Registers on a different scale, to be sure.

Also, this is a post about a trend we've been noticing, namely the rather obvious negligence of other parents on playgrounds. Follow the links in the post, plus we can supply countless other examples. They were just not as bad as the rat. (Although, that rusty nail was pretty bad, and those shards were, and that one see-saw...)

And yes, many New Yorkers are obnoxious people who don't give a damn. What exactly is the surprise here?

Well, I could go on about the dog feces in NYC -- not as bad as it can get in Europe, to be sure -- and the broken glass, but I thought I'd start small.

I don't pick up dog feces on the sidewalk in NYC. But I am disgusted by them, and I worry that children might encounter them, and get God knows what sort of parasite. It's right on the sidewalk where children play, for goodness' sake.

Does that make me a hypocrite? Probably. I'm still not gonna pick them up. I'd much rather pick up a relatively fresh dead rat.

Yet I am sure that most of my fellow New Yorkers, who also are not picking up someone else's dog feces, are not obnoxious folk with no civic pride. It's just below their radar.

You might think that playground safety would be on everyone's radar, but I remember the playgrounds of my childhood in safe, sane Wisconsin. Kids tearing up asphalt to use as rocks; the chains on swings being taken down and used for whips, games of limbo, or tightropes; monkeybars that did injure a lot of kids; unbalanced rickety merry-go-rounds; and so on. A lot of tetanus shots from those parks.

At the schools, it was perhaps worse: kids playing on the gas meters, jumping across the deep concrete stairwell to the basement boiler room, climbing up the two-story cyclone fence. Nooses and hog-ties made from jump rope. And then, of course, there were the pee, poop, bug, and dead animal incidents.

Did the good people of Wisconsin of the 1970s not care about their kids? Were they blind to something as basic as giving children a safe and sane place to play? Were they being obnoxious; did they not give a damn?

Or was it just below their radar?

This is getting a bit... strange.

Dog crap: wildly variable from city to city. Bucharest is pretty bad; Budapest (by way of comparison) quite good. Budapest has pooper scooper laws, at least occasionally enforced.

In any event, a very weak analogy to the dead rat situation. One encounters a hundred dog turds a day in Bucharest, while that was my first dead playground rat.

Unsafe/unsanitary playgrounds: Romania's today are worse than the playgrounds of my childhood, in New York City and rural Maine. I'll be mildly surprised if 1970s rural Wisconsin was worse than 1970s Central Park.

It's sort of irrelevant, though, because I don't compare Bucharest to anything in the US or Germany. -- I do compare Bucharest to cities in the region: to Timisoara, Budapest, Ruse in Bulgaria, and most particularly to Belgrade. Timisoara (for instance) has playgrounds noticeably nicer than Bucharest's. Belgrade's are very run down, but clean.

-- Old, rusty, poorly maintained playground equipment doesn't bother me much. Fixing and maintaining stuff costs money. Romania isn't a rich country. I have to watch my kids a little more closely on the playground, checking for rusty nails and whatnot; that's part of life here, like potholes in the roads.

But ignoring obvious problems that can be fixed by a single ordinary person in a minute or less... picking up a dead rat isn't a rich/poor thing. The intervention required is minimal; getting rid of it took me ten seconds. The payoff is large. So, why me, and not someone else?

N.B., I'm not taking this occasion and drawing a general conclusion. We've lived in Bucharest for two years now. We're mostly past the general conclusion stage of things. (Or at least we are when it comes to playgrounds. We spend a lot of time in playgrounds.)

I see this as simply another version of the water-on-the-slide story that I blogged about over a year ago. Versions of that have been happening to us, on playgrounds here, ever since... in fact, that exact same water-on-the-slide thing happened twice more. (And all three times, nobody used the slides until I went over and cleared the water off.)

This was different in degree, which is why it made me angry; but not in kind.

Doug M.

OK. Your initial post came off very much as "this is my general conclusion about Romania", which is why I was so surprised. I mean, I know you guys (understatement) -- you're about as far removed from the Ugly Expat stereotype as you can get -- and yet it still struck me as very de haut en bas. And if it struck me that way, imagine how Marian must have felt.

So my examples were chosen to show that this sort of thing can happen anywhere, by picking two places very dear to me. My attempt to pour oil on the waters, which is why I generally prefer to throw gasoline on the flames instead.

"My attempt to pour oil on the waters, which is why I generally prefer to throw gasoline on the flames instead."

Heh. Let me help.

I'd say Doug is on to something general, but it isn't exactly what he thinks it is. I just pictured Jen taking the girls to a local park and encountering a dead rat. (I say Jen because I myself would much more likely be found in the yard with them, though given our locale you're quite likely to find a dead _something_ back there anyway. But I digress.) I don't know that "under the radar" is quite right. The rat might register quite strongly. But given that she will probably have to run Alex to school or dance or gym or the doctor or Shop-rite or God knows what else within the next 15 minutes, and that she has a non-walker in her arms at the moment, and that she won't be near a bathroom for a couple of hours, and...etc, etc. What I _suspect_ will happen is that she will deal with immediate threats (say a rusty nail sitting at the bottom of a slide) while avoiding going near anything that will complicate life any further (say, mucking around with a probably dead..and of what?...rat.)

So you are probably also correct in that it's a question of just how harried everybody is. And perhaps in also says something positive about Romania, insofar as it means that all those parents are _becoming_ so damn busy, since I'd associate that with prosperity. And kudos to you, Doug, on taking a minute to handle it despite your own busy schedule. Hope the little f*r didn't have any ticks on him, though.

Disclaimer: I haven't actually asked her and I doubt I'll remember in two hours when I get home, so take this as an indication of my own psychology more than anything else.

I thing that your posting is simply arrogance. You really don't believe that "the basic thing" is a self-evident truth even for your Romanians readers? If the answer is no, then you assume a superior status and teach us a lesson. Thank you! If the answer is yes, then why are you doing this? To have something that leads to racist remarks just good to be placed after that but.

What we have here it is actually just lack of understanding of the social behavior of big cities inhabitants. There is a difference between small town people social behavior and big city people social behavior. The latter is more complex, and sometimes strange, especially in times of crisis, and is less correlated with the individual people set of values. It is not about Bucharest or Romania, or Balkans, it is about the big cities. Last year I read a story about somebody in Osaka who lied dead in the street for several days, until someone went to check out what was going on. Stories of people falling on the N.Y. sidewalks with other people passing by apparently unperturbed are not so uncommon. I heard once of a old lady tripping on a bad weather day at the entrance of a Paris Metro station, when she raised up, a little stream of blood started to flow slowly form its head and all the people nearby were just rushing to catch the next connection. I can continue with stories from Philadelphia if you want. Some West, North, or South Philly stories, or Camden N.J to compensate for the lack of a filthy East Philly. By the way right now there is a dead pigeon on the sidewalk in front of the College of Physicians. It was there when I came home today, yesterday was there too, and given its current state "beyond repair", I doubt someone will pick it up soon, lets hope for the garbage collection people. (Maybe it died because of West Nile virus). Tomorrow I can make it a photo if you want, we can exchange for some dead dogs from Bucharest.

But the thing is, if you would have seen some strange, odd, behavior of, let say, New York people, probably your reaction would have been a little raise of the shoulders. But you are in Bucharest so you quickly draw conclusions and feel free to teach us some hygiene lesson. Just a small town guy lost in a big city. A South-East Europe big city.

Bucharest during the communist years was the most traumatized city of Eastern Europe, as you can contemplate now. Still some neighborhoods preserved a certain charm, and it is still safe (here in Philadelphia I deplore the fact that I cannot let my eight year old daughter to go out unsupervised) and there is always something interesting to do there, and not too expensive too. It’s filthy? Yet it is. We know about it and acknowledge our own shortcomings? Yes we do. Just read the newspapers. It is getting better? Yes it is. If you don’t like it, then you are just unhappy with your current assignment.

I thing that your posting is simply arrogance.

Wait, I thought we were just hypocrites.

What we have here it is actually just lack of understanding of the social behavior of big cities inhabitants

Tch. I'm from New York.

Bucharest during the communist years was the most traumatized city of Eastern Europe

Tirana.

Anyhow, you can't have it both ways. First there's nothing wrong, it's just another big city; now there's a problem, but it's the fault of Communism.

-- I've noticed before, this tendency of expatriate and diasporid Romanians to be very truculent about Romania. The people who still live here are, generally, much less defensive.

This might be worth a post of its own some time, if I ever get around to it.

Doug M.

Hello HDTD!
You have offended my fellow romanian Marian and now he launched his missiles against America... against germans... against human rights... against his own dignity... against everything. I wonder why he did not atack the new Pope... So, he saw dead squirrels and homeless people...he saw shopping carts(he said they're full!)...he saw cardboard boxes(but he did not say what name brands were they: Sony? HP? Dell?),BUT...he did not see my face, after a huge rat, scared by the traffic, ran INTO my foot! It happened în "the heart" of my hometown city of Bucharest, across the street of "Luceafarul" movie theater, long time ago. Now, I can easily see that the times are changing, BUT...my people aren't! They don't seem to be shocked at dead rats on a playground, the huge piles of trash behind the blockhouses where they live, kids playing WITH dead cats or human feces on the streets of...Capital City of my country! Nothing else than...ordinary landscape...

When I said that hypocrisy has a good side too. I wanted to imply that sometimes it is just better to be a little hypocrite, something that the sophisticated urbanites know very well. For instance at the question "What do you say about my kids?" what answer it is more appropriate, a sincere one or a hypocrite one.

If the Tirana was more hurt by communism than Bucharest, it is debatable. Definitely Tirana lost lots of good development opportunities, but what happened in Bucharest, I believe, it is quite a different story. You should have gone to Phenian, instead. The People's House building, the Socialism Victory (over the city) boulevard (now Unirii) and its surroundings, everywhere that now it is an empty space or a recently developed space, in that place lied a big chunk of old Bucharest, houses, villas, old churches, a monastery, 19 century public institutions. And lots of other historical buildings were taken down in many other places of the city.

I can have it both ways. It is a big city with a day to day sense of communion reduced as in many other big cities, and things were made worst by communism. There is a paradox here?

Forms such as I like this people, but... are standard ways to introduce racist, derogatory statements. Are not used by rednecks who do not need such niceties, are used by educated people that know that it is not fashionable to make controversial remarks about other people. In U.S. or in Europe a public person saying something like what you have said seriously endangers his career. Why you should say it in Romania and go way with it. Just because romanians are more tolerant people, and they do see the nuances in such circumstances? Because they are "mioritic"? (If you don't know ask some educated Romanian to tell you what Miorita is, is pronounced like Me-o-ritza).

Your really can't admit that there is a certain likelihood that your final statement may have the potential to hurt the feelings of some people --- and not just few truculent expatriates --- and express some regret and make sure that was not your intention? I have noticed here in US that people are finding very, very difficult to say sorry. It's like pleading guilty in a trial. In some cultures saying sorry is just a way to detension a situation and quickly move on. Carlos attempted to help you see things in a different perspective, but in vain.

P.S. Gelule tu nu ai priceput mare lucru.

Um. Might I call an injury time-out here? (Ow, my ankle!) A chance for all sides to step back. Because I think I am seeing people of good will who have inadvertently found each others' sore spots.

Instead of the real comment that I wanted to post, I will instead give you a link to a website that I just found. I think it is hilarious...

http://www.snowcrest.net/donnelly/piglatin.html

You're right, Carlos! Thanks!