Environmental NON-stewardship in Bucharest

Remember my recent post about all the tree-planting at Titan Park? Well, some areas of Bucharest are going in the opposite direction. For my last two long runs (today and last Saturday), I've ran to the huge Parliament Building which we talked about in earlier posts on my blog and the family blog last year.

These past two weeks however, the scenery at the Parliament building has taken a turn for the worse due to a Formula 3 car race that is to be held on May 18-20. Right now, they are building this huge (and I really mean huge, no pictures will do it justice) conglomeration of temporary bleachers all around the building. It's basically a temporary NASCAR track that is completely built over the course of several weeks (for a 3 day event) and taken down over the course of several weeks every year. Of course this completely shuts off several major streets for traffic making the normal nightmare-ish commute even worse for a large section of the city. Ah yes, sounds efficient doesn't it? Unfortunately it gets worse.

The bleachers are only temporary and will be gone in June - so that's tolerable I suppose. However, according to news reports, the mayor of Bucharest Sector 4 (Vanghelie) came up with a stroke of genius to improve the view of once-per-year race spectators. (FYI, the city of Bucharest is divided into 6 sectors that look like pie pieces and has no less than 6 different mayors - the efficiency of big government never ceases to amaze me).

Anti-Arbor day in Sector 4

So what was Vanghelie's great idea to improve the view of these spectators for 3 day once-per-year event? Yep, you guessed it...Let's just cut down all the 20-30+ year old trees which grow along the sidewalks around the race route!

From HotNews.ro: "The Cultura magazine claims Bucharest District 4 mayor Vanghelie is the one to have ordered all trees along the racing route cut down in order to improve the view of the spectators. He allegedly promised to replace them as soon as possible, but that is unlikely as such events will start all over again next year."

Fantastic! Forget about the 3 million other people who live in Bucharest for the other 362 days of the year. You know, the ones that actually inhabit the dustiest capital city in Europe and one with some of the smallest amounts of green space - we have a car race to put on and 40-800 Euro seats to sell!

"The amount of dust in Bucharest is over ten times larger than in other European capital cities, one of the reasons being the disappearance of around 60 per cent of the green spaces over the past 16 years, ....‘The quantity of dust in Bucharest is 260-280 tons per square kilometre. No such situation can be found in any other capital in Europe where there is under 20 tons per square kilometre’....The representative of the Association of Environmental Experts mentioned that the life expectancy in Romania is among the shortest in Europe, pollution being one of the factors influencing that" (Source article)

Yes, I know I'm on the "soapbox" and you guys really want another race-guessing contest. All I can say is "soon".

End of rant - back to running

Running has been great. I had two good Saturday AM long runs in row of 9.5 and 11 miles and I'm getting my shorter weekday runs done too and the crazy gypsy lady who lives under our building has been cheering me on (she calls me something in Romanian that I think means "sporty guy"). In additon, the weather has been nearly perfect for running as much of Europe is facing drought conditions this Spring.

Last Saturday's long run was memorable for the lack of stray dog activity, but today's run made up for it. This morning I saw literally dozens of strays and had to stop and face-down a particularly nasty one near Parcul National. The face-down strategy is working well. Even when they are showing the teeth, these dogs are actually really scared. They are mainly looking to attack you from behind and I haven't let them do that. Besides, I'm not afraid - I'm still rabies proof from December.