You say Roumania I say Romania!

Goodness - I am on a creative roll this morning. There has been a bit of cultural talk over at Dick and Istvanski's over the last few days about Romania. Here are a few of my pictures from my weekend visit to Bucharest in June 2004.

The wad of notes on the table was what I got out of the cashpoint when I typed in £20. The currency was buggered and had so many noughts after it even the Romanians had trouble keeping up with adding up stuff in shops etc. Put it this way - there wasn't enough room on a normal calculator to calculate the total of a few simple items.

View out of taxi window. It had Aer Conditionat and you had to get in quick as the taxi driver didn't want to upset the temperature balance and let any hot air in!

Main drag. I had to go to a 'mall' to find something to wear for an end of shoot party. When I got there there weren't any clothes shops - just lots of people sitting around eating icecream and a plethora of plastic shoe and meat and chemist shops.

Up the road from the mall - bottoms on the side of a building. I took the photo and then started humming Queen's 'Fat Bottomed Girls (make the rockin' world go round)' to myself. Then I hailed another Aer Condiionat.

Serial Killer Chicken downtown....bloody Coca Cola everywhere ('ahh - coka cole - symbol of free West as Mr Balowski (Alexei Sayle) once said so profoundly in the Young Ones)

View from the hotel room at dusk. Quite grey. There is a lot of grey in Bucharest. Nice parks though and great antique shops stuffed full of art deco gems.

Ceaucescu's monstrous palace/bunker on mega wobbly zoom. The third largest building in the world after the Pentagon. 4600 chandeliers, a thousand rooms and hallways, 300 ft reception hall, nuclear bunker, 12 million pieces of marble, hideous.

Resting - feet on coffee table.

Thank you - that was Romania from a Sat lunchtime to a Sunday night.