Bucharest, autumn morning

I love autumn, and today is a particularly lovely day. It's 8.40 here in Bucharest, though my computer is unkindly telling me it's 6.40, and there's a light mist around the trees in the parks. Here on the tenth floor I have a massive view: admittedly more than half of it is hideous Ceaucescu-era apartment blocks, but in this beautiful, occluded, Turneresque light it all looks wonderful.

My computer died over the weekend, but was resuscitated by the geeks in the office yesterday. I felt rather amputated, not being able to get at my emails and the internet. But in a way it was nice. I may end up living as a remote Scottish crofter yet.

In tiresome, spoilt business traveller mode, I have decided that here the Hilton (the old Athenee Palace) is much nicer than the Marriott, where I'm staying this week. It's shabbier, but the staff are simply lovely. When I first checked in there, I made some random comment about what a historic building it was, and the desk clerk came rushing out from behind his desk to show me the salon and ballroom, which are "part of the National Heritage" - fabulous early c20 rooms, gilded and mirrored. It was so lovely - and he was so proud of it and pleased that I was interested. At the Marriott, all you get is an argument about whether you ordered a non smoking room or not. Oh, and the Athenee had Duran Duran staying last week: the Marriott had Real Madrid. I know which I prefer.

What have the Romanians ever done for us?

It was the Big Blog thingy for History Matters on Tuesday. This is what I wrote:

Today started for me at with a cheery rendition of “The Entertainer” on my mobile phone alarm clock at 5am UK time, 7am Romanian time, in the beautiful, historic Athenee Palace Hotel in Bucharest. At that time of the morning its beauty and history is entirely immaterial. I had smoked salmon and fruit salad (not together) for breakfast together with the weakest Earl Grey tea in the history of the world. Why do hotels bring you a pot of water and a teabag, rather than tea? I am seized with an insane urge to rush into the kitchen and TEACH THEM TO MAKE TEA.

After the customarily terrifying 20-minute Bucharest taxi ride (happily, today did not include the wrong-way-down-the-tram-tracks technique which makes me shut my eyes), I arrived at work around 8.20, and settled down to write a list. My Romanian team started to trickle in at about 9.00 (do I sound just a little obsessed with time?). We are helping the client to record all their financial processes for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a peculiarly irritating piece of US legislation. I am the project manager and spend half my life convincing my team that some things are more important than others, and the other half convincing the client’s staff that we are not, in fact, after their jobs.

Romania’s an odd place to work. It’s only 17 years since the fall of Ceaucescu (I have been told that his execution is still shown every Christmas Day on national television. What a change from the Queen’s Speech), and some old habits die hard – owning up to mistakes and delays must be very scary when your parents could have been arrested for either.

My Romanian opposite number seems genuinely astonished whenever I am not physically attacked for saying what I believe to be true: maybe things would be very different if I were not the strange Englishwoman who comes in and bosses everyone around.

I am just about to go into a series of meetings, at which actions will be agreed (and then forgotten): I have to tell one of my team that she is not doing what I asked her to, and that I want her to stop (I loathe these conversations and put them off wherever possible): I will go back to the hotel, swim in the pool, feeling like a polar bear in a zoo as it’s not very big, and then have dinner with a colleague.

I spent the weekend in Istanbul, where I lived 15 years ago: it still felt like a sort of home. In comparison, I don’t feel at all at home in Bucharest, or that I have seen anything of the real city. I shuttle back and forth from office to hotel in a cab, and venture out occasionally to the supermarket (which is, fantastically, called Angst). I mostly meet other people like me, both Romanian and foreign. But the work is tiring and long enough that I accept that I can’t really spend much time getting to know the city. I look at crumbling, beautiful Belle Epoque buildings together with equally crumbling Hideous Epoque concrete blocks, through the window of my taxi. I have become the sort of traveller I despised in Istanbul. And you know what? It may be shallow, but it’s a lot more comfortable.