BUCHAREST

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17076, 27 January 1916, Page 8

BUCHAREST

THE PARIS OF THE BALKANS. (By JOHN REED AND BOARDAIAN ROBINSON in the “Metropolitan.”) Aly window, high up in the dazzling Neo-French facade of the Athenee Palace Hotel in Bucharest, looks down on a little park smothered in almost tropical luduriance of trees and flowers. Eastward, as far as one can see, red tile roofs and white stone copings pile up, broken with vivid masses of trees —palaces and mansions and hotels of the most florid French style, with an occasional Oriental dome or the bulks of a Rumanian' Greek church. It is like a pleasure city built by Frenchmen in the south, this little “ Paris of the Balkans,” whose Rumanian name, “ Bucureshti,” means literally “ City of Joy.” At sunset the town wakes from the baking heat of a cloudness summer day. The regular evening, parade begins. An endless file of handsome carriages, drawn by superb pairs of horses, trot smartly by ra both directions along the twisting, narrow street. The coachmen wear blue velvet robgs to their feet, belted with bright satin ribbons whose ends .flutter out behind, so you can guide them right or left by pulling the proper tab. There are public cabs, owned communally by their drivers, who are all members of a strangb Russian religious sect expelled from their own country. V

Each carriage is the setting for a woman or two.women, rouged, enamelled, and dressed more fantastically than the wildest poster girl imagined by French decorators. A dense crowd overflowing, from, the sidewalks into the street moves slowly from the Atheneu! up past the King’s Palace to the Boulevards and back again—extravagant’women, and youths made up like French decadent, poets and ARMY .OFFICERS IN UNIFORMS OF PASTEL SHADES,

with much gold lace, tassels on their boots, and caps of baby blue .and salmon pink—colour combinations that would make a comic opera manager sick with envy. They have puffy cheeks and rings under their eyes, these officers, and their cheeks are sometimes painted; and they spend all their time riding up and down the Calea Vio toriei, the principal and smartest street, or eating cream-puffs, at Capsha’s pastry-shop, < where all the prominent and would-be prominent Bucarestians show themselves every day, and where the vital affairs of the nation are settled. ' What a contrast between the officers and the rank and file of the army—strong, .stocky little peasants who swing by in squads to the blare of bugles, excellently equipper and trained! The numberless cafes and pastrv-shops spill tables out on the side-walk and the streets, crowder with debauched-looking men and girls all got up like chorus girls. In the open cafe gardens the gipsy orchestras string into wild rhythms that get to he a habit like strong drink; a hundred restaurants fill with exotic crowds. Lights flash out: Shop windows gleam with • jewels and costly things. ' To look at it all you would imagine that Bucharest was as ancient as Sofia or Belgrade The stone weathers so swiftly under the hot, dry sun, the oily rich soil bears such a mellowing ,abundance of vegetation, life is so complex and sophisticated—yet thirty years ago. there was nothing there but a wretched village, some old churches and an older monastery which was the seat of a princelv family. Bucharest • A GET-RICH CITY, and modern Rumanian civilisation is like that —a mushroom growth of thirty years. The fat plain is one of the greatest grain-growing regions in the world, and. there, are mountains covered with fine timber: but the mainspring of wealth is the oil region. There are oil kings and timber kings and land kings, quickly and fabulously wealthy- Tt costs more to live in Bucharest, than in New York. There is nothing original about the city, nothing individual. Everything is borrowed. A dinky little German king lives in a dinky little palace that looks like. a French prefecture, surrounded by a lossy little pompous court. The Government is modelled on the Belgian system. Although all titles of nobility except in the King’s 'immediate family were abolished years ago, many people call themselves ‘• Prince’’ and “Count,” because their forefathers were Moldavian- and' Wi»llachian 'boyars; not to speak of the families who trace their descent somewhat obscurely from Emperors of Byzantium! Rumanian literature is founded on French literature—recently, too, on German. Poets and artiste and musicians and doctors and and poiiiicans have all st.uded in Fans —and of late Vienna. Berlin or Mumch. A surface coating of French frivolity covers everything— without meaning and without charm.