Bucharest, 8th of May 2026, somewhere between yoga and Pinot Noir

The idea for this journal came to me on my way to yoga, walking my almost daily route down Calea Victoriei. People annoy me sometimes, but the sheer variety of human specimens is too fascinating to make me choose a different street.

Maybe I misinterpret half of what I see. But walking down Calea Victoriei without inventing stories about people would be almost impossible.

On Friday evenings, the sidewalks turn into a social experiment. Terraces take over most of the space and the whole street starts feeling like one very long pub you have to navigate through in a constant slalom between tables, people, and groups walking in perfect horizontal formation before stopping abruptly for absolutely no reason.

Right in front of me was a very young couple. She was holding her purse and, with the same hand, his pinky finger. Just the pinky. I couldn’t decide whether he simply refused to offer more than one finger, or whether he had quietly become an accessory coordinated with the handbag. Either way, it felt like the relationship version of “give them a finger and they’ll take the whole hand.”

For me, walking on Calea Victoriei during the weekend is an actual challenge. I walk fast. The concept of “going for a stroll” is completely foreign to me. I move like someone who always has something better to do than simply exist on the street.

Around me I could hear every language possible. Americans, French people, Israelis — the latter always somewhere around the Radisson and the casino. For reasons I cannot explain, I also noticed ballet flats are back. Which probably means I need to dig mine out from whatever dark corner of the closet they’ve been abandoned in for the last twenty years.

I stop in front of the Max Mara window and imagine what I’d buy if I ever won the lottery. A completely useless financial exercise, yet surprisingly relaxing.

At the Military Circle I turn right onto Regina Elisabeta, and that’s where a different urban sport begins: cyclists aggressively ringing their bells while weaving through pedestrians on an already overcrowded sidewalk.

The city was alive and buzzing. The girls all looked strangely identical: long hair, overfilled lips, the same tense expression, as if their entire future depended on whatever was happening that night.

I remember that feeling perfectly well. Then I remember life went on after every “important night,” no matter how dramatic it all seemed at the time.

There was a queue outside Mayfair 39. I’m not sure whether people were there for the pancakes or for the illusion of a London lifestyle. Main demographic: ages sixteen to thirty and an exhausting amount of enthusiasm.

 Further down, the same chaos outside Gelateria Romana. Queues, noise, people happily eating gelato. For a few seconds I remembered the beer ice cream I had years ago at the Christmas market in Nuremberg.

After surviving the entire urban obstacle course, I finally made it home.

 To a glass of Pinot Noir. My precious.