My “Midnight Summer Dream”…

Part 1 

           
      My apartment in Bucharest is probably one of the most quiet places that exist in this world… this is why I woke up during the night, sweating and scared by the noise… I checked all around the rooms, but nothing seemed to have changed. Was it a real sound? Or something I dreamed about? I laid on my bed… Didn’t want to switch on the light, but I turned left and checked the alarm clock. It was 01.00… I fell asleep at around 23.30, “dead tired” after an exhausting day (I didn’t really manage to relax during the summer of 2009…). But, wait a minute… what was this sound all about? I tried to think… I had a dream, a long one… so probably this sound was part of it… a dream around midnight… during Summer… like Shakespeare’s “Midnight Summer Dream”? Not exactly… I turned right, to the window and started thinking, collecting the parts of my dream…

My dream…
1999… 400 dollars / month
      “I was a foreigner in my dream, a Greek… I came from a small town of my country directly to Bucharest, so as to study. This was in 1999. I was very proud of myself, as my family managed to find the necessary sources, so as me to relocate. This was not easy, you know… Thank God the cost of life in Bucharest was very low, so I was living quite ok with my 400 dollars per month…
      The majority of people were unhappy though. Many were feeling uncomfortable, due to their economic status. I was still at my first months here, but I felt disgusted watching other foreigners provoking the locals, spending hundreds or thousands of dollars in one night… treating everyone around them without respect, ready to “buy” whoever complained. Ready to “buy” his self respect, like they were buying silence, sex, appreciation, “safety”, “fun”, intelligence… Maybe because I was poor as well, I didn’t like the idea and very soon I found myself being a very good friend with several Romanians and only 2-3 foreigners like me.
      After a couple of months, I decided that I wanted to buy my own car, but as my father didn’t have money to send, I started working. I was selling medical equipment, walking door to door for this… I was happy…

2000… First 12.000 dollars
      The year of Millenium! How proud I was… I collected my first 12.000 dollars, when I succeeded to sign a big contract with some doctors in a hospital. A contract which made everyone happy, including me (nice dream). I felt rich! All my Romanian friends came up with 100 different proposals on how to spend the money. The main idea was: “We buy bottles of champagne, bring also many girls and we party. Preferably in a luxurious place” and it had plenty of versions…
      Was it because I didn’t like the girls they proposed? Or because I realized that I would pay for too many people? Maybe because I went to Greece for some holidays and I saw in a magazine some luxurious hotels (and the comparison of those with the “luxurious” options I had in Romania made me laugh). I decided that it didn’t worth… So, I saved the money! But I didn’t want to keep it on me… I bought a car with 2.000 dollars, nothing special, just something to move around the city. I also decided to invest into properties…2000… My first investment
      10.000 dollars was a lot of money at that time… At least for me… So, respecting my efforts, I didn’t want to make a mistake. I started checking adds on newspapers… visiting real estate agencies. Unfortunately the level of professionalism was below zero in most of the cases, while I was feeling that the prices will never go up… People were telling me that the prices were stuck lately… I was also afraid to reach the expensive offices of some few big companies. I tried many others, there were more than 100! Most of them were just searching for quick money… I felt disappointed.
       I turned to my friends and asked them to help me in my search. Some “URSUS” beers and many “fresh” Greek (sexual) jokes inspired them to “scan” all the market for me. Market I said? What market… in most of the cases, I finally ended up talking with someone who was the initial owner of the property, knew nothing about business and he was asking enough money so as to solve his current issues, no matter which were they.
       I could buy apartments of 2 rooms, or some lands close to the city. I chose the second option and finally purchased 4.000 sq.m. in Mogosoaia, investing 8.000 dollars. More or less, I felt comfortable with the owners I met. Many serious people, open hearted, some of them looking directly at your eyes. Sometimes I felt like donating something to them, as they really needed my investment, or any amount of money. In Mogosoaia, in Balotesti, all around the city and in most of the areas inside it, people had low profile and used their properties so as to improve their lives. Not a lot, but enough so as to go on…

(tomorrow the second part)