Our house, in the middle of our street

This is starting to be a habit. Maybe I will begin all my post with lines from popular 1980s pop-songs.

I LOVE THIS PICTURE.

Although neither of these realty gems is in fact mine.

If you've travelled any way outside the tourist loop of Bucharest-Brașov-Bran Castle you may well be familiar with the modern miracle that is the "gypsy palace" some of which may be occupied by a local "Bulibaşă", or as I prefer to call them, Gypsy Kings.

Whilst not typical of most Romanian dwellings, they do go to prove a certain number of things that I have been able to find out about Romanians attitudes to their houses.

For starters, just look how close together they are! If I'd had a decent plot of land like that, big enough to build two houses, I would have thought that it'd be nice to have a bit of space around it. You know, for a garden and what not. But like so many other Romanian houses I've seen, including my own, the building extends as close as possible to the garden fence and you're like to be able to see into your neighbours' property. In this one I reckon they could probably shake hands across the divide.

Yet although you'll not be able to swing a cat between the two houses, you'd have ample room to do so in the corridors. Don't ask me why but Romanians love their big corridors. We've had to stick a sofa in one of ours to try and use up the space. What do you do with a big hallway, otherwise? Answers on a postcard, please.

I'm presuming that the house on the left is unfinished because it is clearly far too sober for Romanian tastes. I'm not making any judgement about this, but the Romanians do love their bright colours! I mean, two such moderately sized homes, with neat and unimposing roofs couldn't possibly stand out unless you painted the windows a violent shade of mustard, could they? (Incidentally, the whole of the outside of our house is painted a similar hue).

So, I think you get the message about these houses (and other scaled down versions) being status symbols. Hence the big satellite dish and double garage, undoubtedly to hold an unyielding gas-guzzler to tower over the plebs in their knackered, old Dacias. Like I said, no judgement, but it does seem strange for me, coming from a background where ostentatiously displaying wealth is seen as vulgar or just plain 'being a chav', to be so eager to bow to the holy grail of avarice. But that's easy for me to say; I was sat at home in my nice warm living room waiting for my cooked dinner whilst watching the Blue Peter "Romanian Orphans Appeal" on telly not so many moons ago.

Inevitably, though, the downside to all this superficiality is the, well, superficiality. In the race to catch up, certain traits such as craftsmanship, attention to detail, and practicality seem to have been forgotten; you need only to look at the photos below to see where the workmanship has not come up to par.

For those of you in need of further elucidation, having been blinded by the décor, that is indeed an ideally placed TV aerial socket for functional kitchen use (i.e. above the kitchen sink), as well as a state of the art extractor fan unit, (a.k.a. a ruddy great hole in the wall revealing woefully insufficient insulation for any country, let alone one which suffers such extremes of temperature).If only the property market weren't so slack at the moment, I think I'm discovering a real talent for Estate Agentese. A.k.a.Bullshit.

As if that's not enough, all the interior walls are also made up of concrete breeze-blocks. Great in the event of an earthquake (Buzău is at the epicentre of Romanian seismic activity, apparently. Why did nobody tell me this before I moved here? At least they only have a bad tremor every thirty. Guess when the last one was….1977. Looks like they were waiting for me to arrive) but not so great if all you want to do is hang a few pictures.

Good thing Hello aren't coming until next month then.