IN Romania, men go crackers with flowers. Starting on the first of March, at the end of the long Central European winter when the packed black snow begins to melt and the icicles fall like javelins from the roofs, men can be seen rushing around with lilies and peony roses. From students at the university to office workers emerging from the Bucharest underground with their briefcases, or even 70 year old retired men clutching - bouquets of memories, Romanians are highly flower literate. With a blossoming vocabulary they trek across town to greet their wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, girlfriends or lovers.
It is not surprising that a man walking through the market at Bucharest's Piata Amsee from spring onwards should be assailed by flower vendors trying out various combinations of orchids and ferns. An old woman once chased me across the market with a stalk of pussy willows. In restaurants, an enterprising young boy leaves a single rose on your table. Because a man without flowers is a man with nothing to say.
Romania is a swiftly changing society where some men still kiss women's hands and where a language of traditional chivalry hides a considerably more open discourse between men and women. The gender politics of Romania are concealed beneath a hunch of chrysanthemums.
The Hungarian/Romanian tradition is to post flowers on the gate of your romantic target. On the understanding that the gate with the best display of flowers houses the most desired women, fathers and brothers are often known to place bouquets on their own gate for their daughters or sisters. In Transylvania, they not only say it with flowers but go to even greater extremes with a ritual that takes place every Easter called watering the women".
I thought this was some problem with toilet training in Romania until it was explained to me as a very romantic gesture in which women are basically seen as flowers that have to be watered in spring. They sit at home in their houses or their flats on the 15th floor and wait for their admirers to arrive. They answer the door and are then doused with a bottle of perfume. The women scream and giggle. The men chuckle and drink plum brandy. And everybody stinks of bootleg Obsession.
Many of these traditions in Romania are dying out or threatening to become as commercial as our own Valentine's day. But even the casual traveller around Romania will come across layers of history and ancient civilisation. It is a country which has been virtually undiscovered by tourists. Okay, you might not exactly be Christopher Columbus arriving in Bucharest, but the welcome and hospitality are overwhelming none the less. People are still keen to undo the isolation of the Communist years.
Travellers will find very few of the usual things here. There is more to see than Romania's spectacular landscape or its 16th century painted churches. At first, Bucharest seems colourless and devoid of the brightly lit attractions of the modern European city. Everything is slightly out of focus here and after you have seen Ceaucescu's palace or the circular Atheneum concert hall, there appears to be little else to see until you begin to notice things like net curtains.
There must be enough net curtains in Bucharest to wrap around the entire world. Even the driver cabins of trains have net curtains. Cafes, shops, restaurants and hotels are all still shrouded in these elegant cobwebs behind which people sit and smoke in a kind of permanent dusk.
Colour in Bucharest is not always where you would expect it to be. For instance, some women like to paint the area between the eyelash all the way up to the eyebrow. This it not eye make up, this is serious visual arts. As you buy a delicious apple cake called Placirita Mere at Cafe Toro, the woman at the counter lazily shuts her eyelids and you see plenty of colour, from pink to bright blue, aquamarine to brown. Honestly, you think you are suddenly looking into a tropical fishtank flashing with exotic streaks.
My favourite hotel is the Bucharest Hotel. It has a staircase like a James Bond set, ascending away from you on either side like impala horns. The ceiling is like a lunar landscape of craters and giant suction nozzles. Beneath the staircase there is a bar situated in a sort of carpeted swimming pool with floating round tables. The porter wears a spiffing purple uniform and the net curtains must be easily 30 feet long from ceiling to floor. This is the best place in Europe for a haircut. After a full head massage and a half bottle of alcohol poured on your scalp, you come out looking like somebody in the Dandy comic with exclamation marks emanating from your head.
Around the corner from the Hotel Bucharest I once saw a woman wearing a fur coat standing in a glazed in balcony on the third floor. It was not until I saw the same woman standing there again in the same position a week later that I realised she was a mannequin. So there was no point in waving at her. And I could hardly read the small sign at her feet.
The strange thing about Bucharest is that it seems to be undiscovered by Romanians too. New shops and new bars are opening all the time. The main street has a lot of wonderful makeshift stalls selling everything from door handles to stockings. My favourite on Boulevard Dacia sold mostly sweets, Snagov cigarettes, matches, toilet paper and one imitation leather, country and western lady's hootee. The best shop in the gypsy shopping district is a DIY store which has alcohol in one window and tools in the other.
At night, one of the highlights of Bucharest is the Lapteriajazz club on the top floor of the National Theatre. This semi circular bar with its low stage, its concave gallery of photographs and its black and white tiled bar could be the most trendy spot in Manhattan. The fact is that it evolved quite naturally when a corridor at the back of the giant theatre was converted. You can see the garlic fumes coming out of the saxophone and listen to the best version ever of Hey Joe, as well as the hottest new sound in Europe the Turgu Mures stomping blues something like a Romanian cross between Garth Brooks and the Saw Doctors.
There are some extraordinary features of communism left over, like a time warp. New casinos are opening up all over the city in the hope that some executive from the World Bank might stray in and get carried away. One of the old spectacles that remains intact, however, is the cabaret show at the Hotel de Grand Boulevard. Even from the outside, the building survives with crumbling grandeur from an era when Bucharest was one of the great capitals and the Lei was the strongest currency in Europe.
In daytime, this state run hotel has one of the most beautiful interiors, covered by a shabby layer of soviet neglect, with sunken armchairs in the foyer and a large faded poster of flowers behind the reception. The carpet at the bottom of the stairs is threadbare and behind a mauve curtain you discover a beautiful dining room with elegant plasterwork bearing the painted GB (Grand Boulevard) letters in each corner. The place is always deserted and waiters hover around like ghosts in the shadows. At one end there is a stage with a mirrored mosaic front.
I had to come back and see this show. For 5,000 Lei, or little over a pound, I couldn't go wrong. And at night the place was transformed. Apart from the candles on each table, eerily lighting up the few silent faces of men and women in the corners, the place seemed to have suffered a power failure. It was black until the spotlights came on and a man entered in a well worn Elvis costume to do a phonetic version of Are You Lonesome Tonight. The motionless band behind him looked like cardboard cut outs. Then the dancing girls came out wearing blue, see through nighties and thick tights fluffy with age. When their act was over, you could hear them chatting and laughing among themselves behind the stage as the place was plunged into silent darkness again and a waiter appeared like a spook at your left shoulder. Not to be missed.