The stale slice

You eat this slice only if you are on the brink of starvation and you also got a tough stomach... There are some areas in Bucharest where you simply don't have to go to, unless you really have to.

We "boast" with Ferentari as being the cursed place where no one ever goes to and those who have gone have never returned (like Harry Potter's Cursed Forest or like Bronx :)) Of course things area bit exagerated but still you might need to know that it's not the safest place to go to.

Ferentari is considered to be the worst of all but Rahova and Berceni are not necessarily much better places to visit let alone live in. It is true, the neighbourhoods are... inhabited :) but there are people that have been living there for a very long time and got used to the place. They all know each other.

It is quite difficult for a foreigner, even a Romanian, to put up with the "atmosphere." This is where you are most likely to get robbed or attacked in the street, where apartments are periodically broken into and you fall asleep to the most horrific gypsy music you can imagine, manele :)

On the other hand, living in such areas also implies living very far from... the rest of the city. It takes a lot to get from the outskirts to the center of Bucharest especially if you don't have a car and most of those living in the sothernmost part of the town don't.

Further on, you will definitely hear no good of Pantelimon, Salajan and Colentina - the last one is officially the most rated in the Police agenda. Colentina is where the Chinese district is located - "The Red Dragon" by its name - and it is quite common for Chinese merchants to be robbed, to fight one another and cause all sort of scandals. That is why people often call the Police to cool things down.

Ferentari remains, nonetheless, in the off-record top because there are not many that go there anyway, the place is almost entirely inhabited by gypsies that usually don't call the Police and the Police on the other hand avoids getting involved.