Romania Special Part 2: Iasi. Dirty or not? 

Oh, absolutely, there are many horrid places (I've put pins on the map for my next trip to Romania, whenever that'll be), but almost without exception they tend to be outside cities themselves. I actually used to live in Iasi many moons ago but left in 2010 and since that time the city has completely, entirely transformed for the better, I almost don't recognise it anymore. That being said, there is lots of illegal dumping at the outskirts of the city, on top of many rural communities having inadequate or non-existent waste disposal infrastructure. It's a sad state of affairs, tbh. Having said that, the disastrous littering and fly-tipping issues inside the city, that we're witnessing over here in London just don't exist. The difference is absolutely shocking. For your viewing pleasure: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xke1PR6S_ro.html

Tot din Iasi sunt si eu. Am fost in vizita.

@@KeepItCleanLondon Atunci bine te-ai întors! Sper că ți-a plăcut cum s-a schimbat orașul! Eu sunt pe moment student la Cluj și îmi place că de fiecare dată când mă întorc văd ceva nou și frumos!

Yep, they're a constant of this world.

That's a good one! Other people have told me that they find these videos relaxing and they watch them in order to clear their heads, so I absolutely encourage everyone who needs background noises to watch them, for whatever reason they find useful or meaningful.

I've never been to Chisinau, but who knows, maybe one day.

It probably won't happen, but never say never. No idea of when I'm going to Romania again.

That’s hardly an excuse. Take your rubbish home/put in a bag if you can’t find a bin or it’s overflowed. But even better simply to not buy so much stuff which contributes to the whole problem

@@radishpinky i agree but also the population is like 20x iasi.

​@@Genevasplaytime Big cities are always taken at their "full size" when compared to smaller cities and public administrations often use this argument to justify how much harder it is to manage everything and why they're falling short on expectations. Myself, I find that a somewhat misleading approach. While not fully independent, boroughs have a high degree of autonomy and are led by individual Councils. Take Barnet, as it has the same population (400k) as Iasi. So a better comparison would be Barnet vs Iasi, not London vs Iasi (or any other comparable city, I'm just giving an example). The areas of a big city that truly can't really be compared to smaller cities are central areas and areas of special interest. I'd say all other areas, when taken separately, are fair game for comparison and scrutiny against smaller cities.

@@KeepItCleanLondon Well said however the behaviour of foreign citizens when living in another country changes as proven by your videos.

​@@Genevasplaytime To a certain degree that is true, but not entirely in the sense that it's usually portrayed, that is foreigners moving in and suddenly "becoming" disrespectful or changing their behaviour for the worse. That is just not true, if you're disrespectful in another country, it's almost an assurance that you're also disrespectful in your own country. The actual problem is a bit more nuanced: what people perceive as normality and/or the failure to adapt to another paradigm of public services. Take, for instance, separating household rubbish. We all know some people have no idea how to separate recyclables or even that they have to, because it's not a thing where they're from. Or another simple example is littering. Someone might be used to having a bin every 20 meters on their street, like you saw in this video. Then they move to England and they find there are no bins on their 10-minute walk from their house to the bus station. That is a sudden change of paradigm and some people adapt, but other decide that "since there are no bins, I am forced to litter". It is the wrong mentality, but it's seldom driven by malicious intent. And at the other end of the spectrum are people coming from places with little, if any, facilities to properly dispose of rubbish, and for whom such "fancy" environmental things have never been parts of their lives, so they'll carry on acting as they perceive "normal" to be. Lastly, of course there are people who are just lazy and they're the worst of the bunch. But yes, the failure to adapt is indeed an issue, and the bigger the cultural, educational and administrative differences versus someone's place of origin, the harder their integration. What does mitigate some of these obstacles is having at least an infrastructure able to counter as many scenarios as possible and the UK, for the most part, still hasn't fully figured out what infrastructure changes are needed to cope with the consumer trends in contemporary Britain. The public infrastructure has stagnated or insufficiently advanced for a long, long time. Because this is not the Britain that older generations knew from back in the 60s or 70s. We are very much living in a consumerist paradise now; for instance today we use more plastic than any other country in the world, apart from the US. Yet we have no deposit return schemes for anything. In London we have more takeaway shops than can be found in the vast majority of cities, generating a deluge of rubbish every day. But we have fewer bins and street cleaners than an insignificant city in bloody Romania. The expectation that whatever worked in the 70s still works today is something I see many older residents have, and they usually pin it directly (and exclusively) on immigration, as if changing consumer trends over the past 30 years had nothing to do with the terrible state of things. I'm not excusing immigration altogether, like I explained above it does carry a degree of responsibility, but it's not the main one. The sooner the government realises that we need to prioritise the rethink of waste management to fit this consumerist age, the better. They can start by allocating money for local councils to install some bins...

Not sure what you mean by that. The quality of the urban roads? The associated infrastructure (e.g. street lighting)? I didn't notice anything about urban roads worth highlighting in this video