Even if I don't want to bash my native city, I do have to admit that I have a low esteem for it - true, I can't compare with the rest of the Balkans because I've never been into a Balkan city except Bucharest of course - but in comparasing to Budapest, Viena, Prague - not to mention Paris frankly is nothing. Bucharest used to have a french "Paris - like" flavour in the late 19-th century and early 20-th century but today is destroyed - the most of the old part was demolished in communist times while many of the new building have a doubtful taste/style - it will take many many years for the city to recover for real... I've seen that someone posted here something about South America - there have been many sterotypes about Latin America but in reality some of the countries there - most notably Chile has a very decent life standard ....as in the Balkans, South America has huge social contrasts.