Vivid Diary June/July 2005

Diary
Paul Dinescu

June/July 2005

I never consciously planned for things to turn out the way they did. Sometimes I feel like a little boy whom Santa Claus has given more than he dared ask for. Would it be hypocritical to say that I deserved what I have? Not at all. Now – by chance and out of the blue – Andrew Begg has asked me to share my thoughts with Vivid’s readers, so please bear with me and forgive any inconsistencies.

I’m Romanian, in my early forties and middle class, and like many of my contemporaries used to dream of living the life of an opulent landlord – the kind with an adversity to everything related to work. The fact that I am, instead, hardworking, honest and a taxpayer might not do much for my street cred. Some people might even call me a bit on the stupid side, something opposite to a smecher, for working hard and paying taxes. However I’ve managed to survive this far, and I am probably too old to change my habits, as boring as some people might find them.

Chance, or luck, has played an important role until now. Firstly, I’ve had the good fortune of living through, witnessing and understanding the historic moments of our time – such as communism and its spectacular fall, the emergence of a totally new society, a new class of citizens who share a desire to strive and prosper. I have a happy family: an ever loving wife, two daughters and a cat, a dog and two turtles. I have a good career with a great employer, and loyal, reliable, entertaining friends. I have the chance to experiment with the new and varied, such as building houses for people less fortunate, skiing in the Dolomites, Chinese food, and Linkin Park (introduced to me recently by my daughters). I can see people growing and developing spiritually faster than ever and I can access accurate information very quickly.

Isn’t it great that warm weather has finally arrived? I watch, fascinated, the bugs going about their business in my back yard, knowing that they too show a continuation of life, a regeneration of the life cycle. That feeling of rebirth is certainly exhilarating, the same kind of vroom you might get when driving a 300 horsepower Mustang. Cogito ergo sum. Since I was a child I’ve loved this time of year. Spring can inspire you to move mountains. A childhood dream, that of ‘doing something constructive’, had for many years been relegated to the deep subconscious and never amounted to more than frantic hammering in the garage or shovelling the garden. This year I decided to change that and do something on a larger scale. As did my friends Henk and Emmeline, and my wife Roxana. We all agreed that there was no better time than the present to start a business of our own, and put our heads together to see what we could come up with.

Of course, this was several months back. Once we had made our minds up, the project took on something of a life of its own. Just two months later we opened Grand Café Galleron, a cosy coffee shop in downtown Bucharest. This is very exciting, as I never saw myself in the position of a business co-owner. How did it come to that? Well, a combination of luck, Dutch initiative and vision, Romanian consideration for taking due care with how the money was invested, Austrian architectural values thanks to our landlord, Dutch savoir-faire in the culinary arts and tons and tons of hard work. By hard work, I just mean hands-on, sleeves-up, getting in there in the evening after work at the bank, and on weekends.

Without wanting to sound self-righteous, the end result speaks for itself. I’m proud of what we have achieved, but like all businesses it is now up to the management and staff to make it successful. Have you been there yet? I’d like to invite readers to step in and have a look. The spirit of good old Albert Galleron – one of the country’s greatest architects, the designing wizardry behind two of Bucharest’s landmark buildings, the Atheneum and the National Bank – will be pleased to see you there. And we are interested in knowing your impressions, thoughts, criticism and suggestions at www.grandcafegalleron.ro where you can also find a complete picture gallery.

Something I have noticed increasingly of late is the subtle role small businesses play in reviving the essential look of a city. Anyone who has been to Prague will know instinctively what I mean, yet that same sense of historic and cultural heritage and sweeping architectural landscape all but disappeared in Bucharest throughout the Orwellian nightmare that was communism. But Bucharest also has a vibrant business life that is too often hidden behind a lack of respect for basic urban design rules. We all agree that the city needs a facelift to bring back the glamour it once had. Such inspiration will never come from city authorities, whose responsibility is to provide infrastructure and to keep bureaucracy at tolerable levels. The city still has many beautiful buildings that richly deserve to be restored to their former splendour, and it is a pity that the majority are left to slowly deteriorate. Part of Romania’s identity will die with them, and the city will remain the prisoner of concrete dwelling areas such as Militari, Drumul Taberei, Berceni, and Balta Alba, all thrown together without a hint of vision or imagination. Some areas of downtown Bucharest are simply overrun with cars, there are others in which the roads are still terribly potholed and broken, others still where you won’t see a blade of grass for ten square kilometres. How did it get to this, and why are city councillors not acting? The time has come to delve deeper into the way the community, the street, the neighbourhood is organised and managed. Citizens deserve to have more influence over their urban surroundings, so as to ensure a cleaner, healthier community for themselves and the generations that follow. Some of the responsibility for building a better community needs to be transferred from city authorities to citizens’ groups.

To this end, I am enthused by the objectives of the recently launched United Way of Romania, a Romanian-American foundation whose mission statement reads that funds will be “distributed to professional and reputable not-for profits in areas including health, education, and services for disadvantaged groups such as the elderly, underprivileged children, disabled or ill persons, victims of abuse, and the unemployed.” Though it might derive from the same root, the community is not a communist concept. It is a fragile thing, and we cannot afford to neglect its nurturing any longer.

A personal statement isn’t complete without adding a word or two about one’s daytime job, which for me began in 1995 when ABN AMRO was at its very nucleus in Romania. I began there enthusiastically but with the corresponding fear that things would not work out. Ten years later that initial enthusiasm remains as strong as ever, and there may be several more grey hairs on my head now – but the fear dissolved many moons ago. It is a source of great pride to look back and consider the development of the bank, from those early days to the outstanding performances it records today. There have been many memorable moments in the past decade: I vividly recall, for instance, the first foreign exchange transaction we wrote, and the first bag of dollars that I had to deliver all by myself to a partner bank. The first staff Christmas party, for which I had to buy and transport in my own car 300 kilograms of oranges. The first branch we opened outside Bucharest, in Timisoara. And the young people who comprised part of the initial team, who have grown into strong, solid bankers at ABN AMRO, or elsewhere in the Romanian banking system, or even in banks around the world. Above all I am proud to have the longest employment contract with ABN AMRO Romania and to have contributed to our wholly deserved reputation as being a bank of the highest possible quality.

Ten years is a milestone. Looking forward I can see the challenges ahead, I can see a new team of people replicating our initial success into the rapidly growing consumer banking business. I am confident about the future. With the convergence towards EU membership comes the feeling that fewer things can go wrong. It is amazing to think that Romania will soon become part of a united Europe, part of a world-class superpower. There have been some massive changes taking place in Romania in the last ten years, and we need to be prepared – above all, mentally prepared – for the huge changes that will occur in the next ten. Thank you for bearing with me and have a wonderful summer.

Paul Dinescu is Vice President of Commercial Banking at ABN AMRO Bank Romania.