"Bucharest must have been a beautiful city once. It is now in a state of mouldering decay. The big houses on leafy boulevards look as if they have not been touched by a paintbrush for sixty years. The yards are choked with weeds. The pollution is stifling and it has stained every building in the city. After decades of oppression, however, the people of Romania now have a democracy, and the government is encouraging significant legal reform. Today's students are engaging and fluent in English. Their confidence bespeaks an optimism that Romania's democracy will succeed and that Bucharest, once heralded as the Paris of the Balkans, will flower again."