Bored Panda works better on our iPhone app
Continue in app Continue in browser

BoredPanda Add post form topAdd Post
Tooltip close

The Bored Panda iOS app is live! Fight boredom with iPhones and iPads here.

Life Under The Streets: Drug Addicts And Orphans In Romania Find Homes In The City Sewers
User submission
16.5K
260.2K

Life Under The Streets: Drug Addicts And Orphans In Romania Find Homes In The City Sewers

ADVERTISEMENT

Bucharest, the capital of Romania, is a beautiful city full of graceful architecture and rich with history. But beneath its beautiful streets is another world, buried there after the fall of Romania’s brutal communist dictatorship – a world of sewers and forgotten orphans.

This underground network of sewers is home to the city’s lost and forgotten souls, most of whom have HIV and a quarter of whom suffer from TB. The sewers, and their king Bruce Lee, were the subject of a recently released Channel 4 News film.

Bruce Lee, this underworld’s king and primary drug dealer, is a complicated figure. He keeps the underground supplied with a metallic paint called Aurelac that they inhale to get high and with other synthetic drugs. However, the fearsome orphan and former street-fighter also pays local gangs for protection and protects other young orphans who have fallen through the cracks. Social workers say that Lee protects the youngsters from sexual predators and that junkies are far less likely to die when Lee offers them a warm place to sleep.

The sewers are remnants of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s grand plan to centrally heat the city. Although this plan didn’t work out, the ruined infrastructure gave the orphans who were forgotten after the fall of his dictatorship a place to live.

Source: dailymail | Image credits: Radu Ciorniciuc

Bruce Lee enters his underground sewer kingdom underneath Bucharest

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-1

ADVERTISEMENT

Lee provides these sewers’ denizens with metallic paint and synthetic drugs – their only comforts

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-4

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-2

ADVERTISEMENT

This orphan and former street fighter takes care of the underground community’s youth

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-17

Most of these people have HIV, and a quarter have TB

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-9

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-7

ADVERTISEMENT

Their residents are junkies and orphans who fell through the cracks after the fall of Ceausescu’s dictatorship

ADVERTISEMENT

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-6

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-5

The sewers offer junkies and street kids a warm and relatively safe place to stay

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-3

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-19

Social workers say that Lee also protects children from sexual predators

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-12

ADVERTISEMENT

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-14

Lee pays local gangs protection money to keep the sewers safe

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-16

ADVERTISEMENT

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-15

The sewers and tunnels are leftovers from Ceausescu’s attempt to give Bucharest central heating

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-13

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-10

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-11

underground-sewer-life-bruce-lee-bucharest-18

Image credits: Radu Ciorniciuc

260Kviews

Share on Facebook
Dovas

Dovas

Author, Community member

Read more »

There is a beast with heart of cold stone that dashes like lightning, shreds flesh from bone. // Bewitched by this beast, I fell to my knees. My mouth babbled madness and mumbled soft pleas. // I stared down the ravenous, gnashing dark maw of a cute cuddly kitten with yarn in its paw

Read less »
Dovas

Dovas

Author, Community member

There is a beast with heart of cold stone that dashes like lightning, shreds flesh from bone. // Bewitched by this beast, I fell to my knees. My mouth babbled madness and mumbled soft pleas. // I stared down the ravenous, gnashing dark maw of a cute cuddly kitten with yarn in its paw

What do you think ?
Related on Bored Panda
Related on Bored Panda
Trending on Bored Panda
Also on Bored Panda