Meet Bruce Lee, king of Romania's tunnel underworld

You can travel to the heart of the EU from the station in Bucharest but our journey is just a few meters. O n the surface the newest member of the club has worked hard to redefine itself but there's another Romania underground. This is the entrance to Bucharest's underworld. By late afternoon outside the station they start to wake up clambering up out of the ground, disorientated. Among them a little boy, Nico. He agrees to send word down that we'd like to meet the boss. This world underground we're told has an overlord and you only go down by invitation. A couple of hours later and we're told he'll see us now. - Paraic? Yeah? - You OK? What? - You OK? Yeah On our hands and knees we pothole into a parallel universe It's the heat that hits you first. The camera lens steams up. Then the music kicks in. If they had a club night in hell it would feel like this. When your eyes adjust you're in the first chamber. They call it the office. These are the lost ones. The children spewed out by the old communist orphanages have had kids of their own When Ceausescu fell there were nearly 50,000 of them in state institutions Almost everyone here is HIV positive, a quarter have TB. They're all making their way to the count. The man on the other side is called Bruce Lee after his street fighting days He supplies the drugs. He calls the shots. Yes please. I would love one. On the cabinet where he keeps the drugs, a photo of the little boy we met outside, Nico. It's not just coffee and cat food on the counter for the equivalent of 50 pence, he sells bags of a metallic paint called oral. A synthetic drug similar to methadone is also on offer and injected. So I think Bruce Lee has asked us to go to see some of the other rooms and they're actually cleaning the corridor ahead of our imminent arrival. Bruce Lee is warming to us time for the tour and farther in. The tunnels were part of Ceausescu's grand design to centrally heat the city now a sweltering drug den. I've never seen anything like that to be honest as this network of tunnels and this is quite an honor I gather. I've been invited into Bruce Lee's room There is bizarrely a twisted order to Bruce Lee's fiefdom. Social workers told us he tries to protect the young ones from sexual predators and that addicts are less likely to die down here because he offers them a sort of safety and a warm place to sleep. So we've just been told that we're been brought to another section of this strange community it's called the hotel and it's basically like a hostel underground. We go through room after room. During the winter months this place is full. This afternoon just a few couples, lying on the artificial grass. Holding onto each other. Bruce Lee talks a lot but the unspoken lines of another story are carved out on his arms. Self-harming from the orphanages and the prisons. He wants to talk about Nico again the boy we met above-ground. He's not from the old orphanages he's the new generation. He says we should meet the woman who looks after Nico with him for that For that though he says we have to go upstairs and out of the top. Oh God fresh air And thus begins the last bizarre leg of the journey. Bruce Lee, his minder and about 15 dogs tramping across Bucharest. Oh above-ground he seems nervous the auralac bag pumping hard. We're going to meet a woman called Raluca. A volunteer running a shelter for the people of the tunnels. As we wait, Nico arrives. It turns out, little Nico is actually 17. His development stunted by the drugs and abuse he has full-blown AIDS. Bruce Lee won't let him inject any more but the silver streaks of aurillac mark him out. We move inside to wait for Raluca in the meantime Nikko talks about his time in hospital last year. Raluca eventually arrives. For her Bruce Lee is a drug dealer with a heart but he's still a drug dealer. Do you disapprove of what he's doing? This strange partnership has worked for least one boy. These are after all the only two adults left in Nico's life. We are a big family and the happiness was many problems but we have a family It's almost night. Time for a last dappled family portrait,full of darkness and light.

Channel: Channel 4 News

Views: 4,990,980

Rating: 4.5304422 out of 5

Keywords: Romania tunnel people, drug addicts Bucharist, Bruce Lee king of the sewers, Romania Channel 4 News, Bucharest tunnels, Bruce Lee, Romania, Bucharest, underground, underground world, tunnel, sewer, 4News, Channel 4 News, Channel 4, news, latest news, breaking news

Id: TwadpGdskCM

Length: 12min 39sec (759 seconds)

Published: Tue May 20 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/johnnycrosshatch]

That dog REALLY hates cars.

[u/aruss88]

I got claustrophobic just watching this

[u/[deleted]]

There's a very similar full-length documentary about this called Children Underground which focuses on the kids living in the Bucharest underground metro. It's worth checking out.

[u/[deleted]]

We were shooting this TV show in an abandoned construction site in Bucharest. And as we were shooting the show, these underground children came out, with plastic bags with paint and looking pretty much like the people in this report.

Because of a technical problem we had to stop shooting for a while, so we decided to go talk to those kids. One of them told us his story - abandoned by parents, living in orphanages and on the streets. He was 14 or 15 at the time.

So I got emotional and said that this wasn't right, that all this world around them is also for them, they just need to want it.. Can't remember exactly what I said, but something on the lines that everything is possible, miracles happen if you try... We talked for maybe 10 minutes in total, then we went back to shooting.

Fast forward a couple of years later, I was coming back home, feeling down for some reason and this young couple stops me.

"Remember me?" - a young man, well dressed, fresh haircut, a normal person.

"No", I said

"We've met at that construction site and you told me something and I've changed.. I'm much better now, I have an apartment, I have a girlfriend and a job. Just wanted to thank you..".

Imagine the astonishment I felt, I had no idea that that was even possible. But it seems even a couple of sentences of encouragement can dramatically change a person's life.

I don't know what happened to this guy after that, never met him again, but that memory still lives on as one of the biggest achievements of my life.

Here's the TV show we shot at that construction site (in Romanian): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC_E7bqTijo

[u/Labyrinthos]

I live in Bucharest, nice to see it in the spotlight! /s

To be honest it's easy to lose sight of how sad their stories are when you see them vandalizing, stealing and selling drugs. Not sure how to start rehabilitating a 35 year-old that has never worked, is addicted to multiple substances since he was 6, is uneducated, etc. By all means, let's rehabilitate everyone, but how? I don't think it's as easy as throwing money at the problem. How would you do it?

[u/[deleted]]

That's some straight-up Fallout shit right there.

[u/Pizzashape]

All I can think about is how much it would smell.

[u/EvenKeelPlease]

Hard to believe that kid is 17.

[u/[deleted]]

10:30. Full blown aids.