I love going on demonstrations. Growing up with hippie parents, we used to go on them all the time when I was a kid. While other kids went to McDonalds at the weekend, or spent their Saturdays watching Ghostbusters II on video, I was out there with Mum and Dad protesting about nuclear power, or the Thatcher government, or the destruction of the rainforests.

When you go to a demonstration in Britian, you know exactly what to expect. There’s always a lot of people will beards selling obscure left-wing newspapers that have a circulation of about three. There’s always a lot of students, usually led by a plump girl with a megaphone and an unnecessarily confrontation attitude. Then there’s the middle class contingent, out on a march to ease their consciences, probably carrying children on their shoulders in lieu of a placard.

A few weeks back, I had the chance to witness a mass demonstration in Romania , in Piata Universitate on the day of Basescu’s impeachment. It was absolutely nothing, NOTHING like a demonstration in the UK.

The first thing that struck me was that almost everyone at the demonstration was absolutely, certifiably, without a shadow of a doubt, very odd. I don’t think this has anything to do with the kind of people who support Basescu. They are, after all, the majority of normal, right-thinking Romanians – it’s just the nature of the people who tend to show up at demonstrations. It was as though someone had opened the gates of Spitalul 9, and told the patients “Run free, my beauties! Run free!”

First, there was the inevitable aurelac contingent – essential, it seems, for any public meeting. Do political parties bring them in on special busses? I suspect they were the first people Basescu called up when organising the demo -“Yeah, we’ve got a really important public meeting. Do you think you could all show up? Wearing no shoes? And with those bags of paint? Fantastic! See you there!” One particularly ingenious and rather more respectable looking aurelac had managed to get hold of a press pass. This meant that you started giving what you thought was a serious interview, only to be asked “o mie de lei, domnule...”

Second, I was accosted by a strange woman, who figured out that I wasn’t Romanian. “Do you understand what this is all about?” she asked me. I assured her that I had a fairly firm grasp of Romanian politics. “I don’t think you do,” she told me. “This doesn’t concern you.” I assured her that Basescu’s suspension was important for the whole of Europe . “No.” She insisted. “It’s not.” She looked decidedly unhappy that I’d had the nerve to come and support her cause.

Third, there was the man who tore up the banner we’d brought along (“Expats for Basescu”). I was starting to feel as though us foreigners were really unwelcome, until I realised that the poor man had no idea what the banner said, and assumed the word “Ex” meant that I was against him. Clever. The second, slightly more amusing banner we made (“Acid Casualties for Basescu”) was understood by even fewer people, and inevitably ended up being waved around by the aurelac contingent.

There’s only one thing worse than the weird people at demos, and that’s the sinister people. The men talking on phones, wearing leather jackets. The people milling around, asking you whose side you’re on, spreading strange rumours. The bald man, who looked like the result of a misguided attempt to cross a human with a pit-bull terrier, who tried to instigate the crowds to block the traffic, and later appeared to be part of the organisers… Who are these people? Whose side are they on? Good guys or bad guys?

Ok, I admit it, I did meet quite a few pleasant and intelligent people, who said some extremely perceptive things about the political situation. However, by that stage I’d given up entirely, and automatically assumed that everybody who tried to speak to me was certifiably insane. For this reason, the quotation that ended up on page three of a national newspaper with my name next to it, wasn’t as coherent as it could have been – at the time, I was probably wondering whether the interviewer was going to try to ask me for some money.

Demonstrations shouldn’t be like this. They should be fun. Just look how much fun they were in the sixties! Next time I go on a demo, I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that it involves 1) sixties chicks wearing unfeasible amounts of mascara 2) nudity, and 3) large doses of psychedelic substances. That’s what I call a demo…