Bucharest, Romania

This past weekend was my first trip to Romania. The country has always kind of fascinated me. It's the land of Dracula and Nadia Comaneci. It's in Eastern Europe but the people are not Slavs. As a former Roman province, Romanian is a romance language and it sounds like a "funny" version of Italian. I remember, when I was a kid, that these were the "good" communists that stood up to the Soviet Union and attended the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Yet, when the Iron Curtain was coming down, Romania's revolution was the bloodiest. So with a cheap flight out of Vienna, I figured why not go finally see it?

I should have known that something was up when my Romanian friends warned me about how dirty the city is, that I would need to be careful of pickpockets and that the countryside is where is where I should go.

It was hot there over the weekend. Around 95°F and humid. The city's metro isn't really designed for tourists. It was built to bring the workers in from the outer parts of the city. So every tourist stop was a hike from whatever the nearest metro stop was. My poor feet were so sore. Plus there was a lot of dust and dirt so by the end of the day I was ready for a shower...bad!

I had always heard that Bucharest was beautiful...that it was the Paris of the Balkans. And I could see where that was probably the case +25 years ago. Nicolae Ceauşescu, the communist dictator overthrown in 1989, did a number on the city. A massive portion of the city was torn up, including old buildings and churches, to make room for the Palatul Parlamentului (Palace of the Parliament).

Lots of people were evicted and forced to move in to the typical socialist flats. Unfortunately, lots of people now had no room for their pets and the city has a huge dog problem. Something like 50 people per day are bit and my travel guides all said that if bit, just go to the hospital within 3 days for a rabies shot. It's been 25 years already, why is the dog problem still a big deal? I did notice that about ½ of the dogs I saw had a yellow ear tag and the other ½ didn't.

Bucharest's Arcul de Triumf was built out of wood in 1922 to honor the Romanian soldiers who fought in World War I. In 1936, it was replaced with the granite version.

Ateneul Român, the Romanian Athenaeum, is the city's musical center. The 19th century building, located on Benjamin Franklin Street, is adorned with mosaics and frescoes.

Piaţa Revoluţiei (Revolution Square) is where the rebirth memorial is for the 1989 revolution. Most people don't really care for this one. I heard it called "the cocktail olive on a stick".




At Piaţa Universitatii (University Square), I found another memorial to the victims of the revolution. A lot of the memorials I saw were already crumbling in places. Pretty sad considering these aren't even 25 years old.

The Peasant Museum was OK and the Village Museum was really cool.

Parcul Carol I, is one of the nicest parks in the city. Here's where the memorial to the unknown soldier is plus tombs for WWI and WWII.



Lipscani is the historical district of Bucharest. It's where a lot of restaurants and cafés are. But most of the streets are a disaster. Apparently, while doing street repairs some archeological sites were found. So the repairs stopped and the area looks more like a war zone.

Well I can cross Bucharest off of my list of places to visit. I got to see a little bit of the country on my trip to Dracula's castle. If I go back to Romania again, I'll skip the horrible city traffic and head straight for the country.