Herăstrău Park

Parcul Herăstrău is the best park in Bucharest. If not the most eclectic. It was opened in 1936 and is really split in to two different sections.

One part is Muzeul Satului, Bucharest's Village Museum. It is one of Europe's largest open-air museums.

It's a great place to spend a couple of hours outside as you walk around and see more than 300 buildings representing Romania's rural architectural history. Every region of the country is represented.

There are lots of old peasant houses, with some dating back to the 16th century. Plus barns, churches, windmills, etc.










The other portion of the park contains everything else. There are lots of statues and sculptures, including a giant one of Charles de Gaulle. There is an area for ping-pong, and for skateboarding. You can rent boats and go out on the water. There's even a Japanese garden.



























I had to laugh when I came across the Michael Jackson memorial. First of all, it's clearly new so it hasn't started to crumble like so many of the city's monuments. Secondly, the story goes that while on one of his tours here, he yelled out "Hello Budapest". Wrong capital.

Palace of the Parliament

Palatul Parlamentului, the Palace of the Parliament, is the second largest building in the world, after the Pentagon. Bucharest residents still refer to it as Casa Poporului, the House of the People.

Today it houses both chambers of the Romanian Parliament.

Ceauşescu got the idea for it after a visit to North Korea in 1972. He wanted to house all government offices in one place, in addition to, being his residence. Victory of Socialism Boulevard (now named Boulevard Unirii - Union Boulevard) would be the Champs-Élysées of Bucharest and lead to the Palace. The street was deliberately designed to be 1 meter wider on each side and 6 meters longer than the Paris thoroughfare.

About 20% of central Bucharest was leveled, including 19 Orthodox Christian churches, 6 synagogues, 3 Protestant churches, 8 relocated churches and 30,000 homes.

Construction began in 1984, 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. After the revolution in 1989, work halted for about 3 months. So much money had been invested in the palace that work resumed and it was completed two years later.

This place is massive. It can be seen from the moon. A tour of building lasts about an hour and you only get to see about 3% of the building. During the tour, the guides throw out random measurements of how big it is but it didn't mean anything to me because it was all in metric. I'm getting better at metric but I'm still not so great when it comes to really large numbers like these. So here it goes...

Area: 76,000 m² (~250,000 ft²)
Height: 84 meters (~276 ft) above ground; 15 meters (~50 ft) underground
Length: 170 meters (~558 ft)
Width: 245 meters (~804 ft)

There are 1,100 rooms and each is lavishly decorated. In each room, the ceiling pattern, matches the wall pattern, which matches the floor and carpeting pattern. Almost all of the materials used come from Romania, including 1 million cubic meters of Transylvanian marble, 900,000 cubic meters of wood, 700,000 tons of steel and bronze, 200,000 m² of carpet and 3,500 tons of crystal for the 480 chandeliers. The building is incredible but it's hard to imagine all of the money and materials used for this while the people were starving.

Nicolae Ceauşescu

Nicolae Ceauşescu was the Secretary General of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989. He was the last dictator in Eastern Europe and the only Iron Curtain leader to be violently overthrown.

He was a maverick who often stood up to the Soviet Union. He really became popular, both at home and abroad, when he denounced the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Romania had long been a poor country and his policies made it so much worse for the people.

He wanted to increase the country's population so, in 1966, contraception and abortion were banned. Α 10-20% income tax was imposed on people who were childless after 25. And it didn't matter if you were single or not. Mothers of at least 5 children were entitled to significant benefits. He also made it virtually impossible to get a divorce. So with a growing population and rising poverty, the number of abandoned children, began to grow in urban areas. Orphanages were seriously overcrowded.

In order to build the perfect socialist society, over 11 million people were resettled from private houses in 7,000 villages to apartment buildings in 550 standardised "agro-industrial centers".

Ceauşescu borrowed around $13 billion from the West to finance economic development programs. In the 1980's he began exporting most of the country's agricultural and industrial production in order to repay its debts. But this created domestic shortages and caused extreme hardship for the people. Food rationing was introduced and it was common everyday to have heating, gas and electricity black-outs. The foreign debt was finally paid in 1989, right before the revolution.

Plus the Securitate, Romania's secret police, was ruthless. Relative to the country's size, the Securitate was the largest security agency in Europe.

In 1989, there was a violent revolution in Romania and the government was overthrown. Ceauşescu and his wife Elena fled the capital but were eventually caught, given a show trial and executed on Christmas Day. Footage of the trial and the post-execution were broadcast on Romanian television.

The Peasant Museum has an exhibition of communist iconography. There's really not a lot to see but there are lots of pictures of Stalin and Lenin. It was interesting to me that there is not one word or picture of Ceauşescu when he ruled the country for over 20 years. I wonder if it's because the people have had their fill of the Ceauşescu personality cult. Or maybe he is just so despised that they don't want to think about him anymore.

The BBC ran a show called "The King of Communism" that is pretty interesting. Here's the first part of the show. You can find the rest of the documentary available on YouTube.

©BBC

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.

Czechoslovak Commercials

I should have been studying my Czech grammar but instead I wound up on YouTube. But I don't feel too guilty because at least I was still practicing my Czech. Here is a video of some random commercials that were shown in Czechoslovakia prior to the 1989 Velvet Revolution.

The commercials have a bad 1980's retro feel to them...but oh well.

• The plastic egg containers are still around but I've only ever seen them in clear plastic; not pink. And "No", I haven't tried stacking bricks on them.
• I have had egg on pizza here. It's actually not bad.
• Climatex sportswear is still alive and kicking.
• I've seen flavored syrups in the grocery store but I haven't purchased any yet.
• The "disco" milk commercial at the end is just tragic.

Maria Theresa

Sunday, was Maria Theresa Day at Špilberk Castle. There were people in costumes, some arts & crafts, and games for the kids.

For everyone back home, here’s a little bit about Maria Theresa (1717 - 1780). She was a key figure in 18th-century European politics.

She was the eldest daughter of Holy Roman emperor Charles VI. Due to the lack of a male heir, her father altered the Hapsburg family law so that she could inherit the lands.

She became the archduchess of Austria and queen of Hungary and Bohemia (1740–80), as well as, empress of the Holy Roman Empire. She unified the Hapsburg Empire and is considered one of its most capable rulers.

While on the throne she had 16 children, including Leopold II and Marie-Antoinette.

Public Transit Exhibition

As part of the festival that included Ingnis Brunensis, there was a display of historical public transportation in the city center. I had seen the historic tram before but these were even more fascinating. It looks like the Brno Technology Museum has quite a collection. People here have been getting around via trams for 110 years. The city buses were added 80 years ago. The trams and buses were even running so people could go for a short ride around town. Both the exteriors and interiors have definitely changed over the years!

Jihomoravský kraj

The ČR used to be divided into 27 districts, called okresy. In 1999 there was an administrative reform which caused districts to merge. Since 2000, the country is now divided into 13 regions, plus the capital Prague.

Each kraj, region, has its own elected Regional Assembly and hejtman - kind of like a "governor". In Prague, the power is held by the city council and the mayor.

Jihomoravský kraj, the South Moravian region, is now ten years old and is home to almost 1.2 million people. It is comprised of the southern and central parts of Moravia and it borders both Austria and Slovakia.

The region is broken down further into seven districts. I'm in Brno-město, the Brno city limits.

Street Performers

Today was my first protest experience here. Brno’s town council wanted to get rid of public drinking and begging. So now, you can be fined up to 40 € (~$48) for drinking in public. Fine, whatever.

The problem is that the law is written in such a way that it does not distinguish between begging and street performers. So street musicians can still play but they can now be fined if they accept money. That makes no sense to me.

Lots of performers showed up in the city center today and people came out to show support. I don’t know if the new law will be amended or not, but it was neat to see everyone out and about. Since people came out to support them, it looked like the artists were making more money than they normally do.

In-karta

České dráhy, Czech Railways, also known as “ČD”, has one of the densest railway networks in Europe.

Going by train is pretty convenient, although a lot of my friends prefer to go places by bus. The price of a train ticket isn't too bad domestically. It's not even that bad when you cross the border in to Austria or Slovakia. But beyond that it does seem to get kind of expensive...relatively speaking. I think once you start crossing multiple borders then each country taxes the seat in order to get its cut. The trains must be feeling the pinch from all of the low-cost airlines.

When you buy a train ticket, it is good for two months. So you can travel whenever you want. The tickets are open seating so it's first come, first served. You can pay a little extra and get a seat reservation. The reservation will be for a specific seat, on a specific train, at a specific time. You don't have as much flexibility but you at least know for sure that you won't have to stand the entire trip, if all of the seats are full.

Last week I was able to pick up my In-karta card. It took three weeks before I could go to the main station to pick it up. I paid 990 Kč (~$50) for it and the card is good for three years. The price is cheaper if you're under 26 or a senior citizen. It gives me a 25% discount on tickets and a 50% discount on seat reservations. The discount applies to domestic tickets, in addition to, tickets for Germany, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. The good news is that within the next couple of months my card will have already paid for itself.

As far as train schedules go, the easiest thing is to go to IDOS. Luckily, you can click on the British or German flags at the bottom of the screen to change the language displayed. One thing that drives me mental is that when you look up a route within the ČR, the website displays the cost of the ticket - both the full price and the In-karta price. But if you search for an international trip then you either have to go to the train station, or call customer service, for the quote. Unfortunately, my Czech isn't good enough yet to really talk on the telephone so I end up going to the train station or having a friend my the call for me.

EDIT: I was at the station today, June 5th, and found out that my In-karta discount is good for Romania as well. Yeah!