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Published: July 25th 2006
People's Palace
It's gargantuanEd:
Now, if you arrive at an airport and a taxi driver meets you at the gates, and tells you he can take you to town, and grabs yours bags and starts walking away, without giving you an opportunity to say a word, surely alarm bells start ringing. But oh no, not to Matthew. He happily followed this strange man and obediently stepped into his 70’s Dacia (Communist era car brand) with no door handles and rather dodgy-looking meter. Despite my objections, I too get into the car and we are taken into town at the cost of nearly ten times the normal rate. This was our welcome to Romania, one of the last pillars of the Soviet Union who only as recently as 1989 revolted against a megalomaniac dictator (Ceausescu) and is now desperately hoping for entrance into the European Union.
We arrived to meet Katherine and Greer at our apartment which we made home for the next four days. The apartment was in a dilapidated 50’s public housing block, but thankfully you wouldn’t know it from inside and it was in a great spot in the middle of the city.
Bucharest is still a city unprepared
People's Palace
Far far back for a wide shot... for tourists. It has plenty to do and see, unfortunately there’s no information centre or sign posts that indicate the how, where and when. Nonetheless, with our trusty guide, and the odd friendly local, we found plenty to see.
First stop was the People’s Palace, one of the many grandiose projects which Ceausescu squandered millions of Romanian Lei to feed his ego whilst the country starved and suffered in poverty. All you can really say about the edifice is that it’s Huge. It’s the second biggest building in the world after the Pentagon (Ceausescu didn’t even hesitate to bulldoze one sixth of Bucharest to build it). Over 700 hundred architects worked on designing the 12 storeys, 3100 rooms, 60 galleries and 64 reception rooms. Inside it’s quite gaudy and brimmed with tacky 80’s décor. It’s impressive, but you can’t help feeling all it really represents is a painful reminder of the sufferance of the Romanians at the hand of the crazy dictator.
After then we headed down the replica Champs Elysee walking past fountains and gardens, making our way to the University Piata in search of a tour for Transylvania. University Piata was the site of a mass
Inside the Palace
One of the many 'grand' stairs rally where the people revolted against Ceausescu and many students were killed in the process. Sadly, there are still visible bullet marks in a number of the buildings.
After exploring the city that afternoon we headed to Amsterdam Grand Cafe, a funky bar with the cheapest cocktails I’ve yet had in Europe. After a few drinks we decided to head home and gear up for a big night in town. After checking our trusty lonely planet guide, we decided to start at Club A, the local uni bar. The bouncer at the door said something to us in Romanian, but as tourists do, we nodded, smiled, and headed straight for the bar and dance floor. After 3 hours of drinking, dancing, and becoming best friends with the locals, I was grabbed by Greer who said we had to leave now! Behind her was the bouncer, who had recruited another security officer and promptly escorted the 4 of us out of the club. To this date it’s still a mystery as to what we did that got us so unceremoniously kicked out.
Despite this, we hopped into a cab, and headed out in search of another club. Our taxi
View from the Balcony
The Dictator moved a city to get this straight road dropped us off at Club Bavaria, and no sooner had he left when Greer realised she left her camera in the cab! After standing in the cold for about 30 minutes hoping he would return, we gave up and headed home, Greer obviously in tears.
The following morning, Matthew convinced us to head out of town to the grave site of Vlad the Impaler (whom Dracula is based on) which sits in an island in the middle of a lake in Snagnov, about an hour outside Bucharest. The guide suggested we could take a maxitaxi which would cost about 1 euro each way.
So off we headed on our quest for Snagnov. The maxitaxi was cheap for a reason. It’s filled with gypsies and they fit about 30 people in a 10 seater van. I can assure you there were some rather interesting odours! We explained to one of the passengers that we wanted to get off at Snagnov, and they seemed to recognise the word and nodded. All seemed to be going smoothly until after an hour she got off without a word. Nervously, we sat there looking confused. She must have told the other passengers because
Church
Russian influence? 10 minutes on the whole bus yelled ‘Snagnov!’ and the 4 of us got off.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, Romania is not catered for tourists, so expecting a sign that said ‘welcome to Snagnov’ was a bit too much to ask. So there we were, four Australians, on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, with no lake in sight. After laughing at the situation, we wondered around until we came across some locals. After explaining we wanted to get to the lake, they pointed in a direction, and off we went.
After walking for what seemed like ages, we finally reached a body of water. Unfortunately, it turns out the boats that take you across to the monastery and grave site only run in the summer!!! So after asking local after local for any other viable option, we had to concede that we were not getting to that gravesite or monastery (which we’re told is beautiful!) Luckily, the journey home was a little simpler (given that we actually knew our way this time!).
It was still early when we got back to Bucharest, so we decided to check out one of their larger parks.
Random Building
Near University Square We came across a Luna Park of sorts - except it was more like a site where rides come to die. It struck me that these people probably don’t have to pay insurance, coz those rides did not look safe at all. We decided to head home to get ready for dinner (and got stuck watching The Notebook! Such a sad movie!!). Our guide recommended La Mama Restaurant for cheap and hearty meals. It wasn’t wrong; Matthew and I shared a grilled party which was divine (all for 10 bucks).
That night we decided to head straight home and Greer spent the night calling 50 taxi companies to offer a reward for the return of her camera. Unfortunately, she had no luck.
The next day we started off early for our tour of Transylvania. Our guide was a local who was filling in for the usual guide, although he knew enough to keep the tour interesting. It turns our Romania have their own share of alps, and the drive through the Bucegi mountains was gorgeous, passing fields and snow capped mountain after snow capped mountain. First off was a stop at Sinaia. Here we visited an Orthodox monastery,
Locals
Outside Amsterdam Cafe but more interesting was the Castle of Peles, home of the longest serving monarch in Romania, King Carol I.
The palace on the outside was beautiful, with gorgeous gardens and turrets with the mountains as a back drop. However, it was nothing in comparison to the inside which was amazingly decorated. Room after room we were led with our mouths open in astonishment. The wood work finishing was perfect, and each room was themed with such detail it left us quite impressed.
Afterwards we headed over to Bran, to see Bran Castle, which is often confused as Dracula’s Castle as Vlad lived there once. There is no actual Dracula castle (it is just a story after all) but it doesn’t stop Romania selling it as its hottest tourist destination, so the place is packed with Goths making their annual pilgrimage. The castle itself was a bit of a let down, guess visiting the Castle of Peles may have had something to do with that!
After spending a couple of hours there (being such a touristy town we waited over an hour to be served for lunch!), we headed over to the town of Brasov.
Brasov is a
Amsterdam cafe
Enjoying some cocktails cute little town with a funky feel and much more vibe than Bucharest. It has an open square packed with locals having a beer. It so happened that there was a free concert on that afternoon so there was folk dancing and music. There was also the mandatory cathedral in the centre of town, but we skipped it for ice cream and some sun-soaking :-). If I had to do it again, I would plan to stay one night is here instead of the whole time in the capital.
We got back into Bucharest at around 9pm and had all intention to head out again but were so exhausted we ended up just grabbing maccas and went to bed! The following morning we had an early flight back to London and left the girls behind (they were a bit smarter and booked a flight in the evening!). Overall, Romania was great and another piece of the Europe puzzle that needs to be seen to make sense of it all!
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Elaine McCarron
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Your Greatest Fan
Hi it's only me, great to read about your experiences yet again . Only 78 more sleeps. Love Mum xxx