Return to the international world

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We seemed to go over 40 hills, across 50 rivers and through realms of dragons and trolls as we and and a brigand of insufferable screaming children slithered across the straight 4 hour track to Bucharest. We seemed to stop forever at each station and arrived into the capital half an hour late. As soon as we stepped off the train at Gara de Nord (often cited as the most dangerous railway station in Europe, but we weren't convinced it was anything too bad) we were harassed for taxi rides. Having been instructed to take a taxi, we found the official rank at the front of the station to be safe, but apparently we were ripped off anyway.

My friend Anne-Sophie, with whom I lived in Prague last summer, greeted us there by directing us to the welcome sight of a bed without wheels. However, we weren't completely shattered despite seeming to have travelled a thousand miles, and felt we needed to shake off the journey, so Anne-Sophie led us off into the vibrant friday night streets of Bucharest, as they were well into the mood. We stayed in one place for one beer - the Romanian beer Ursus has taken second place in our favourite beers on this trip after Soproni.

Bucharest is definitely a party city. Like Constanța and, we were starting to believe by now, the whole of Romania, it doesn't seem to expect tourists much, but there is a lot to do here especially if you're young and like to party, or if you're old and like to stare at banks. I definitely recommend visiting here, despite having heard mostly bad things about the city from other travellers - it is a more difficult city to stick your teeth into than say Prague or Budapest, but it is alive. The bars in the centre were packed and plentiful - the rest of the city was huge, and the few things there were for tourists to see were very sparsely spread out. One really has to know where to go, and trying to piece the different parts of the city together in your head is difficult - every huge boulevard and square seems separate.

The centre of Bucharest is mostly made up of old abandoned houses occupied by Roma, bars, small shops, markets, and then huge majestic looking buildings surrounded by columns, most of which are banks. Aside from a few of the city markets, the only attraction we took in was the Ceauşescu Palace (nowadays the Parliament Building) which Anne-Sophie still hadn't seen, and it was curiously possible to do a tour of despite it being the head office of the government. The security was incredibly strict - we had to leave our passports at the desk and do airport-style metal detector routines before our tour began.

The Romanian parliament buildings were built under the regime of the extremely vain communist tyrant Ceauşescu, who was executed after the revolution in 1989 for human rights violations which make the Czechoslovakian and Hungarian regimes look somewhat benign. He operated in a similar fashion to Kim Jong-Il, wishing to be treated like a king rather than a president, and ordered construction of this huge palace for "the Romanian people" (read: him and his wife) as under his demands the country slipped into a state where there wasn't even enough electricity for every citizen and household appliances like refridgerators were deemed "luxuries", while workers at some factories were enslaved seven days a week to collect the materials for this building - the second largest building in the world. By the time it was finished, Ceauşescu had already been executed, and it was finished for the purpose of housing the parliament conferences, as well as occasional concerts and events.

When visiting every hall we were shown we were told about Ceauşescu's "wishes" for the cavernous rooms - most were for the purpose of "receiving the guests" and he had special wishes for staircases to be constructed in a manner whereby he could walk down them "looking straight on and proud" rather than watching his feet (yep, like I said, extremely vain). The tour ended with the terrace on which Ceauşescu wanted to make addresses to the Romanian people on the long boulevard below - something which he never lived to do, however, his wish was fulfilled by Michael Jackson, who woefully called to a crowd of fans from this terrace on a tour "Hello, Budapest!"

We went afterwards for a drink, then for some shisha in an alleyway which is now the only undercover place in the city which is exempt from the ban on smoking in public places here (something which I believe London REALLY needs to impliment) and then went to meet Anne-Sophie again along with her Belgian flatmate and a few friends of hers from home at a traditional Romanian restaurant for dinner. Romanian cuisine I can deal with, people love meat here as everywhere in central Europe, but the traditional dishes all have too many leaves in them for my liking. After filling ourselves up we headed to the terrace of the national theatre (an open air bar which I definitely recommend visiting in summer) for some beer and to watch Germany claim third place in the world cup. We left as the shit weather returned and it started to drizzle. The shit weather may come to cause us problems soon - I write this on another train packed with screaming children on the way to Transylvania, where we're really hoping for good enough weather to do some walking in the mountains.

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Photos

Bucharest
Michael Jackson gave an audience from this terrace beginning with "Hello, Budapest!"

Example bank
Presumably so big to hold all the money needed to build them in the first place!

Piața Revolutiei
Most of our pics are in sepia by now