Blogs from Bucharest, Muntenia, Romania, Europe - page 20

Hello everyone, If someone asked me what stands out about my visit to Romania, it has to be Ceausescu Palace in Bucharest. It was built in the 1980's, but Ceausescu was executed when it was 70% finished. At 3,000 plus rooms, only the Pentagon is bigger. Some rooms are the size of a football field. There are 280 chandeliers; one weighs five tons. All 600 doors are solid wood, many elaborately carved. Ceausescu felt strongly about using only materials from Romania. He liked silk, but their climate doesn't lend itself to silk worms. So he built a lab for the sole purpose of creating silk for wall coverings and draperies. They could not give us a cost estimate for the building. Ceausescu demolished entire neighbourhoods in Bucharest. He thought that they were old fashioned and a ... read more

Day One So by the time I got to Budapest I was exhausted, albeit a little cranky from my lack of sleep. As soon as I got off the train, there were tons of people ready to scam me. Ie. Exchanging money at a "better" rate than the bank when he had counterfeit money. People were offering me rooms for "cheap" in a "good" part of town. The funny thing is that with my sunglasses people get confused about my nationality. So I get people yelling at me Hey Senorita! or they show me a piece of paper with Japanese on it... most of the time I get english but I ignore them. So I was supposed to couchsurf in Budapest but that fell through last minute. So my first order of business was to find ... read more

Still bumping around Romania. Seeing a lot of old friends. Weather is stifling hot, over 100F. Most cars and buildings here have no A/C, so it’s a sauna. Bucharest has changed a lot since I was here 3 years ago. They join the EU on January 1, and there is a sense of excitement. New construction is going on everywhere and lots of business opportunities. The country has been occupied so often recently, first by the Germans, then the Russians, and the revolution was less than 20 years ago, but you can definitely see how things get better and better. You can still see the bullet holes in some of the buildings from the revolution. They tell me the government is still corrupt, but under pressure from the EU, reforms are in progress. Still one of ... read more

We have now finished our tour in Romania but this last week has been full of calamities. It all started about four days ago when Dina, Karoline, and I were sharing a room and were attacked by a massive swarm of mosquitos. I was trying to fall asleep when I started hearing a buzzing sound in my ear. I was really tired so I tried to ignore it and just sleep. Then after about an hour I had had enough and woke up Karoline to ask for some OFF. When Dina heard me she said she had not been able to sleep either because of the buzzing by her ear. We decided to turn on the lights and kill all the mosquitos. When we turned the lights on we saw there were at least 30 of ... read more

oh man. romania. never thought i'd make it back here. a lack of funds could've been blamed, although family matters sometimes protrude certain cavernous cavities of the heart, and pain becomes a tad more real than i would like it to. i spent the first few days (beginning may 26th) walking up and down bucharest, drying up my lungs with 555 tobacco, but most importantly, smearing my heart with good consistent familiar words from alexandra, a much-needed preparation for the upcoming meeting with my mother, aunt, and everyone else. bucharest is bucharest. many streets, even more people to see, many lights and sights, much corruption, stress, tight pockets, even tighter attitudes. i should have likened bucharest with a decrepit paris, but even that is too much to put on the old town's shoulders. sleep calls. i ... read more