Bucharest,
Romania
Friday, September 14, 2007
Having already seen the exterior of the much talked about grotesque People's Palace built by Romania's former leader, Ceausescu on an earlier trip, I was keen to explore whatever might be left of the older more historic city. Just a bit of background: Ceausescu and his wife were executed in December of 1989 after major violent revolutionary demonstrations against his administration. He was responsible for bulldozing huge areas of the city to build the earlier mentioned behemoth of a building and huge sterile apartment blocks all around. You can still see older buildings peeking out from behind these apartment blocks if you look...saved from the wrecking ball. In an effort towards 'modernization' he destroyed many country villages and relocated the peasants into these flats. Then he tried to change the countryside into a new industrial zone...luckily it seems that much of the former agricultural areas are back in production. Currently, it seems that Romania is having a difficult time bringing components of it's society up to the EU standards...there was a show on EuroNews the other evening that went into it in more detail about the culture of corruption in Romania, the scandalously horrible zoos that won't be able to be brought up to standards without the help of other EU countries...my tourmates accidentally ran into the zoo in Sibiu and were shocked by what they saw. It's quite good that the focus is on these issues and hopefully Romania will get the help it needs to modernize.
We snapped our obligatory pics of the huge squares and People's Palace then set off walking north on Victoriei street where much of what's left of the city's historical buildings are located. Saw quite a few lovely Orthodox churches, found a back alley Internet cafe-bar-jazz-club-music store in an old converted neo-classical building and hung out there for a while. For dinner we enjoyed traditional Romanian 'fast food' (really not very fast but quite palatable) before walking back to our hotel-health club through the high rent embassy district. In case you are wondering about our accommodations, our hotel is attached to a woman's fitness center. (Apparently the men are staying fit at the numerous sex clubs littered all over the city) As some of our guides say, despite any and all appearances to the contrary, prostitution is NOT legal in Romania. Casinos also seem to be quite big here. It seems the very 'best' of westernization has caught hold.
All that aside, found this huge city to be unexpectedly quite interesting and enjoyable. .
Bucharest
Comments
Hello!
Hi Tracy,
It's Caroline form Sydney here- how are you doing? (Actually it seems like you're doing quite well! Lucky you!)
I just love your 'Identity crisis' photos, particularly the second one. In Sydney we have similar constructions (where a skyscraper is tacked to the top of an older building) but somehow the Romanian versions look far less tactfully done! Let's try to think of them as something like the Aya Sofiya... or maybe not lol.
Take care! :)
Caroline