Bucharest

After the relatively peaceful Ruce, our next destination turned out to be a bit of a shock to the system. Bucharest is, I suppose, best described with words like chaotic, surprising, full of contrasts, for example.

And I don't mean that in a bad way (although it was very chaotic, busy and hot!), we found it a positive surprise in many ways (it doesn't have a very good reputation as a tourist destination). Even the taxi drivers didn't rip us off!


As I said before, Bucharest is (more than maybe any city I've seen in Europe) a city full of contrasts and surprises. There are some very pretty old buildings (including a lot of very impressive churches and monasteries), but also some pretty ugly Communist-era buildings. Although even for the communist monstrosities, it has to be said that they have a bit more class than for example in Bulgaria (maybe thanks to that flamboyant madman Ceausescu)? And then you have the crazy drivers, but on the other hand some very peaceful and well-kept parks.



The ultimate "attraction" of Bucharest is, of course, the huge building which now houses the Romanian parliament (amongst other things - because this place is massive!), and which was built towards the end of Ceausescu's mad reign (he never saw it finished, poor chap). It's actually the 2nd biggest building in the world (after the Pentagon), with 12 floors (which are, er, very high indeed), and about 250x250 meters in area. Some other interesting facts: 3 million light bulbs, 2000 chandeliers, a carpet weighing more than 1 ton. It really is like a modern-day Versailles. During our 90-minutes walking tour, we saw a measly 4% of the palace. You have to say it's a very impressive place, but spare a thought for half of the old town which was razed to make room for this monument to one man's madness!






Another nice thing about our stay in Bucharest was that we stayed in a decent hotel, for a change (although it did cost us 80 euros, which by Romanian standards is a fortune). We were actually quite keen to spend some more time in Bucharest, but had to leave, because we couldn't find any free hotel rooms!