Wake up call, exercise, breakfast, on the bus we go. Today starts our journey with 42 people, as opposed to our cozy 18 person group in India. As per Gate 1 m.o., we have assigned seats. The rotation is easy, though. Every day we move 2 seats back (on the guide side of the bus) or 2 seats up (on the driver side). Works perfectly. We start out in the middle of the bus, right in front of the back door…score! Strategic seats to get on and off quickly (a must for the “comfort” stops).
Our tour today begins at 9am, and we are all on time, and bonus! Only one couple has forgotten their passports (we need them for the Parliament building tour). That’s a pretty good start in our opinion. We leave a few minutes after 9 and head through the town – and the awful traffic – with Cristina narrating all along the way. Our first adventure comes when the bus gets stuck on a low hanging electrical wire on the street where the grocery store is located. It takes about 5 minutes before some helpful passers by lift up the wire so we can pass. Nice community work/spirit! Release, we drive out past University square where students organized against the communist regime in 1989. There are crosses in the median, right in the middle of where the barricades were at the time of the revolution. (No pictures – it was too hard to get it from the bus.)
We roll through the streets, learning about the country and in particular Bucharest, where 10% of the population lives. It’s a young town with a lively night life. Located on the Danube Plains, it gets hot in the summer (and the fall! We’re here to verify that!), so there are lots of parks and green spaces, in particular Herastrau park, which is the largest park in the city, with a lake in the middle and an oasis for the community in the summer. We learn about architecture, how many buildings were built in the 19th C French style, and before WWII, Bucharest was called the “Little Paris.” Of course the allies bombed the city and destroyed a lot, so much of the rebuilding was done in the communist style. Then the 1997 earthquake destroyed even more, bringing about more communist architecture.We drive through the Primavera District, where the rich live and hear about how the upper class left the country before WWII because they could see what would happen with communism.
Making our way up and around the Herastrau park (it is huge), we circle the Arch of Triumph, built in the 1920’s to celebrate the victorious Romanian army in WWI. It was during WWI that Romania regained Transylvania, and Romania celebrated the reunification of the country. They just celebrated 100 years of reunification on December 1, one of their biggest holidays.
We circle around the main part of the city to the northern most part of our tour which passes the “Free Press” building, which of course is an ironic name for the building that housed the press during the communist times. A statue of Lenin (made of the melted metal from a statue of the King of Romania) was originally in front of the building, but it was removed after the revolution and finally replaced with a statue called the “Wings of Freedom", paying tribute to the thousands who lost their lives fighting the regime.
Turning back toward the city, we arrive at the Palace Square, now known as revolution Square, the location of Ceausescu’s final speech. It was here, on a balcony that Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu tried to pacify an increasingly restless crowd, completely underestimating the lack of support and push back that was occurring, triggered by the protests in Timisoara where thousands of protestors were said to have been killed. When the crowd would not obey the commands they were given – when to clap, when to cheer, when to sit and stand – Ceausescu was eventually whisked off the balcony, escaped in a private helicopter to his palace (which we will see this afternoon) – then onto the countryside where he was captured a few days later and executed – on TV – after a 50 minute trial.
The building is gorgeous – as are the surrounding edifices – but in stark contrast to the old style, almost renaissance style of the buildings, there stands an odd statue that people refer to as the “impaled potato” or “meatball on a skewer” meant to commemorate the end of the communist regime. It’s terribly odd – and to make matters worse (or better, depending upon your view), taggers have spray painted red paint under the “meatball,” making it look like it is bleeding. (Actually, a lot of people seem to approve of the red “blood” tagging!)
The most fascinating building, though is the old Securitate (secret police) building, which is a combination of old and new architecture. Strangely enough it currently houses the Headquarters for the Romanian Architects Association – and it is one of the most interesting, odd, strangely attractive buildings we’ve ever seen!
After this brief intro to Romania/Bucharest and Ceausescu, we are ready to head to his “grand” masterpiece, the Parliament Palace, or the People’s Palace. Ceausescu named it for the “people”, but, as one guide later tells us, the joke is that it’s named that because it can fit all the people of Bucharest inside of it. It’s definitely big enough! The Palace is the 2nd largest building in the world, after the Pentagon and cost $3 Billion to build using 20,000 workers (political prisoners). Ceausescu started it in 1984, it was 80% finished at the time of his fall in 1989. In order to build it, 2.7 square miles, consisting of many neighborhoods, were raised and something like 40,000 people displaced and moved into the new communist style block housing that had been built to house them (along with people from the country who were forced to move into the cities to work in the factories).
It is 3.9 million square feet, with 12 floors above ground and 8 underground levels, with 1,100 rooms and halls. Virtually everything in the palace, materials, etc., are Romanian made (to Ceausescu’s specifications – he actually micro-managed the whole project, forcing the architects – there were 700 total – to build a plastic scale model for him to view – supposedly by handing in a dolly over it. He changed any detail he wanted, resulting in some oddities like the grand staircase that doesn’t exactly mirror itself on both sides). Definitely palatial!
We start our tour by having our passports checked and going through security, then begin on the first level with the Grand halls that seem to go on forever.
Next we move into the theater hall with all leather seats, and the largest of the 480 chandeliers in the palace.
Then its on to even more grand halls, and the aforementioned staircase, plus meeting rooms, and what I believe was Ceausescu’s office (which is grand and over the top – as is everything he does) and intricately carved doors with crystal, not glass.
We end our tour on the balcony overlooking the grand Boulevard Unirii which Ceausescu designed after the Champs-Elysees, only wider and longer (of course!).
We’ve been here over 2 hours and we’ve only seen 4% of the entire building. It’s just astounding that it took so long for a revolution here! Crazy opulence, money spent on only the leaders, and we’ll see and hear plenty more as we go along.
Now its time to go back to the hotel, and grab some lunch before our Communist Bucharest tour.
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