Bucharest, Romania
Good morning. What a wonderful night’s sleep. We have a whole day here in Bucharest. More importantly it means a whole mother night in the great hotel. We have three different excursions today. First thing this morning we have breakfast in the breakfast room. This is followed by the guided tour of the city. Then we will go to the Palace of the Parliament. In the evening, we have a lecture by someone who participated in the 1989 revolution that overthrew the communist dictator Nicolai Ceaușescu. Lastly, we have an aperitif and a snack of local cheese, meats, and bread.
At 8:20 on the bus and on our way. The excursion starts out by driving around the city just taking in the beautiful parks, gardens, wide boulevards and trees all of which contribute to Bucharest’s beauty. Immediately one of the things you notice is that those communist concrete apartment structures which were so ugly and run down in Bulgaria are still here in Romania, but they aren’t all as run down. They have repainted them and have been kept up. It really does make a big difference in your perception of the country.
There are a number of beautiful palaces from the 19th century. They are now restaurants, embassies, hotels and a few are still private residences. We saw the previous royal palace, the government Victoria palace, and the savings palace. We drove around the parliament building and the new Orthodox Cathedral which is just now being built near the government palace.
We stopped and got off the bus at the Village Museum, formally called the National Museum of the Village “Dimitrie Gusti. This is an open-air ethnographic museum located in King Michael I Park. Similar to, but much better laid out and has more buildings and programs than the Norsk Folkemusum at Bygdøy in Oslo. The museum showcases traditional Romanian village life, like the Norsk Folkemuseum, however, it extends to over 1,000,000 square feet. It also contains a lot more buildings, to be exact it contains 123 authentic peasant settlements, 363 monuments and over 50,000 artifacts from all around Romania. These structures are dated from the 17th to the 20th century, and are representative of different ethnographic regions of Romania, including Banat, Transylvania, Moldavia, Maramures, Oltenia, Dobrogea and Muntenia.
They are very well arranged by age and region. It is a much better story telling device than the Norsk Folkemuseum. It probably should be since the village was inaugurated in 1936. It was the idea and creation of Dimitrie Gusti, a folklorist and sociologist. The layout of the museum was created by the writer, playwright and director Victor Ion Popa, and a set designer Henri Stahl. The necessary financial funds were provided by the Royal Cultural Foundation. At the time of its inauguration, it was the fourth open-air museum of Europe after Skansen in Stockholm, Norsk Folkemuseum in Oslo and the ethnographic museum of Transylvania.The museum had doubled in size since its inauguration from 500,000 to over 1,000,000 square feet. Initially there were 33 authentic settlements that were transferred from the researched villages. Among them was the Maramures wooden church from Dragomirești, Maramures county. The latest building was added as recently as 2022. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts.
We were dropped off back near the hotel in time to go and get lunch before the next excursion. Mary and walked down Calea Victoriei looking for a place to have lunch. We found a bistro in a courtyard a couple blocks from the hotel. It is one of those places where you look into as you are crossing in front of what looks like a driveway. About a meter or so into the driveway there is a small chalk board. It was something that looks like pranzo (lunch in Italian) – prânz. This is followed by a listing of items, one of which is Pepsi.
We decided to walk into the courtyard and see. It was all a little confusing. A young man approached us, and we asked if they were serving lunch. Yes! There where a number of tables, but only one had anyone at it and that was three men drinking beer. We chose a table and sat down. The young man brought us menus, then returns a few minutes later with menus which had English in them. The menu said something about the Green Hours Jazz-Café. However, the awnings over the windows around this courtyard said Tankeria Ursus.
A translation on Tankeria Ursus was also confusing. At first google translate thought the English translation was Tankeria Ursus. Doing the words separately – Tankeria translates to “the tanker”. Ursus translates as bear, however so does ursu. When you switch the direction of translation, urs translates as bear. Bears translates to urşilor. AT this point I am going with it was once named the The bear tanker and leave it at that. There is probably a deeper meaning and we probably don’t want to know what it is.
Lunch however was fairly quick and good. Mary chose what was listed on the menu as quesadilla. Nothing like Casa Lupe in Sunnyvale but we really didn’t expect that. It was a pan fried bread, kind of like pizza dough, with a chicken and cheese filling. Think of a panini but where there bread is thin like pizza dough. It was served with fries and a pink mayonnaise sauce. The sandwich I chose was a chicken breast with tomato and lettuce. This was served on a rectangular roll and was very good. It was served with fries and mayonnaise. We both drank a beer.
We were scheduled to go on another excursion after lunch for two hours. Mary wanted to go lay down for a bit before going. She climbed into bed and immediately fell asleep. I woke her up enough to ask if she wanted to go see the parliament building or not. She said no. So we napped instead.
What we were supposed to go see was the Palace of the Parliament, the People’s house. Now we drive around it this morning and it is quite impressive. The building required the demolition of a number of historic buildings and displaced some 40,000 people. It exceeds the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza. It is the world’s heaviest building, and is sinking into the ground at the rate of about a quarter of an inch per year. So we hav time to come back and see it before it disappears. The group that did go got to see an attack on the building where someone set the gift and souvenir shop near the entrance on fire. That would have made the day more fun!
At 17:00 we did go on the third excursion of the day – a lecture on communist Romania, an expert’s perspective. Here we met a man who at the age of 15 participated in the overthrow of Nicolae Ceauşescu. He was in the square below the balcony where Ceauşescu was delivering a speech when the crowd threatened Ceauşescu to abandon the speech and the building and flee by helicopter from the building. It was extremely interesting to hear these first hand events of December 19, 1989 and the days that followed. Could have listen to him for several hours.
Unfortunately the talk only last about an hour. Afterwards we boarded the bus and went to a section of the old town for an aperitif and to snack on local cheeses, meats and bread. The restaurant was called Hanu’lui Manuc, or in English simply Manuc’s Inn. It was an interesting place clearly for tourists or at least mostly tourists. They were set up to serve large croups quickly. The food was served family style and was interesting but nothing unusual. There were some interesting design items. Such as vases or jugs stacked one on top of another to create a room divider. There was a rod running through them top to bottom so that they did creat an open wall appearance.
We got back to the hotel just before 21:00. I ordered a car from Bolt and went to the Hard Rock Café about three miles across town. The Bolt, the European version on Uber, showed up and took me there. I was a little concerned about the route, but then realized he was driving around the traffic. There is a whole lot of traffic here even at 21:00.
Got to the Hard Rock Café and found the store. Got Miss Grace her T-shirt and while I was at it I also got myself one. Then I used the app and ordered a Bolt to return me to the hotel. The driver showed up but drove right past me. I waved and texted him, but he didn’t stop. Now understandably this is a parking lot which is jammed with cars and not exactly right on the main drag.
I walked out to the main drag, Bulevardul Regele Mihai al României, and ordered a second Bolt. He showed up with three minutes and I was back on my way to the hotel. I sent a text to customer service at Bolt after received a receipt for the guy the drove by. The situation was explained to them and I immediately received a credit for the ride. I was back in the hotel and sending a photo of the T-shirt to Grace by 21:15.
Buonanotte e Ciao, Enrico e Maria
Comments