Bucharest

This is my third visit to Romania and my second visit to Bucharest. The last visit (2002) was long enough ago that memories are very fuzzy. It is surprising to me how things as simple as a sign or a street-scape or an intersection lurk somewhere in the recesses of my mind, unconjured for years on end, only to suddenly appear so very familiar. Bucharest has changed in ten years. While there used to be several kilometers of empty road en route from the city to the airport, office towers now crowd the intersection just before. Traffic is more snarled than before, although that I’m told that the city has added a couple hundred thousand people and a few hundred thousand cars in the past decade. In general, the whole place feels a bit more “European” than it did a decade ago, with more signs of globalization.

Bucharest is not a pretty city in the sense of “the pretty sister of Eastern Europe. Such an honor would go to Prague (the beautiful but vapid sister whose beauty fades quickly), Budapest (the stately, beautiful sister with high cheekbones) or Krakow (the really cute sister). Bucharest is the rather homely sister whose company you really enjoy. The whole place seems a sort of hodge podge of Moldavian turrets, ancient stone churches, art deco, classical revival, and Victorian brick-a-brack. Individual pieces are lovely. Some of the turn-of-the-last-century architecture rivals anything Vienna, Budapest, or Prague have to offer. The churches and turrets add an ancient touch. And the art deco is a dash of pepper. Somehow it works. Somehow it is fun and draws you back for more.

In the midst of it all stands possibly the world’s greatest monument to megalomania – Ceaușescu’s Boulevard of Unity and the Palace of the Parliament – the biggest building in Europe sitting at the end of an avenue wider and longer than the Champs Elysées (with a bit of North Korean charm thrown in, to use the words of my Romanian colleague earlier today). While post-revolutionary Romania has done their best to make use of this colossal building and to make the area beautiful, it remains gargantuan and someone supra-human, a testament if there ever was one to man’s inability to perfect the world.

It’s been one of those days and one of those trips that reminds me why I enjoy this part of the world so much, from the wonderful breads, soups (and food in general) to the aesthetic carefulness evident in everything from book covers to street signs to the thoughtful people.

Romania has definitely moved up my list of countries where I’d like to spend some more time (with a less packed agenda!)

 the square where Ceaușescu's fall began - with monument to revolution