Post 46. Bucharest, Romania. Part 2

Day 2

Parliament Building

I booked a guided tour of the Parliament Building. At 365,000 sq. m. It is the largest building in Europe and the heaviest building in the world, weighing four billion kilos, with a LOT of marble inside! It took 13 years to build. 

When Ceausescu went on a visit to China and North Korea in the 70s, he was impressed with all the new modern concrete buildings and wanted to build a new perfect communist city of his own. 

A powerful earthquake in 1977 that destroyed a lot of buildings in Bucharest, gave Ceausescu the excuse to demolish anything he wanted. 

So 20% of Bucharest was demolished to make way for his dream, including over 10,000 houses, 20 churches, several hospitals and many schools. 

There were over 700 architects employed to work on it, and 100,000 employed in direct labour during construction. They worked in five round the clock shifts of 20,000 at a time. There were also 12,000 soldiers stationed there, supposedly for security, but they also were labourers. There were hundreds of workplace accidents and a lot of people died from exhaustion. 

All building resources such as wood, glass, stone, granite and marble came from Romania. Even the crystals for the 15,000 chandeliers were made in a special factory onsite. 

The parliament building has twelve floors above ground and eight floors below ground. Underground there are two nuclear bomb shelters for 600 people, a swimming pool (never finished) and Metro station (never used). 

The building was only 60% finished when Ceausescu was executed on Christmas Day 1989 and it was decided that it would be cheaper to finish it than demolish it.  

“The Ceausescus were evil and vicious. An entire nation was imprisoned, went hungry and lived in the half-light because of them” - John Simpson, Despatches from the Barricades.

National Gallery of Contemporary Art

After the tour I went to the National Gallery of Contemporary Art which is housed on the ground floor of the Parliament Building. 

To get to it, I walked all around the outside of the building as it was on the opposite side. This took 30 minutes, the building is so huge and the grounds are so extensive.

The displays inside were not that interesting to be honest. 

I thought that some of the best art was the permanent graffiti art covering some of the staircases. 

There was also a temporary exhibition featuring two artists that was quite good. 

Orthodox Cathedral

As it was so close, I then headed over to the huge Orthodox Cathedral behind the Parliament Building. 

This is a magnificent building in such good condition. 

I again lit some candles for the living and the dead as is the tradition in the Orthodox Church.

Visit Bucharest Hop On Hop Off Tour

In the afternoon I decided to go on an open top bus tour. Checking out a Google search, the first six or seven offerings were by private companies and seemed very expensive. 

Much further down the list, I found the official Visit Bucharest Hop On Hop Off Tour for less than half the cost of the tours being offered by the commercial companies. The starting point for the tour was Casa Presai Libreri (The House of Free Press) in the photo above. 

The tour goes on a continuous circular route of the city, taking in many of the sights and monuments. Above is University Square. 

The Arcul de Triumf is hard to miss and is modelled on the Paris version, it is a little smaller in height. 

On the outskirts of the city centre there were  many new high-rise developments.  

I noticed on the route that Bucharest's traffic is heavy all of the time. This is surprising,  given that there is an extensive metro, bus and tram system in place. 

There are a few stafout Art Deco niildings in Bucharest ss well such as the one above. 

I found it a great way to finally find my bearings and also as a way of travelling the substantial distances between the different sights. 

I was well ready for dinner at this stage as I had been eating snacks from street sellers up until this stage. Restaurant Hanu’lui Manuc was widely recommended for traditional Romanian food. 

It is  huge place with most tables outdoors under cover. As the temperature had dropped from 28 to 16 in 24 hours, most people were looking for a table inside. I was lucky to get one of the last ones. 

I was very disappointed with the food and found it way over-rated and over”-priced. I chose Transylvanian Bean Soup served in a bun and a turkey schnitzel. 

The soup would have been better just served in a bowl as it soaked into the bread too much, and there was just too much bread. 

The turkey was bland and with no flavour. True, the setting is great and the service was good but I had better much food elsewhere on my trip.