Bucharest
Arriving into Romania, myself, Sam and Jess all split off towards our different hostels. Already the train station was a lot more developed than Bulgaria, it was big and busy and lots going on.
safety first…
I grabbed a bus towards the hostel and meet 3 english girls heading there as well. The hostel was above a strip club, like in the same building to it…so a wee bit weird walking practically into the strip club to get up to the hostel. It was late and I was stuffed so just headed down the road to some sort of Romanian style fast food and grabbed a salad as I was feeling a bit lacking in fresh food after a day of eating chips and bread. I meet an Aussie in the hostel, who while was lovely, went on to fulfill every stereotype of aussie backpackers. Basically he spent about half an hour telling me how cool he was because he gets drunk so much. Yes you are…so cool.
We watched some Olympics and headed to bed pretty early, nice enough hostel but rooms were like an oven and hard to sleep when its so hot, to make it worse a couple came in late at night who snored worse than anything I’d ever heard. I am not sure why this overweight middle age couple with massive wheely suitcases were staying in the hostel, but thankfully they left in the morning. I had a full day in the capital before heading out to Transylvania so as I do most days I went for a massive walk across the city checking out the historic quarter and also the huge boulevards built by the crazy dictator Ceausescu in the 1980’s. Pretty much he just wiped out half the city after visiting North Korea and built massive fountain lined streets and the second biggest building in the world for the government which is this stupidly large white palace type thing. Really crazy dictators are mental and while its all very impressive, its a bit weird.
The history of Bucharest is really interesting with this Ceasescu guy and then the revolution/uprising in 1989 which happened around the university, you can still see the bullet holes in the building from where the government forces basically sat in this hotel firing into the crowds. it was all pretty epic sounding and really interesting, so while Bucharest might not be the most exciting city, the history is worth it.
I walked all the way over to this museum which the lonely planet said “is so good you’ll want to hug it”, well not sure is it is that good, but was cool. About Romania peasants and lots of displays with notices like
” these items are a mix of valuable and everyday items put together so they can ‘dance’ without the constraints of glass and display cases holding them back”
I wandered back along the main street desperately trying to change my left over Bulgarian currency which no-one wanted to touch, despite they are actually a bordering country. Eventually I got them changed into the more useful Romania lei which has just been adjusted by whacking off a few zero’s. This seems to happen in a few eastern European currencies where their currency is basically crap but now in the EU it has been pegged to the Euro to stop it going out of control.
I stopped by the supermarket “Angst” on the way home and grabbed some food to cook at the hostel. Chatted to some interesting english people travelling, who had pretty much picked every party destination in europe and were heading there-trying to fit it in in a month or something. When you are taking 3x 30 hour train journey’s a week, you’re probably moving too fast.
another night of Olympics-who knew sport with Bulgarian commentary could bee so interesting- and off to bed with no snoring and remarkably less oven like.
I headed to the train station in the morning and caught 1pm train heading to Brasov where I would base myself for a few days and check out Transylvania and some Dracula kitsch
Tags: Romania, TRAVELS 2008
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Ahhh Bucharest…can I say I don’t exactly fancy that place? Spent a week there last year and I came home – mind you I live in Arad, in the western part of Romania – more tired than when i left lol It’s crazy, it’s busy, it’s hot, it’s jammed packed! YUCK!
I am amazed you didn’t post a photo wt the Peoples’ Palace (or the Parliament nowadays). Ok I admit I never took a photo of that gigantic thing. it’s also ugly if you ask me.
Probably one of the places I adore in Romania is Sighisoara…but not during the Medieval Festival.