One Day in Bucharest

Last week I started documenting our recent journey to Eastern Europe with my Skywatch Friday post. Now I want to dive deeper into our brief visit to Romania.

First of all, I never in a million years thought I'd ever visit Romania. It was a communist country until 1989 and was someplace that you'd never think to visit. When choosing which river we wanted to cruise this summer we decided to go somewhere new and unexpected.

After a long day of traveling Viking picked us up at the airport and took us to the J.W. Marriott in Bucharest. Beautiful hotel!

The first order of business was dinner. I usually go with an Aperol Spritz when in Europe, but on this night I decided to try an Elderflower spritz. Delicious!

Viking gave us two options for the following morning. 1) Load up on the bus at 8:00 and make the 5 1/2 hour journey to where the boat was docked; or 2) Load up on the buss at 8:00, take a tour of the city, have lunch and then make the 5 1/2 hour journey to the boat. We decided we'd probably never be in Bucharest again so we chose the longer day with the tour.

For either option we had to have our luggage out by 6:00 a.m. to load on the truck. I'll never understand why that early.

Our first stop was at Revolution Square to hear the first hand account of the revolution by a man who took part in it back in 1989. We met him at the Kretzulescu Church dating back to the 1720s.

This is the Memorial of Rebirth that commemorates the struggles and victims of the 1989 Romanian Revolution.

Egmont Puscascu spoke to us for about an hour and I will say it was one of the most interesting talks I've had the privilege of attending. In 1989, Egmont (the 15 year old guy in black at the top of the tank) bravely took part in the revolution.

On December 21, 1989 the Romanian dictator, Ceausescu, forced a hundred thousand people to the square to hear him condemn the violence in Timisoava.

Before long a disturbance broke out in the crowd. The crowd was fired upon, Egmont's best friend was shot and killed along with many others. Eventually the military changed sides and the communist regime ended.

Ceausescu and his wife were apprehended after they attempted to flee by helicopter. Four days later on December 21, 1989 they were tried and convicted of genocide and other high crimes and were immediately executed by firing squad. It was a powerful story.

Next we took a bus tour of the city. I didn't pay much attention to the landmarks they were pointing out here and there. Eventually we made our way to the Dimitrie Gusti National Village Museum where we got to unload and have a couple hours of free time.

It's an open air museum that showcases traditional Romanian village life.

What did I notice first? There are a ton of cats there and they all seem quite friendly.

The museum was opened in 1936 as the fourth open air museum in Europe.

Structures range from the 17th to 20th centuries.

There are 123 peasant settlements.

The collection contains over 50,000 artifacts and 363 monuments.

If you know anything about me then you know I like to paint things that are a little different. I am already eyeing this window with blue shutters as a future painting.

The guide told us there was a still at every house back in the day. He compared it to Tennessee.

This one was an orthodox church.

The inside was dark. Buildings like this bring a sense of comfort to me--the history, the simpleness, the people who have worshipped here.

How hard do you think it is to care for a thatched roof?

From there we headed to the old town section of Bucharest where the architecture was so beautiful.

I don't know what all these buildings are, I just know I was amazed by them.

Viking provided us with an authentic Romanian meal accompanied by local folk dancers. I don't think I mentioned how hot it was on our first day--105 degrees. Everyone drank a ton of water, beer, soda and wine at lunch to rehydrate.

The last stop was the Palace of the Parliament. It's the heaviest building in the world at 9.04 billion tons and is the largest civilian administrative building the world. It was constructed between 1984 and 1997, it was ordered by Ceausescu after he visited North Korea and became jealous of their large buildings (remind you of anyone). It's definitely impressive, but the guide told us its mostly vacant now because heating it and the electricity cost too much. At one point it consumed 70% of the nation's energy.

Then it was time to load onto the bus and start the long journey to Viden, Bulgaria.

It's been 36 years since the revolution, but it still looks like Romania is struggling. If you've ever been to an easter block country, you would have seen all the communist block housing that still remains to this day. My dad first taught me about these apartment buildings when we visited East Berlin in 1990. Basically they're just concrete square structures stacked on top of each other. The communists did not care about beauty, only function.

One more interesting fact about the times after the Romanian Revolution. Anyone 18 and older was given a house after the revolution. Currently they have one of the highest percentage of home owners in Europe at 90-95% Does this make up for the communist regime taking everyone's property when they came into power?

Gas is expensive there too. I calculated this to be about $8 per gallon.

We saw lots of stork nests.

Mostly we drove through agricultural land which was dominated by sunflowers.

After many hours we reached the Bulgarian border.

More communist block housing or as our guide called them, commie condos.

The boat was docked next to this structure, but we didn't have time to explore and Irv couldn't find a geocache because we had to immediately board the ship for departure.