Finding the right train is easily accomplished through the big maps on the walls of the stations.
You can get individual tickets or tickets for a certain period. The metro is relatively cheap. The tariffs are here. You can buy a ticket at ticket vending machines at all stations. The machines are straightforward to use, have an English interface, and accept many cards and contactless options such as Apple Pay.
We bought a week’s ticket for 30 RON (6 euros) per person.
The ticket is a thick paper card with a magnetic strip. You use the card to enter through the gates. YOu slide the strip in, wait a few seconds for the validation, and the machine spits out the card again and opens the gate.
When you arrive at your destination, you can pass through the gates without presenting your ticket. The gates open automatically.
PS. In an earlier post, I mentioned that Bolt provides a fine taxi service in Bucharest.
The Muzeul National al Taranului Roman (National Museum of the Romanian Peasant) is being renovated. Not many of the interesting exhibits to which the Michelin Guide devotes three pages are now on view. The renovation leads to an amusing search of the halls through the cafe-restaurant on the terrace with its old wooden church. A golden McDonald’s arch stands in the courtyard to a set of stone tombstones. In a small room displaying religious drawings, the attendant keeps accurate records of visitor numbers.
We take the subway to Polytechnika station, where fossils can be studied in the marble of the subway station.
We walk on to the AFI Cotroceni mall. All the malls in the world of this type look alike, whether you are in NYC, KL, or Bucharest. In the food court, we find a Lebanese restaurant among the KFC-like restaurants, where we eat labneh, sambusek, falafel, sarmalute, and some flatbread. Not very Romanian, but fine.
We walk back past the botanical garden where a light show, Belle and the Beast, is built up, so we can’t go in. We walk back through the Cotroceni district, a nice neighborhood with old houses of the more luxurious category. At the edge of the district is the Saint Eleutherius Church; we take a look.
In the evening, to restaurant Manuc’s Inn, Hunul lui Manuc, traditional and with dances (review mode:) which was nice but also very touristy; so what, why should I be ashamed of that?
The next day with Bolt (an Uber-like app) a cab for 45 lei but the airport. That’s 9 euros for a half-hour ride. How can a person earn anything from that? (Lei is the plural of leu, I just read)
Bucharest Cathedral is enormously crowded. We walk around the cathedral area, enter through the back entrance, and encounter a crowd attending an Orthodox service.
On Thursday, October 24, 2024, Archbishop George of Cyprus joined Patriarch Daniel of Romania at the Patriarchal Cathedral of Bucharest for the solemn reception of the relics of Saint Lazarus. The event took place as part of the celebrations dedicated to Saint Demetrios the New, Protector of Bucharest.
We watch and listen to the meeting. Unfortunately, the cathedral is not open for viewing today. In town that afternoon, we see many Orthodox clergy wearing their yellow habit (which is what this garment is called?) over their arms.
We visit the Church of St Nicholas – Vladica (Biserica Sfantul Nicolae – Vladica), at the exit of Patriarchal Street, the uphill road to the cathedral.
We walk to A’s apartment via the Parcul Carol with the monument for the unknown soldier.
Unplanned, we slept in until 8 a.m., yet we still had to hurry somewhat to see ourselves in time for our appointment at Casa Ceaucescu. We “jump” on the subway up to the Pilot – Aviatorilor stop and then walk another kilometer through the villa district with walled residential areas and poopy cars.
Next to the Embassy of Kuwait is the “Ceaușescu House,” as Google Maps calls it. Ceaucescu’s residence was stormed during the revolution but not looted, apart from food, drink, and something else I have forgotten. In any case, the lavishly decorated rooms are still intact.
Little remains of anything that looks like gold leaf. The guide explains that the gold content is not so bad or disappointing, just what your starting point is. Only 127 grams of gold were used in the entire house (or something like that; I forgot the unverifiable statistic).
The guide talks like Villanelle from Killing Eve in exclusively affirmative sentences, even when they include a question.
We walk through the lavish rooms decorated with sad taste. A carpet gifted by the Shah of Iran. A chess table at which Ceaucescu won all his games; no one dared let him lose. As mentioned, Elena Ceaucescu’s gold bathroom is much less heavily gilded than I thought, but it really does look gaudy. The Ceaucescus not only oppressed the people but also committed a crime against good taste.
The daughter had a princely residence in imitation of the Louis XIV style. The boys had their own luxury happening; if the guide’s stories were to be believed, they were not happy. One son went into politics because his mother, unaccustomed to rebuttal, wanted him to. He was a regional leader and reported to his father how the people were suffering but was not believed or ignored. The other son studied physics. He is still alive but wanted nothing to do with the official opening of the house as a museum. It will be your parents too.
The pool wall has mosaics that, for once, are not disgusting. Devices and cabinets along the wall look like instruments of torture.
For the optional film, we follow a lady who does not speak English through the corridors of a part of the building that is not explained to us but is actually even more interesting than the gold-lined rooms we saw earlier. Here, hunting trophies, strange paintings, and utensils hang in small rooms along dimly lit corridors. You are allowed to take a picture, but I sneakily take a picture of a crazy portrait of Ceaucescu.
The film is shown in a small movie theater with plush chairs. The video begins in the middle of something and seems like a scrapbook of coveted images. It is hard to find a line in it other than that it is about Ceaucescu. The photos go so far that the message might be: those Ceaucescu’s who were not so bad in the end. I hope that is not the intent. The film closes with the final balcony scene of Ceaucescu being booed by the audience. He screams silence! Then, the film is cut as roughly as it began, and the lights go on. The lady, who speaks no English, gestures and leads us through the corridors back to the entrance of the building.
We take off our blue plastic overshoes—discard, not reuse—and walk into the garden, where the descendants of peacocks that were once gifts from a Japanese minister to Ceaucescu roam.
Palace of the Parliament
The second step on this Ceaucescu Day is the Palace of the People, which was called after the revolution in 1989. It was built on a site for which the entire Uranus-Izvor neighborhood was first demolished. That was right up Ceaucescu’s alley, who was radically implementing the systematization program anyway. He drew inspiration from Kim Il Sung’s Kumsusan Palace project. A fine source of inspiration in dictatorial-communist circles.
If you want to visit the Palace, the procedure is simple: you call the phone number on the website. You can do this up to a day in advance. I called yesterday.
“Hello?”
“Hello, this is Niek, can I make an appointment to visit the palace?”
“Sure. How many people?”
“Two?”
“We still have tomorrow at 1300, 1400 and 1500.”
“Ok, 1400 is ok.”
“What is your name?”
“Nicholas….”
“Ok Nicholas, two persons for 1400 tomorrow. Be there a quarter early and bring your passports.”
“Ok, thank you.”
“Bye.”
The entrance is not where Google Maps thinks the entrance to this building is. Fortunately, we see that in time, which saves about twenty minutes of walking around the gigantic structure.
First, we pass through a metal detector. Then, we report to a ticket office, where a man with a list of names determines whether you have registered. This list of names is scribbled in ballpoint on an A4 sheet. I see Nicholas standing there. Our passports are checked. Our names are crossed out, and I get two tickets. At the next counter, I pay. You can do that with Apple Pay. The passports are checked. The man attaches the receipt to the tickets. We walk 10 meters to a gate. Here, we hand in the tickets with the receipt. We get the receipt back; the tickets are stamped and put on a pile. We receive a badge on a metal chain which we must wear around our necks.
After checking in the group of 1400, a guide appears and leads us through the halls. There are many halls, all in a utilitarian classical style. The building is used for political meetings, conferences, and what not. Now, there is a conference of the International Council of Nurses (https://icn125.org/ I looked up). Nurses walk through the huge hall that gives access to the conference center.
Palace of the Parliament
The building prides itself on special features. For example, it is the heaviest building in the world and one of the largest government buildings in the world. According to our guide, only The Pentagon is much larger, but that belongs to the Defense Department. However, this building has the most volume of any building worldwide. It cost 4 billion euros to build. The energy bill is $6 million a year. Below ground level are another eight floors, including a nuclear shelter. No shortage of statistics to make this building unique.
Palace of the Parliament
The rooms we are shown are primarily used for meetings. Along the side are plastic translation booths. What are we actually looking at? I wonder as we take pictures of meeting rooms. We are led down another hundred stairs, hand in our passes, and walk through the park back into the city, leaving the world’s heaviest building behind us.
We meet P at the metro and walk to the natural history museum Grigore Antipa. There are many stuffed animals and many school classes. The number of stuffed animals and fossils is especially impressive, as is the building itself.
An elephant fossil is, sorry, the largest and most complete elephant fossil ever found of the species Deinotherium or Terrible Beast. According to Wikipedia, the species name Deinotherium gigantissimum is now invalid. Bummer.
Another fact about one of the greatest contributions to this museum’s collection:
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Mihalache Ghica’s collection was enriched in 1882 with the most valuable donation made by Hilarie Mitrea, a doctor from the village of Rasinari. That donation included over one thousand species of animals, from insects, fishes, amphibians, to birds and mammals, most of all collected from Indonesia during the time when Mitrea was a doctor in the Dutch colonial army.
We walk into St. Joseph’s Cathedral on our way to the National Gallery. Roman Catholic I only realize inside even though I could have deduced that from the name of the building. The organ tuner is doing his work here, which is an interesting sound. I record it.
At the National Gallery, our admission tickets are stamped adrift. Three huge floors of enormous work. There are many attendants, and at least one is in every room. I know only a few of the artists. However, Brancusi is the most famous, and I hadn’t realized he was Romanian.
Bird
The famous photographer and curator Edward Steichen bought a work of art by Brancusi and had it shipped to the US. Upon arrival, customs misidentified it as an industrial object and a tax was levied on it. Steichen photographed the artifact, and it became a symbol of beauty and innovation that defies pettiness. Anyway, the Bird is not here, but the other well-known work, Sleep, is.
Sleep
The European part is also substantial. Room for Dutch masters. A Rembrandt. We wander the halls saturated.
On a street corner, we eat our late lunch at Dumicat. Review mode: excellent.
After lunch, we walk through town to the Armenian Church. An angry guard gestures while making a phone call that the church is closed. We buy souvenirs and have a drink at Frog. Review mode: nice place. Especially students (recommended by A).
I haven’t felt a chill like this morning in the bedroom in a long time. Overnight it has been three degrees. After the simple breakfast of a nice tight crusty bun that makes sesame seeds jump around when you cut it and when you take a bite, we meet P at the Universitate metro station near us.
We drive to the metro station Aviatorilor, which means Pilots, but I can’t find not why that is. We walk through the King Mihai I park. Mihai I was the last king of Romania, sitting on the throne until 1947. He was married to Anna Bourbon Parma, a woman with an insane root system in European royal houses (Wikipedia):
Anne was the younger sister of Prince Jacques of Bourbon-Parma and elder sister to Prince Michel of Bourbon-Parma who was the second husband of Princess Maria Pia of Savoy (eldest child of King Umberto II of Italyand Queen Marie José), and Prince André of Bourbon-Parma. As a granddaughter of Robert I, Duke of Parma she was first cousin to: King Boris III of Bulgaria; Robert Hugo, Duke of Parma; Infanta Alicia, Duchess of Calabria; Carlos Hugo, Duke of Parma; Crown Prince Otto of Austria; and Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg.
Carlos Hugo, the nephew so of the wife of the last king of Romania we know. It was he who married our Princess Irene in 1964 in the Catholic Church, which caused a crisis in the royal family. Nowadays, I would be surprised if anyone cared who and where a princess married, but these are different times. And we are so many off-the-rails princes in the royal house later that the most loyal royal fan has soaked up a layer of calluses, for that matter. Claus was one of the few with decency and a clean record.
We visit Bucharest’s open-air museum, located near or in King Mihai I Park. It is a special historical collection of houses that nicely shows how people in the different regions of Romania used to be housed, let’s say 50 years before and towards the turn of the last century.
One metro stop to Piața Victoriei and a short walk to Casa Oamenilor de Știință, a traditional restaurant. We eat in the garden. It is just doable in terms of temperature (i.e., just not too cold). We are helped by a waiter who speaks hardly any English but is very helpful. He doesn’t write anything down. He walks back and forth muttering to himself. Our order arrives flawlessly.
We descend to the Atheneum, a very beautiful building. The low light shines beautifully into the entrance. We walk down the spiral staircase to the concert hall. The double basses are on the stage. A piece by Faure is on the music stand.
I try to mark the points we visit on Google Maps as much as possible:
