Ceaucescu day. (Two days ago.)

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.

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.

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.

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.