More Bucaresti Miscellany

More Bucharest

We've seen this sort of sign before

And this

And this

But the interior was beautiful

Very old

Certainly the most beautiful restaurant in

town

Temporal affairs (on the cell phone) at the monastery

Beautiful facades on so many buildings,

many crumbling

But they're working on it...

And another street concert, this one sort of Latin, so to

speak

These people had their own box in the balcony

More news folk, more news to report

Joe Bob Briggs, where are you now? In the burbs, north,

past the airport, by our campground, the one and only

drive-in theatre we have seen in Europe

Modest proposal for Home Depot: want to increase

customer visits and increase purchases? Then install full

bars in all your stores, like this Brico-something in the

Bucharest burbs

Sunday morning radio-controlled races in the Ikea parking

lot; these little guys really go, and the sound they make is

just like the big boys

Burning rubber on the Mulsanne Straight; spinning out in

the S's

Bucaresti Miscellany

Varied scenes...

The venality and malevolence of the feline species

Versus the stupidity and laziness of the canine

Today's wedding is brought to you by...

So there we are, innocently looking at
the old Odeon Theatre, in Bucharest,
and wham! there is a bust of Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk; I mean, is this prophetic,
or what?! ...what?

Lines...electric lines, scaffolding lines...

Fresh from their successful concert in
Budapest...can Ozzie What's-His-Name be
far behind?

Speaking of which, this the first major street
concert of the day, sort of jazz American, dirty sax

Another sleeping dog, in the historical district; have I
mentioned that Romania has somewhere between
200,000 and 2 millon feral dogs? They are everywhere;
vacant lots in cities will harbor a dozen or more; every
rest stop on the highways in the countryside has its
resident feral dog (very territorial); about 9,000 bites
are reported annually; rabies is not uncommon; they
are to Romania what the feral chickens are to Kauai, a
pestilence and a disgrace; only more so

We conjecture that the tag says "certified rabies-free;
OK to be bitten by [date]"; so far as I can tell, these are
"communal" dogs, fed and maintained by the residents;
EU visitors must be appalled; we certainly are

I wasn't the only one taking pix...local TV

Power of indoor advertising

Even the graffiti is interesting...

Palace of Parliament

We walked then to the Piata Revolution and onto the broad boulevard that leads to Bucharest's main tourist attraction, Ceausescu's megalomaniacal Palace of Parliament, the world's second largest building (after the US Pentagon); so it is written. Actually, it does not look that large.

OK, at this point it's still a mile away

Looking the other way on the 3.5km Boulevard Reunii,

deliberately designed to out-do the Champs-E in Paris...

Street lamps very interesting, marred by the

third-world wiring scheme; this outside the

department of tourism, right next to the

world's second largest building

Looking back the whole length of the Reunii

The Palace of Parliament and the square before it; today

was an environmental-themed festival, with yet another

rock concert; what would Ceausescu have thought?!

In fuller glory

Concert just beginning, people not yet arriving

Craft and food fair outside the Palace

Making those delicious roller-pin pastry things we like

And cooking them over an open fire

Too large for my suitcase, damn!

Michas...Anthony Bourdain says you have not really

experienced a country until you have tasted its street

food...michas is "some garlic, some rat, some dog, some cat";

go for it, Tony!

But I did really like the music, the "Rock

Loves Chopin" group from Poland; the

"Revolutionary Etude" really works in

their rendition

More Bucaresti

More Bucharest...

So there we are, walking along Calea Victoriei, remembering

it has been five months since we had a real American pizza,

and

There pops up one of Bucharest's eight Pizza Huts

It was not exactly an Agra-experience (see

November, 2008), but it was great, it was

memorable; I had two beers...

And there were more beautiful chapels

And domes

And more Vlad; Vlad was actually Wallachian,

not Transylvanian (the Dracula thing); this is

the real bust of him; I remember laughing with

colleagues, years ago, that without Lewis and

Clark, Custer, and the Copper Kings, Montana

really had no history--that, of course, is a great

slander, and I am embarrassed ever to have

entertained the thought, even in jest; but...

Romania really needs to find something else

in addition to Vlad

In the old town center where his original

castle lay

Us; memo to camera: when asking someone else to take

your picture (we do this all the time for other people),

give them more explicit instructions about framing the

picture, focusing, waiting for clutter to pass by, etc.

(you should see the ones I deleted)

Bucaresti

We nearly did not go into Bucharest. We are tired. Tired of traveling. And our Lonely Planet guide did not exactly entice (nor enlighten, once we got there; it is the worst LP, the worst guidebook, I have yet seen). But, once more, we went unto the breach. We are glad we did. It was a glorious end of summer day, and the whole city seemed to turn out in a variety of celebrations. And, if it is not a great city, it is one that holds great promise.

The Eonescu concert hall, on Caile Victoria

Part of the National Art Museum

Part of the National Art Museum

All this near a central square, where hundreds
were massacred in 1989

Communist Party headquarters, from the balcony of which
Ceausescu attempted his last speech; as the protest grew,
he was rescued by helicopter; but, within days, he and his
wife were "tried" and executed by firing squad, the only
communist leaders to be so dealt with in 1989-90

One of the several monuments to the struggle, which lasted
several more years

Bucharest's historic district offers a variety of beautiful old
buildings, a variety of styles and forms

Covered arcade

A side street in the historic district, and
the national library

In the banking district

Of course, not everything is historic nor
beautiful