{"id":2424,"date":"2019-10-13T16:45:22","date_gmt":"2019-10-13T16:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=2424"},"modified":"2025-12-24T22:14:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T22:14:34","slug":"o4-paris-of-the-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=2424","title":{"rendered":"04. PARIS OF THE EAST"},"content":{"rendered":"

From our mooring spot at Russe we were coached a convenient 90 minutes NW to Bucharest, the capital of Romania.\u00a0 The countryside en route could be described as “not hilly”.\u00a0 But that would be a dreadful under-exaggeration. It’s just plain flat – or should I just say it’s a flat plain. The country villages are clearly really poor in a desultory, grey sort of way.\u00a0 There are many more deserted factories all over the place.<\/p>\n

Arriving in Bucharest, the huge apartment blocks rose up on either side of the approach road.\u00a0 Hundreds of them!\u00a0 These were all built to the same plan – probably to save architects fees.\u00a0 They were originally all grey.\u00a0 All with open balconies.\u00a0 With the passing of the old regime, people have started glazing in the balconies,\u00a0 adding external insulation and air conditioning units.\u00a0 And, perish the thought, painting them colours other than grey!<\/p>\n

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To be fair we did approach from the poorest side of town.\u00a0 Once we got to the centre we found a lot of lovely buildings that had escaped the worst of the ravages of the “Soviet era” even if some of the best architectural gems are still occupied by the Ministry of Information and other branches of the Secret Services.\u00a0 And it’s true that many had been carefully renovated.<\/p>\n

We were taken for a bus ride round the outside of the palace built by Ceau\u00e7escu for his private residence.\u00a0 Lucky we were in a bus – it would have been a long walk!\u00a0 It is, apparently, the second largest building in the world.\u00a0 Second only to the Pentagon with it’s 17 miles of office corridor!<\/p>\n

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It is now the Palace of the Parliament – the seat of the Parliament of Romania.\u00a0 It has a height of 84 metres, a floor area of 365,000 square metres and a volume of 2,550,000 cubic metres.\u00a0 It took 13 years to build from1984 to1997 at a cost of 3 billion Euros.\u00a0 The president then built a similar huge but rather smaller edifice for his wife.\u00a0 She of no significant education but 10 doctorates from many institutes!\u00a0 This was to be her office across the street from his place!<\/p>\n

There had been an earthquake in 1977.\u00a0 Ceau\u015fescu used this as an excuse to demolish large tracts of old buildings.\u00a0 He then replaced them with a suite of more or less single-styled buildings bordering broad boulevards.\u00a0 The principal one is styled on those found in France, especially in Paris (hence the name, Paris of the East).\u00a0 However, while it looks like the Champs Elysee, it is built 12 cms wider!\u00a0 And with lots of fountains!\u00a0 In my photo, the boulevard is NOT clearly visible running from behind the fountains to the palace in the background.<\/p>\n

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The president named it the “Boulevard of the Victory of Socialism”.\u00a0 The people extended it’s name by adding “Over Us”!\u00a0 Reasons for constructing these wide avenues include, obviously, self-agrandisment as well as making it easier for our bus to navigate the city.\u00a0 However, the main advantage to Ceau\u015fescu was the easy access for tanks and the relative difficulty for the people to build obstructive barricades to.keep them out.<\/p>\n

In addition to his boulevards, Ceau\u015fescu added an Arc de Triomphe to his city plan.<\/p>\n

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But you try getting a photo of the Parisian original with just one car in the foreground!<\/p>\n

The old city area was fairly compact and contained some interesting buildings. There was an interesting “new and old” view of the National Gallery of Arts on Calea Victoriei (Victory Street).<\/p>\n

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And then there was the Birth of the Virgin Mary Church.\u00a0 With it’s iconostage…<\/p>\n

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… and its little courtyard.<\/p>\n

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There was also a fascinating place just opposite the church.\u00a0 Caru’ cu Bere.<\/p>\n

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A lively (packed, actually) restaurant with live music, lots of tourists, lots of noise and very useful toilets!<\/p>\n

Here we are with one frothy drink each…<\/p>\n

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Now some more history…\u00a0 As I understand it Nicolae Ceau\u015fescu tried to suppress the popular uprising by giving everyone guns, ordering them to attend a rally and encouraging the ethnic groups to start shooting at each other.\u00a0 That didn’t work out as planned, so he then commanded the army to shoot at the crowds.\u00a0 They did that briefly, but then they saw the writing on the wall and promptly switched sides.\u00a0 They decided to arrest the president.\u00a0 He was captured, carted away by helicopter from this building… (the spiky monument is a memorial to all the innocent people who died in the uprising – many of them in this exact place)<\/p>\n

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Ceau\u015fescu was tried and executed over a period of just a few days in 1989.\u00a0 (Obviously, it was the arrest and trial part that took the “few days”!)\u00a0 This was done before he could implicate any of his cronies.\u00a0 There’s a surprise!<\/p>\n

It’s a complicated story – and I may have been getting the wrong stick of which to hold the wrong end…<\/p>\n

… But now it’s time to cast off and move on down towards the delta of the Danube.<\/p>\n

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TBC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From our mooring spot at Russe we were coached a convenient 90 minutes NW to Bucharest, the capital of Romania.\u00a0 The countryside en route could be described as “not hilly”.\u00a0 But that would be a dreadful under-exaggeration. It’s just plain… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-danube-2019"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2424"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6771,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424\/revisions\/6771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}