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The longest boulevard in Europe
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As I think I've mentioned before, it's always gratifying to be greeted jn a foreign country by someone holding a sign with your name on it - it makes you feel like a VIP. So it pleased me greatly to see my good friend Cosmin waiting for me with a sign when I arrived in Bucharest. Just a shame he spelled my name slightly wrong.
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Mr. BAWBAG is actually a Romanian phrase meaning "You're a great guy"
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Cosmin and his missus Paula were very genial hosts. They also have a three year old son, Alex, who despite not really fulfilling any hosting duties. was a great wee guy nonetheless. We got on famously, (despite the obvious language barrier) and he could actually understand quite a lot of what I was saying in English, although unsurprisingly I could barely understand anything that he was saying in Romanian. They also have a very friendly (and hungry) Labrador called Leia.
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Cosmin, Paula, Alex, Mammaie, and me. Leia must have taken the photo.
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I'd actually visited Romania with Cosmin and another friend Nick 10 years ago, and while we got to visit many interesting places, we didn't spend any time in Bucharest. Top of my list of things to do was to visit the People's Palace (also known as Palace of the Parliament). Although it doesn't seem that massive from the outside, it's the heaviest building in the world (It weights four million tons and apparently used up every last dod of marble found in Romania), and second largest building (after the Pentagon in the USA).
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It's quite big.
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Apart from the fact that it was conceived by Nicolae Ceaușescu and featured in an episode of Top Gear where they raced cars in its basement, I didn't really know much about the place.
The tour of the building was pretty good, although if you didn't know anything about Romanian history, you could be forgiven for thinking that Ceaușescu was a visionary architect instead of a brutal dictator who came up the idea of spending a significant proportion of the country's wealth on a massive vanity project. However, there's no doubting that it's a very impressive building.
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| According to Wikipedia, their leccy bill alone is $6m a year |
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Me after addressing a speech to the longest boulevard in Europe
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The palace also hosts a large theatre with the second largest chandelier in the world. It took every fibre of my being not to smugly inform the tour guide I'd seen the biggest one the week before.
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| The world's second heaviest chandelier. A pathetically light five tons. |
Next door to the palace was another massive building project that has divided opinion in the country, mainly because it's being built with public funds. I'd have liked to have a look round it (especially because it was free!) but time was running short.
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| The People's Salvation Cathedral, Romania's answer to la Salgrada Familia |
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| I've seen plenty of abandoned stuff but never an abandoned moving walkway (that no longer moved) |
Next up, the family holiday to the beach (and when I say family, I mean I gate-crashed Cosmin's family holiday).
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