Sadly, the river cruise portion of our journey ended this morning. At the port of Oltenita, Romania we bid a fond farewell to the Avalon Passion and its crew members and headed for the next leg of our adventure.
The bus ride from Oltenita to Bucharest offered the opportunity for us to see day-to-day life in several smaller towns before we reached the hustle and bustle of Bucharest. And yes, we saw a lot of this as it is still the most economical means of transportation in this region of the world:
(Obligatory picture of horse/mule drawn transportation)
The population of Bucharest is 2.5 million but during the day the number jumps up to 4 million due to commuters. That’s a lot of traffic, and boy did we experience the craziness of that! Next time we want to complain about some crazy driver on 435 we will think about morning traffic in Bucharest (Tim says worse even then L.A.).
Our local tour guide gave us some insight on life in Bucharest, as well as some local political views. Universities are free in Romania and many college grads are moving abroad after graduating thus creating a shortage of workers. Wages for many positions are higher, sometimes more than double, in other countries as they are in Romania. One example of the shortage is that a teacher at the guide’s local school postponed retirement for at least four years because of the shortage. The guide and his wife were both school teachers, each bringing home about €680 a month, with monthly bills of about €1500 a month. Needless to say, that’s not a profitable equation! They now work together in the tourism industry as they can make more money.
Our first stop was at the Parliament Building aka The Peoples Palace – the largest building in Europe and second largest in the world (#1 is the Pentagon, which almost doubles it at 6.6 million square feet vs 3.5 million square feet for the People’s Palace).
(Perspective is hard on this one… as to get the entire building into a single frame, we had to go across a major street, and into an adjacent parking lot to get far enough away for the entire building… thus don’t be fooled by the closeness of the cars in front, they’re a quarter to half mile away from the building easy.)
Side entrance that we went in.
The Peoples Palace was built under the direction of the former Romanian ruler Nicolae Ceausescu, who was a leader of the Communist Party from 1965 until his untimely death in 1989 (further explained below). Ceausescu wanted to build a new Pariliament building using only Romania – literally. Romanian materials, Romanian labor. Other countries offered certain products (Italy offered marble, Czechoslovakia offered crystal chandeliers) but Ceausescu insisted on “shopping local”. If they didn’t have it local initially, they created it locally. For a couple of examples, back to that offer of crystal, he said no, but with no way to get crystal locally, he built a crystal factory from scratch, and voila… Romania had the ability to produce it’s own crystal. For all of the silk, (silk curtains, etc.), he imported silk worms from China and raised them in Romania (initially raising them in schools). As they matured and started to produce silk, voila, Romania produced it’s own silk.
In the end, there ended up being one room of the massive building that contains green marble (not native to Romania), which was a gift from his friend the Shaw of Iran. The building is ridiculously opulent – 15,000 chandeliers, 10 floors above ground, 15 floors below ground, marble everywhere (floors, staircases, columns, ceilings), carved oak doors and wall panels, handmade carpets that are so massive it takes 40 men to roll them up…..you get the picture. In fact, because of all of the marble, the building is so heavy that it (the entire building) sinks 1/4″ each year.
Many of the lights (well over half) were off in the areas we visited (note: we saw only 2% of the building) and the Parliament guide told us that they were conserving energy until the Parliament session starts in September. Think he was joking? No. When the building is fully functional, the utility bills (electric, gas, water) run about €1 million/month. (The electricity alone is one quarter of all the electricity used in the entire city of Bucharest.)
(Remember, we were in dark halls A LOT, so our pictures are pretty dark… sorry.) Here’s a long sampling:
This is the conference room where most of the laws get agreed upon (they actually vote in the chambers, later/below).
Here’s the actual voting chambers:
With a few last general pics thrown in:
Because Ceausescu was deathly afraid of getting sick, the entire complex was constructed without air conditioning! Huh? Say what? Why would that be you ask? Because as they were preparing to put the HVAC system in, he was told that it would have to have a state of the art computer system installed to run the HVAC system. Of course everyone knows that computers have virus’s, so he ordered the HVAC scrapped, and they put in a natural circulation system instead. (seriously – we couldn’t make that up if we tried)
Ceausescu wasn’t a “bad” leader (i.e. our guide said that he wasn’t evil and despotic), if that can really be said of a Communist leader, but he put Romania into a bad situation. During the period of construction, 95% of Romania’s GDP was dumped into the Parliament building, taking away money from any and all public services possible. Remember that crystal factory, all of it’s production went to the building. All other factories in the country (say a furniture factory that made chairs and desks and such to sell in other countries), were ordered to stop producing whatever it was they produced for profit, and begin producing needed materials for the building. (i.e. furniture, tile, window, pipe, etc… nothing was made to be sold / make money, all resources coming out of the factories of the entire country went to that one building.)
There were no records kept of the cost to build this massive building, but materials alone were estimated to be about $5 billion USD in the 90’s. Materials alone. No labor. (Which would have made the materials look like chump change.)
Due to importance/money that was poured into the Parliament Building, people were homeless and starving and Ceausescu ended up being a despised leader of the country. In December 1989 a major uprising, now referred to as The Romanian Revolution, was brewing with rioting, civil unrest, and the deaths of many citizens. Many ugly things came out about Ceausescu at that time including genocide and economic sabotage. He and his wife were tried and convicted of genocide and economic sabotage and were immediately executed by firing squad on live television.
Okay, there’s your lesson on the Peoples Palace. ????
In the afternoon, we visited Ceausescu’s personal home (Palace). It was unlike other palaces we have visited in the past as it was smack dab in the middle of a neighborhood and was more of a mansion than a palace. (It actually started out as a normal size home, but within 10 years, he’d added on an additional 80 rooms.)
Here’s some general pics from his home (again, somewhat dark, apologies):
And here are some “specialty rooms” pics:
Technically this is part of his “spa”, but it sure looks like something a Bond Villain would have:
Okay, probably wouldn’t include a bathroom pic, but hey, gold fixtures? Why not.
And of course who doesn’t have guard peacocks roaming the property?
Oh yea, an indoor “garden” filled with nothing but exotic plants:
After seeing Parliament we were not surprised to see the opulence of Ceausescu’s home. Even the indoor swimming pool has marble steps! The palace has an “apartment” for each family member, consisting of a bedroom, a bathroom, a dressing room, and a sitting/living room, and an office. We say “apartment” as it’s all under the same roof.
Oh, we mentioned the indoor pool, better show it:
Well, that was pretty much the day. It was too hot by far to get out, so we just stayed in the hotel for a burger and fries for dinner. Besides, gotta get to bed! Tomorrow we’re off for Transylvania… Muahahahahahahahahaha.
Cheers,
Tim & Jay
