Bulgaria to Bucharest, Romania

Wednesday, May 21

After a few challenging ventures down (and careful backing out of) narrow dead ends in the streets of Veliko Tarnavo's old town, we finally made our GPS wake up and pay attention so we could be on our way out of town.  We were headed about 60 miles north to the Romanian border.  Tom tried to spend the last of our Bulgarian currency at a gas station, but we luckily still had enough left to pay the Danube River bridge toll and the unanticipated but required Romanian road tax.  (Evidently, we should have paid a similar fee upon entering Bulgaria, and shown proof of same when leaving the country, but no one seemed to care about that.)

Once we entered Romania, we no longer had to deal with the Cyrillic alphabet and Romanian, which has strong similarities to Romance languages (Duh!) seemed strangely familiar.  Until today, we'd had no idea we could speak it! 

We were headed to Bucharest, the country's capital, where we found our apartment about a ten-minute walk from one of the city's main squares.  We connected easily with our host (especially as we'd had some difficulty reaching him via email and text during the last couple of days) and he even arranged for a friend whose English was better than his to come and help get us oriented. 

We headed out for a few hours to have a look at the old town and a bit of the city.  We checked out a few churches and wandered down the narrow cobbled streets of the old town.  We enjoyed strolling among the cafes, ornate commercial and public buildings, a 19th century galleria lined with shops, cafes, and hookah bars, and churches and then headed toward the district of government buildings. 

 

There, up on a hill, is the Palace of Parliament, the world's second -largest building (after the Pentagon).   This was the work of the Nicolae Ceausescu, the megalomaniacal dictator who held sway from 1965 to 1989.  During the early years of his regime, though Romania was part of the Soviet bloc, he managed to maintain some degree of distance from the Soviets and even sought to find favor with western powers during the cold war.  However, after a visit to North Korea (everyone's favorite role model!), he out-hardlined the hardliners and established a most repressive regime here.  As the Eastern Bloc disintegrated after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, protests spread throughout Romania, and Ceausescu, along with his wife, were arrested and executed by firing squad.  Romania's independence hasn't been a cake walk, but the country is now part of the EU and things appear to be on the upswing.

Our original plan had been to take an evening walking tour, but we were hot and tired, and decided to go tomorrow morning instead.  The call of our temporary "home" and a chance to relax over happy hour and leftovers from last night's fantastic dinner were just too hard to resist.