Bucharest

It's been a few weeks since I got back from Europe and I'm finally getting around to writing about the last two stops on my trip: Bucharest, Romania, and Istanbul, Turkey. After leaving Dublin I flew to Bucharest, which ended up being my least favorite place that I visited, for various reasons.
A part of it was that my last day in Dublin I started to feel a bit sick with a cold but I powered through. It got worse once I was in Romania, and I don't think staying up until 4am to watch the Super Bowl helped, so the day after that, which was my third full day in Bucharest, I ended up staying on the couch all day at my host's house. Also, before I even got there I had a bunch of people I talked to on the couchsurfing website basically tell me that Bucharest is a dump and I shouldn't go, and even my host and his friends talked about Romania as if they didn't like it that much, so that dampened my enthusiasm for the place right from the start. Add to all of that my worsening travel-weariness and the fact that I was really looking forward to going to Istanbul, and the whole thing was a recipe for a not very enjoyable few days. Although I saw some cool things and my couchsurfing host was great, I was happy to leave when the 4 days were over.

Bucharest itself was pretty interesting to walk around, because the architecture seemed to be a mixture of a bunch of different styles. Most of the buildings throughout the city were very utilitarian-looking, concrete and many stories high, filled with what I assumed were apartments. As soon as I got there I could tell it was a formerly communist country because this building style seems common to images I had seen of countries with similar histories. Then in the center of the city there were other, more grand buildings from various periods in time, some of which were also built during the communist regime but were intended to make the city look more grand. It was also the first country I had been to that was not quite as economically developed as the rest. It was clear that Romania is a much poorer country than the Western European countries. Less money seemed to be spent on infrastructure because the roads and sidewalks were not well maintained in many places, and everything I bought or paid for was much cheaper than I was used to, especially food. With the feeling of economic hardship in the country, I sort of expected that crime rates would be high, but my host told me that Bucharest is very safe, and that he would feel safe walking alone in the city at any time of the day or night.

Here is a quick photo tour of what I saw in Romania:

Palace of Parliament in Bucharest, which is the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon, and is also the heaviest building in the world. I didn't get to go inside because the day I planned to do that was the day I was sick. 

Palace of Parliament again. If I'm remembering the history I learned correctly, construction was started during the reign of the communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, and after he was killed, the new government decided to keep it because it would have cost more money to take it down than to finish the construction. 

Buildings in one of the main squares in downtown Bucharest. These look similar to many of the other communist era buildings in the city.

Street in the old city center. The style of the buildings was much different here than many other parts of the city. 

More buildings in the city center. The one on the left is a good example of why Bucharest used to be known as "Little Paris."

Romanian Atheneaum, one of my favorite buildings in the city.

On my last day in Romania, I went to a small town in Transylvania, called Brasov. Here are some pictures:

A gate in the old wall that used to surround the city.

Strada Sforii, supposedly the narrowest street in Europe

Brasov from outside the old city wall

Old city wall

View from the top of one of the hills surrounding the city. Not sure if you can really see it in this picture, but the hill across the way has letters on it spelling out "BRASOV," similar to the Hollywood sign. 

Cute traditional Romanian buildings in the center of Brasov.

I enjoyed Brasov and the quaint feel it had to it, even though it was cold and I was still feeling a little sick. But then on the way back to the train station, just to add to all of the things I already disliked about Romania, I got fined for riding the bus without a ticket. It really wasn't my fault because the bus stop where I got on didn't even sell tickets, and the bus drivers don't sell them, you're just supposed to buy a ticket before boarding and then validate it once you're on the bus. So I had no choice but to get on without a ticket. Things like this had happened to me before, when machines in Munich and Venice had simply refused to sell me a ticket no matter what I tried to do, (and I had also done it intentionally several times, mostly in Paris, to save money on tickets, which is bad, I know), but since I had done it before without any consequences I got too complacent and didn't pay enough attention when the ticket enforcers boarded the bus. I was only one stop away from the train station so I could have gotten off and walked the rest of the way, but I didn't realize in time and they caught me. So in the end I had to pay 60 lei, which is about $15. Since everything is so cheap in Romania the fine wasn't so bad either; if I had been in a western European country the fine could have been 60 euros, which would have been about $75, so of all the places I could have gotten caught, I was glad it was there. But once that happened I was like, okay, I'm ready to get out of this country! I know a couple people who said they really enjoyed Romania, which is why I decided to go, so I think the country has more to offer than what I saw, and I know my experience could have been much better under different circumstances. So maybe someday I'll give it another chance, but it's not on the top of my list of countries to return to.

I had intended to combine Romania and Turkey into one blog post, but I've written more about Romania than I expected, so I think I will give Istanbul it's own post so it gets the attention from me that it deserves. Stay tuned for that in (hopefully) not too long!