May 00 - Ceaucescu's 'Peoples' palace' (1984-'89, 'the world's heaviest bldg.' and the 3rd largest [that's not a factory, assembly site, distribution centre, mall, hangar, or terminal], after the Pentagon & the Potala palace in Tibet), Bucharest

But the Pentagon and the Potala weren't built with a ridiculous amount of marble. This bldg. also contains one of the world's largest chandeliers, large enough to contain a platform for maintenance workers to walk around on inside it.

 

- I arrived here in Bucharest late the night before my last full day in Romania. I stayed at a hostel I think or the cheapest digs I could find. The options were relatively expensive and I did much walking that night in search of something affordable. The next morning I hiked over to and up and along the wide Bulevardul Unirii, lined by huge, concrete constructions and divided by a long string of art nouveau fountains down the centre (the last of which you see here in the foreground) to 'the People's Palace' in the Centru Civic. (The stretch reminded me of the approach up University ave. to Queen's Park in Toronto, but on a lengthier, more massive scale and with greater uniformity.) This fountain was dry, but other identical ones further east were filled with water and were active. I recall seeing a surprising number of stray dogs roaming @ in packs along the Bulevardul.

 

- I bought a ticket to join an organized tour of this massive pile.

- "In 1971, Ceauşescu visited North Korea and returned full of admiration for the grandiose avenues of Kim II Sung’s Pyongyang. In 1977 a massive earthquake reduced large parts of Bucharest to rubble and left over 1,500 dead. While this prompted the construction of several major city projects, incl. a new metro system and an airport, it also provided Ceauşescu with the perfect excuse to implement his megalomaniac vision for the city. In 1984, he set out to remodel Bucharest as “the first socialist capital for the new socialist man”, and to create a new administrative centre which was to be “a symbolic representation of the 2 decades of enlightenment we have just lived through”. In truth, this Centru Civic was intended to embody the state’s authority and that of Ceauşescu himself, and implementation entailed the demolition of 1/4 of Bucharest’s historic centre (@ 5 square km.s), said to be slums damaged earlier by the earth-quake, but in fact containing 9,000 largely undamaged 19th cent. houses, whose 40,000 inhabitants were relocated in new developments on the outskirts of the city. There was worldwide condemnation of this vandalism, particularly since many old churches, a hospital and a monastery were to be swept away. Though some of the churches were reprieved, they're now surrounded by huge, modern apt. blocks. The core of the complex was largely completed by 1989, just in time for the dictator’s overthrow." (RG)

- "Uniting the two halves of the Centru Civic is Bulevardul Unirii, at 4 km.s long and 120 m.s wide, slightly larger (intentionally so) than the Champs-Élysées after which it was modelled. Midway along is Piaţa Unirii (“Square of the Union”) [where I'm standing as I take this shot, or closeby], an oversized expanse of concrete dominated by traffic, and ... the best place from which to view [this]."

- "Dominating the entire project from the western end of B-dul Unirii is the colossal Palace of Parliament (Palatul Parlamentului), claimed to be the 2nd-largest administrative building in the world - after the Pentagon - measuring 270 by 240 m.s, and 86 m.s high. It epitomizes the megalomania that overtook Ceauşescu in the 1980s; here he intended to house ministries, Communist Party offices and the apartments of high functionaries. Built on the site of the former Spirei Hill, which was razed for this project, the sheer size of it can only be grasped by comparison with the toy-like cars scuttling past below. It has 12 storeys, 4 underground levels (including a nuclear bunker), a 100 m.-long lobby and 1100 rooms, around 1/2 of which are used as offices while the remainder are redundant. The interiors are lavishly decorated with marble and gold leaf, and there are 4,500 chandeliers (11,000 were planned), the largest of which weighs 1.5 tonnes, but the decoration was never complete due to the Ceauşescus’ ever-changing whims. They were demanding patrons, allowing little more than a technical role to the architects, of which there were @ 700 – one staircase was rebuilt 3 x before they were satisfied. The floor pattern – which mirrors the layout of the bldg. itself – was apparently designed that way so Ceauşescu wouldn’t get lost."

- "This ultimate white elephant was officially known as the Casa Republicii, then as the Casa Poporului, but more popularly as the Casa Nebunului (“Madman’s House”), before taking on its present name. The new government spent a long time agonizing about an acceptable use for it, and in 1994 it was finally decided to house the Senate and Parliament here; it is now also used for international conferences. The standard tour is a 45-min. trek through 10 of the most dazzling, most representative or simply the largest of the halls, such as the extraordinary, glass-ceilinged Sala Unirii ('Unification Hall'), where legendary Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci was married in 1996. One of the last rooms you’re led to is the Alexandru Ioan Cuza room, whose balcony offers defining views of the city." (RG)

- youtu.be/Uln3oINe6Kc?si=0EbX3si7NBXbTNKw

 

- I had only the one day in this city and did much walking, but the only other site or sight I devoted time to (at least a full afternoon) was the National museum of History in the former 'Postal Services Palace' (1892), with 8000 square m.s of floor space and @ 60 rooms of exhibits. The LP writes that it's "strong on Romania's ties to ancient Rome" and I recall an impressive plaster cast of Trajan's column. I bought a few postcards of exhibits that impressed me (as one does), including one of an octagonal, golden 'vase', with leopards for handles, 1 of 12 solid gold items from the 'Pietroasele treasure' (of the original 22), late 4th cent., Goth, and discovered in 1837 in Pietroasele, Buzău. "The multiple styles of the items, in which Han Chinese styles have been noted in the belt buckles, Hellenistic in the golden bowls, Sasanian motifs in the baskets, and Germanic fashions in the fibulae, are characteristic of the cosmopolitan outlook of the Cernjachov culture in a region without defined topographic confines." (Wikipedia) www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Qe9r12eZE

- I bought another of a large, abstract idol (800 grams of pure gold, thought to represent a fertility or mother goddess but resembling a breast-plate, 31 cm.s in length), 1 of 4 items from the neolithic, 4th mill. BC, Moigrad treasure, associated with the Bodrogkeresztúr culture of Chalcolithic Hungary, and one of the oldest treasures found anywhere. There's no shortage of invaluable, beautiful and detailed Dacian hoards and treasures of pure gold on show in the 'Treasury room', incl. the famous, elaborate Coţofeneşti helmet. The Thracians and the Dacians were marvelous goldsmiths.

- In the vast displays re more recent Romanian history, I saw Grigorescu's 'The Attack in Smârdan' (a scene from the War of Independence [1877-78]). www.wikiart.org/en/nicolae-grigorescu/sm-rdan-attack-1878

 

- "According to legend, Bucharest was founded by a shepherd named Bucur who built a settlement in the Vlăsia forest, later recorded as a 'citadel on the Dâmboviţa' in 1368, and named Bucharest in an edict from the time of Vlad III Dracula (r 1456-76). Over the centuries, both Târgovişte and Bucharest have served as the Wallachian capital, but the latter finally secured its claim in 1659, its position at the convergence of trade routes to Istanbul outweighing Târgovişte’s defensive advantages in the Carpathian foothills. As the boyars moved into the city they built palaces and churches on the main streets radiating from the centre; these streets were surfaced with timber baulks and were known as 'bridges' (poduri). Despite earthquakes and periodic attacks by Turks, Tatars, Austrians and Russians over the course of its history, the city continued to grow and to modernize. New boulevards were driven through the existing street pattern in the 1890s, after the style of Haussmann’s Paris, and still form a ring road and the main north–south and east–west axes of the city today. Most of the major bldg.s, such as the Romanian Atheneum and the Cercul Militar, were designed by French or French-trained architects and were built in the years immediately preceding WWI. It was @ this time that the city was dubbed the “Paris of the East”, as much for its hectic and cosmopolitan social scene [but only for the well-to-do] as for its architecture. ... " (RG)

 

- I saw some of the romantic and eclectic contributions to the city from those French architects imported by King Carol I in 'la belle epoque', incl. the impressive entrance to the Beaux Arts 'Cantacuzino palace' (1901-02) with its clamshell-shaped porte-cochere. On Aug. 10, 1913, the Treaty of Bucharest was signed there at the end of the 2nd Balkan War.

- I happened upon the Athenaeum (1888, architect Albert Galleron [French]), a round, domed, neoclassical concert hall and the loveliest bldg. in Bucharest. Its exterior is beautiful, but the interior is more impressive from what I've seen online. "A 75-by-3-m. fresco by Costin Petrescu on the inside of the circular wall of the hall depicts the most important moments of Romanian history, from the Roman conquest of Dacia to the realization of Greater Romania in 1918." www.jacksonfineart.com/artists/david-leventi/romanian-ath... "On Dec. 29, 1919, the Athenaeum was the site of the conference of leading Romanians who voted to ratify the unification of Bessarabia, Transylvania, and Bukovina with the Romanian Old Kingdom to constitute Greater Romania." (Wikipedia)

 

- I'll only mention a few misses in Bucharest (incl. a concert in the Athenaeum).: The small but lovely Storck museum foto.agerpres.ro/foto/detaliu/13028645 ; certain 16th to 19th cent. Orthodox churches, incl. the Patriarchal Cathedral (1665-'68), seat of the Romanian Orthodox Church; and the National Art museum in the former Royal Palace with its fine gallery of Romanian Medieval Art, and some Brâncuşi in its gallery of local Modern Art.

 

- From Bucharest, late in the afternoon or in the evening of May 12, with my visa set to expire, I took a train south the 64 clicks (1 hr. and 45 min.s according to the RG) to the border-town of Giurgiu (Jee-er-jeeoo). I didn't know it then, but I was travelling on the first and oldest rail-line in Romania, built in 1869.

- "As a fortified city, Giurgiu featured often in the wars for the conquest of the lower Danube. It was the site of the October 1595 'Battle of Giurgiu' [/b/ the Austrians and the Ottomans] and was a theatre of war in the struggle of Michael the Brave (1593–1601) against the Turks and in the later Russo-Turkish War (1787-1792). It was burned in 1659." (Wikipedia) I just passed through.

- I crossed the border and the Danube via the 'Giurgiu-Ruse Friendship Bridge' into Bulgaria (currently the only Bulgarian bridge across the Danube), said a sad goodbye to Romania, and arrived in the city of Ruse (Roo-see, I think).

 

 

So, Bulgaria! I had crossed again from one country into a very different neighboring country. It seemed to be more modern, with far fewer 'time capsules' (which I love, as you know), but then with some much older churches and sites and sights to be toured. It's less Western European, without Transylvania's gothic features and Romania's ties to Italy, Germany, Hungary and France. It's very Balkan (of course) with a Byzantine flavour, a resident in a very different neighborhood (notwithstanding that the Dacians were a subgroup of the Thracians, who according to Herodotus were the most populous race known to the ancient Greeks, after the Indians). The historical spotlight in popular culture or imagination (in the west at least) would seem to shift back and forth /b/ the countries, from glorious, accomplished Thrace in the 1st mill. BC, land of Orpheus, Dionysus and of gold, neighboring ancient Greece; to Dacia north of the border in the times of its struggles with Rome, Decebalus v. Trajan, the Iron Gates, etc.; then back south to the medieval Byzantine period and the Bulgarian kingdoms of the late 1st and early 2nd mill.s; and back again to Romania with its colonization by the Magyars and then by the 'Saxons', and its conflicts with the Turks.

 

- I found Bulgarians to be generally more shy and quieter than Romanians (the hitch-hiking was poor there, which is consistent with shyness. I took the train most often). But once they'd made your acquaintance, Bulgarians would make a point to be generous I found, often exceptionally so.

- I found a real appreciation for the relatively abundant, modern abstract art in Bulgaria, including wonderful socialist-realist art unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Much of it was very creative. And the food there was very different as well. I'd say it was much closer to Greek cuisine. Shopska salad with feta cheese and olives was had everywhere. (I've never eaten so much salad anywhere else, apart from in the FYR of Macedonia.)

 

- The Bulgarian authors of the guide-book I’d made copies from, and of a book or booklet re Bulgarian history that I bought and which was on sale everywhere, were a bit prone to an excessive pride in Bulgaria I found, which is the way of things in the Balkans generally. The booklet made such claims as, for example, that Bulgarians had invented brain surgery as ancient trepanning tools had been discovered. The frescoes in the Boyana church in Sofia are held out as anticipating Giotto and as evidence that "but for the Turkish yoke, Bulgaria would have ushered in the Renaissance" (to paraphrase). But the Italian Renaissance was about much more than achievements in art. The fact is that Bulgarians chafed under 'the Turkish yoke' for 5 long centuries, as any occupied people would, and so naturally they look to the west and ask what their society might have become and might have achieved if not for their subjugation.

 

- I spent @ a month and a 1/2 in Bulgaria, and saw a fair bit in the northern 2/3rds of the country. I followed a guidebook (I forget which, I'd made photocopies) which I later learned left much to be desired. Almost nothing was written up in that guide re the southern 4th or 5th of the country, which has several sites I would've loved to have seen, incl. the cave of 'the Devil's throat', down into which Orpheus is said to have descended to Hades to retrieve Eurydice. (But the now-famous shrine to Dionysus [who was Thracian!] and site of an oracle consulted by Alexander the Great, and the tomb which is a candidate for that of Orpheus at Tatul, hadn't been excavated and were unknown to tourism in 2000.) The biggest miss was what could be the trippiest, most off-the-hook Soviet or Communist-era ruin anywhere (which is saying something), which was within walking distance of Shipka, a place I visited. (I'll write about it in the description to my photo taken at Shipka.)

 

- I forget how and where I met him upon my arrival, but I was invited to stay at the home of a kind, local man I met in Ruse. The hospitality was just as wonderful in Bulgaria as it was in Romania or moreso. I didn't spend a cent on accommodation for at least my first 7 nights in the country.

 

- My host took me on a small walking tour of Ruse the next morning, or at least to the central 'Freedom square' where I took a photo of the 'Monument of Liberty' (@ 1907-09, sculptor Arnoldo Zocchi), a statue of a woman in a toga standing on a square column above a plinth, holding a sword in one hand and pointing with the other, with 2 lions at the base. It commemorates the liberation of Bulgaria by the Russians from the Turks in the 1870s. One of the lions tears the chains of a yoke with its teeth. It was inaugurated on Aug. 11, the anniversary of the most decisive date of the 'Battle of Shipka'. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_of_Liberty,_Ruse#/media/Fi...

- I think I recall, but took no photos (?) of, the modernist 'Pantheon of National Heros' under a gold dome with the remains of 453 activists from the time of 'the Bulgarian National Revival' within. (Or maybe I saw a photo of it later? It's a miss if so, a very interesting piece of modern architecture.)

 

- Ruse is the most significant Bulgarian port on the Danube and is the 5th largest city in Bulgaria. In the late 19th cent. and until WWI it was the 2nd largest (after Plovdiv). It's "known for its 19th and 20th cent. neo-baroque and neo-rococo architecture". The city's a bigger deal than I realized when I was there. "A Thracian settlement developed into a Roman military and naval centre in the reign of Vespasian (69–70 CE), as part of the fortification system along the northern boundary of Moesia. It was named Sexaginta Prista, 'City of 60 Ships' (Greek: Pristis - a special type of defensive ship. It's presumed that the port had 60 berths.) The fortress was on the main route between Singidunum (Belgrade) and the Danube Delta. It was rebuilt as a praesidium following its destruction by Goths in 250 CE, but was destroyed again in the 6th cent. by Avar and Slavic raiders. The Ottomans revitalized the town which became a large fortress and administrative centre of Tuna Vilayet, extending from Varna and Tulcea to Sofia and Niš, by the 18th cent. And Ruse developed into a centre of the Bulgarian National Revival, hosting the headquarters of the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee. (all Wikipedia) The city's greatest transformation came with an international agreement concerning free merchant shipping on the Danube, which led to its emergence as an important economic force, and as a trading centre for the Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and British empires. Ruse was the scene of many firsts for Bulgaria, such as the first newspaper printed in Bulgaria and in Bulgarian, the first printing office, railway line (Ruse to Varna), weather station, film projection, etc. It's fair to say it's an important city to the modern history of Bulgaria.

- I missed a history museum, the low-lying ruins (the foundations of walls) of an historic Roman fortress, and the 'Transport museum' in the original British-built railway station (1866), with late 19th cent. carriages and locomotives from the days when Ruse was a stop on the Orient Express which then ran from Budapest to Bucharest to Giurgiu, passengers would cross the river, and then from Ruse to Varna, and by boat to Stamboul. One item is "the sumptuous Sultaniye carriage, used by Empress Eugenie of France in 1869 en route to open the Suez canal." (RG)

 

- From Ruse I hitched south @ 25 km.s down the 501 and walked to the 'rock-hewn churches of Ivanovo'. (See the description for the next photo, taken at Madara).

Done