Romania – Day 3 (Bucharest)
Monday 04-May-2009
Today was my final day in Romania and on the agenda was a visit to the Palace of the Parliament. This building is the world’s largest civilian admistrative building, most expensive admistrative building and heaviest building. Alin managed to book a tour of this building for around midday with the English guides.
The tour was run during business hours so security was important to them hence you need to bring your passport for the tour. You couldn’t bring your camera inside unless you paid a fee to take photos. If you didn’t pay the photo tax then they confiscate your camera and you would collect it at the end of the tour. The same goes for your passport.
The tour was only for 45 minutes as we went from room to room. In the space of 45 minutes we only covered an amazing 1% of the entire building. From my calculations it will take you 4500 minutes to cover 100% of the building which equates to 75 hours! Pack those rucksacks and begin your trek around the Palace of the Parliament ladies and gentlemen.
From the Palace of the Parliament we walked towards the Union Square (Piata Unirii) then inside the plaza to see if Alin’s uncle was around. He wasn’t so we left the plaza and headed to the Cismigiu Gardens for a stroll and grab some lunch at Monte Carlo restaurant. My favorite food on the trip so far is Mititei which is grilled minced-meat rolls made from beef mixed with various other ingredients. We got a plate of those and these Mititei were the largest I seen all trip and boy did it taste good. I’m salivating as I type this out, I want some now!
Parking in Bucharest is another concept altogether that you need to grasp here in Bucharest. It seems you can just about park anywhere you want. Wherever there is space or a concrete slab then just park there even if it’s a pedestrian crossing or a footpath. Just park your car on the footpath and let the pedestrians walk around the car, on to the road and then back on the footpath if there is not another car parked next to it. There’s a traffic island on the street, sure just park on there too!
It’s amazing what some of these drivers can get away with and it doesn’t help either when the Police can be so easily bribed (not that we bribed anyone but have been told). We were waiting at a set of traffic lights to cross a busy intersection. There were cars turning from the opposite side of the street coming down the road we were crossing.
There were also pedestrians on the other side of the road waiting for the green man. All of a sudden there was one car making the turn but instead of going down the road, he decides to drive towards the group of pedestrians waiting at the lights, drives on to the footpath while everyone had to get out of the way and then down the footpath dodging people to find a parking spot. What on earth?!
Chris was kind enough to pick me up from the apartment and take me to the airport. He didn’t want me to take a taxi and get ripped off by the taxi driver. He lives relatively close to the airport so I guess it wasn’t that inconvenient for him. The Bucharest Baneasa airport is very small with 6 check-in desks in total. There is another airport about 10-15 mins from Bucharest Baneasa which is the main international airport. The airport itself is only about 15-20 mins from the city center so as you are driving up the highway towards it, it suddenly appears out of nowhere.
The line for check-in was very long and the locals don’t seem to understand the concept of a queue. They would just roll their suitcases up to the check-in desk ahead of everyone else that has been waiting in line and just do whatever the hell they wanted. So it was ridiculous waiting in the queue for about an hour just to check-in. I did hear rumors flying around that they will close this airport and with the way it’s running at the moment, it is quite possible.
smiles