Arrival in Bucharest

As many of you who found your way to this blog probably know, I am spending the summer in Galați, Romania interning with an NGO called SMART in order to fulfill a requirement of my Master of Public Policy degree at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy. More on the actual internship will be forthcoming. I have been in Romania for 3 days and will be staying for 10 weeks. I spent my first day in Bucharest, the capital, before heading to Galați. This initial post will be about my experience in Bucharest.

I arrived from Los Angeles via Frankfurt in Bucharest at 17:20 this past Wednesday, around 17 hours after departure. There is a 10 hour time difference between the Western United States and Romania. The Bucharest airport is small and was a rather painless experience. The customs agent did not even ask my purpose in Romania, but simply stamped my passport. Luckily, all of my baggage arrived with me. A friend of my employers, Iulian, picked me from the airport.

I was then driven around Bucharest and shown the major sites. Bucharest is a big city. It has a population of around 3 million people. Due to the scale of much of its architecture, it reminds me of Paris. I later discovered that Bucharest has been called the Paris of the East.

The above is a picture of the Romanian Parliament building. As any Romanian will proudly tell you, it is the second largest administrative building the world (after the Pentagon). It was built in the 1980s by the communist dictator  Nicolae Ceauşescu to serve as the center of government, and no doubt to act as an imposing specter. It is also surrounding by other buildings done in a similar style and scale which today house various ministries and other organs of the Romanian national government. The day I arrived happened to be European Union Day, which explains the massive EU flag in front of the building. The group of people in front of that were involved in some sort of protest.

After seeing a couple of sites and cleaning up from a long flight, I went with Iulian and a friend of his to Bucharest's Old City.  This area has become the central night life hub and is filled with bars, pubs, entertainers, restaurants, and street food vendors.

Sorry for the blurry pictures of the Old City.

After a late night, we finally returned to Iulian's to sleep. The next morning, I went with Iulian to his office. After he printed out some maps, I took off to explore Bucharest. 

I first stopped at the Romanian Museum of History, which was actually currently exhibiting Chinese artifacts on loan.  The permanent collection ofthe museum is divided into two parts. The first contains Greek and Roman artifacts, including a life size reconstruction of Hadrian's Column, even though the individual slabs of the column are side by side rather than stacked to allow viewing of the entire story of the Roman conquest of the Dacians. 

The other part of the permanent collection exhibits artifacts from Romanian history, all the way from the civilization that inhabited the area prior to Roman conquest to recent history. Items included jewelry, weaponry, and royal crowns. 

After the museum I took the metro to the other side of the city, The Bucharest metro is very good, and can be regarded as one of the best features to come out of the city's communist era. A day pass on the metro is 6 Lei. The exchanged rate from American Dollar to Romanian Lei hovers around 3.2.

After some more wondering around , I visited Herastrau park, which is massive and seemed to be around the size of Hyde Park in London. At the center of a park is a lake.

Adjacent to Herastrau park is the impressive Museum of the Romanian Village. The outdoor museum is comprised of actual houses that were moved from villages all over Romania, some several hundred years old. Again, I was amazed by how large the collection was, though I am told there is a larger similar museum in another city.

After that museum, I walked around the park a bit more before taking the metro back to the town's center and exploring further. Finally, I returned to Iulian's office.

I liked Bucharest quite a bit. It is not as clean as a place like Paris, but it is also is not decaying. There are also numerous large parks and most of the architecture is attractive. As I mentioned above, the Romanian capital is large. I saw what I could in around 8 hours of walking and Metro riding, but there is still much I missed. I will hopefully return to Bucharest a couple of times before leaving Romania, as well as see as much of the rest of the county as possible. 

Later that evening,  my employer, Radu, picked me up. We then returned to the airport to meet a classmate who will also be working for SMART this summer. From there, we had an interesting 160 mile drive to Galați, finally arriving around 3 in the morning. More on this experience and my time so far in Galați next post.