Our guide sternly corrected me. I had always assumed that Romanians derived their name from their long ago heritage of being a part of the Roman Empire. This thought had been reinforced by the fact that the Romanian language is a Latin-derived one, like Italian or Spanish, the only such language in Eastern Europe. Communist revisionist history, grumped our guide, Bogdan. I guess both I and Wikipedia are wrong. But, for once, I didn’t argue. Bogdan has been an outstanding guide for our group.
We said goodbye to the crew of the Amadeus Nova on Sunday morning and bused the two plus hours to the capital of Romania, Bucharest. Bogdan, who on the previous day had given us a cliff notes summary of the history of Romania from its beginnings until the World War I era, continued his tutoring, covering from the end of that war through the revolution that toppled the Communist government in 1989. His parents struggled greatly under the communists, so his opinion of that era is clear. Unlike many in the younger generation, many of whom are waxing nostalgically for a society they never experienced, he knows what a terrible period that was. (Free rent! Free education! No unemployment! Yes, and no heat for the apartment, electricity three hours a day, a ration of 2 pounds of meat a month, and nothing to buy with the money they were paid, etc.)
We started with a bus tour of the heart of the city, with sections dominated by communist era buildings and other areas with the attractive homes and buildings constructed during the time between Romania’s independence from the Ottomans in 1877 and the world wars. While many in the latter category were destroyed during the communist era, those taken over by senior communist and government officials survived (and mostly are back in the hands of the descendants of the previous owners).
After lunch at the Casa Donna Restaurant, we were taken to the open air Village Museum. In it are representative homes and other structures gathered from throughout Romania and reconstructed in the museum. It is advertised as the largest such museum in Europe.
We then drove to and checked into the Athens Palace Hotel for two nights.
Monday morning we visited the Palace of the Parliament. It is colossal, second only to the Pentagon in size and, by weight, the largest building in the world. It was the pet project of the Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, cost billions of dollars to construct and required the removal (with one week’s notice) of twenty thousand residents. It’s not yet complete. Its maintenance runs more than a billion dollars a year. Even with the Romanian president, senate, and chamber of deputies and all their associated administrative functions, the palace is far from filled. Still, it’s impressive.
For the afternoon, we walked the few feet from our hotel to the National Art Museum, once the Romanian royal palace. (As the leading families of Romania could not agree among themselves who should be king, they chose a German prince, Carol (Charles)). I failed to take a picture of the building except from across the avenue.
By all accounts King Carol I was a competent, conscientious and popular ruler and under this reign Romania prospered. Romania remained a kingdom from 1881 to 1947, when the Communists threatened to execute 1000 students who had been arrested for protesting, if the king did not cede power to the communists. He did.
The palace/museum is normally closed on Mondays but the trip operators provided for the museum to be open just for us. Our only disappointment was that the coronation room was not open for viewing due to a special event.
That evening was the farewell reception for the main tour group. The Gohagen tour operators made the mistake of providing tables to sit at and ample appetizers, so everyone made a full meal of the offerings. A third of us, 46 by count, are heading for several days in Transylvania. Dracula, here we come.
