Bucharest; Saturday, 21 October, 2017

I had a nice long lie-in and a good breakfast, so by the time I finally made it out of the hotel it was already well gone 11am.

My first stop of the morning was to wander down to Revolution square – pausing briefly to have a look round the outside of the Ateneul Român theatre. The square was the point where the revolution in Romania in December 1989 really picked up a head of steam. There had been protests for some time in the city of Timisoara, and on the morning of 21st December Ceausescu addressed a crowd of about 100,000 people in the square from a balcony on the (now former) Communist Party Headquarters building that dominates one side of the square. The speech had been designed to make it look like Ceausescu was still in control, but the crowd had different ideas and started heckling, booing and chanting the name Timisoara. As the secret police started to open fire a full-scale riot broke out and from there several days of fighting and bloodshed lead to the rapid collapse of the regime. On Christmas day Ceausescu and his wife were executed.

Today the square houses two memorials to those who died in the fighting with one listing the names of all those who were killed by the Ceausescu forces. Today it’s difficult to imagine what this space must have been like at the time – the fast roads and hordes of tourists not helping.

After taking in the square I continued wandering south along the Western edge of the old town – taking in some of the more interesting buildings, along with some of the truly ugly communist era blocks.

Down in the centre of the city I turned onto Union Boulevard and walked along its western end from the river up to the imposing bulk of the Palace of Parliament. This massive building required the demolition of vast parts of the old city and is now the 2nd largest administrative building in the world (after the Pentagon). After taking in the views from the outside I wandered round to the tradesmen and tourists entrance to join a tour.

The tours run regularly, particularly in English, though from the organisation you wouldn’t have thought so as it was quite chaotic getting through booking, purchase and then security screening. In the end the 2pm tour that I was booked on didn’t get underway until well gone 14:30, but it was worth the hassle as the tour shows off some of the most impressive rooms and halls of the building – even if you only visit less than 5% of the whole structure.

After the tour I had a bit more of a wander before finding myself back in the Old Town, and as it was fast approaching 5pm I decided to stop for a very late lunch or early dinner and a drink in another very nice restaurant. In the end the food (and beer) was so good that I spent much longer than I normally would on dinner and it had long since gotten dark when I paid the bill and walked back through the university district to the hotel.