Romania

From Budapest to Bucharest

Having left our last holiday destination of Budapest, Hungary, we are now on our way to Bucharest, in Romania. Sadly, I cannot find any quirky links between the two, apart from their similar sounding names, but wonder how many people have confused them when booking flights to these cities.

In preparation for our next trip I started to consider what I knew about Romania. Just three things came to mind: the rule of Ceaușescu, Romanian gypsies, and the terrible images broadcast from orphanages in the 1990s which led to appeals for help from families internationally. One young business contact I knew at that time was so taken by the TV appeal to UK viewers that she picked up the phone immediately and offered to provide a supportive home for two Romanian orphans – single handedly. Such was the emotive message.

But what is the wider view? Writing this blog urged me to delve more deeply into the country than just the sites we are scheduled to visit and it was not long before I found rather more points of interest than I had been left with from earlier media reports.

The country today has a lot to be proud of. It has four Nobel laureate prize winners: George Emil Palade for his investigation into cell biology; Elie Wiesel for his work in the peace movement following he and his family’s internment in Auschwitz; Herta Müller for literature, and Stefan Walter Hell for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy. All four have incredible stories worth researching in their own right.

Romania has medieval towns, many UNESCO sites – including its own version of the Arc de Triumphant – painted monasteries and fortified churches. Some of these we will be visiting.

Its capital, Bucharest, has recognition from the Guinness World Records. The city’s Palace of the Parliament is believed to be the heaviest building in the world with huge amounts of steel, bronze, marble and crystal used in the creation of the site’s 1,110 rooms and – in addition to its multi-levels above ground – 8 floors underground.

Jeremy Clarkson considers Romania has the world’s best driving road, the Transfagarasan highway, with an array of tunnels, viaducts, bridges and hairpin bends. It will be interesting to see if our coach driver will take us in that direction.

The country has Europe’s largest mammal, the European bison, and the largest number of European brown bears. Let’s hope we see them before they see us.

Happy for some, a study of 195 countries spanning 26 years concluded that Romanian men are the heaviest drinkers of alcohol, consuming more than 8 drinks a day. It is clearly not a good idea to get into a drinking competition with the locals.

Bucharest has one of the prettiest bookshops, Cărturești Carusel. We hope to get a view inside to see if it lives up to its accolade, although the mention of bookshops takes us back to Kathmandu in Nepal which has the largest number of secondhand bookshops we have ever seen. It must be for all those Everest-climbing wannabes awaiting the ideal climbing conditions to visit this awe-inspiring mountain.

How strange it is that Romania has so many aspects of interest, but all we have learned about via the media over the years is the rule of Ceaușescu until 1989, orphanages and travelling families. It will be good to learn more and put some of these things into perspective… but don’t expect me to explain the workings of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy!

Copyright: Sue Barnard 2019