July 25 - Bucharest. Village Museum and Palace of Parliament

Important things today…Paul found an ATM so that we now have Romanian money, and we took a bunch of laundry down to have it done for us, since we were totally out of clean clothes.

Now on to the fun stuff. 

We were picked up at 9:00 for our city tour.  The tour guide/driver gave a running commentary as we drove through several areas of the city. 

Specific sights we saw included…

"Wings", a monument to the anti-communist resistance (in the Free Press Square)

the  Arch of Triumph in Revolution Square,

the  Art Deco statue Monuments of Heroes of the Air, 

and...the Memorial of Rebirth, officially known as "The Rebirth Memorial Eternal Glory to the Romanian Revolution and Its Heroes from December 1989." 

While the monument was intended to represent the struggles and victims of the Romanian Revolution against communism it is actually quite controversial because of its design.  It is variously named the Potato Skewered on Stake, or Potato of the Revolution, or the Olive on the Toothpick.  All very good descriptions.

Our first stop was the Village Museum (Muzeul Satului).  The village showcases traditional Romanian Village buildings that were moved from their original villages to the museum site. 

Traditionally many of the house complexes were entered through gates and they had a number of interesting examples.

Because most of these homes came from farming areas there were some interesting farm buildings including a building to store hay, with the roof gradually being lowered as the hay is removed.

And an interesting building for storing and drying corn.

The museum included some fences around most of the homes, including some woven with small branches and topped with hay.

We could go into a few of the buildings and most of the homes were furnished with traditional furnishings and items.

There were several churches (the priest from one of the churches even moved into a small home in the museum to be near his church)…

and several mills and a "Laundromat"…

A Laundry tub...put the clothes in the tub and open the flume for water to gush down and clean the clothes.

in addition to the various houses and buildings.

Various artisans also had traditional Romanian crafts for sale.  Interesting to look at, but no place for it as we no longer have a home.  So no purchases.

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More photos of the Village Museum.
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The next stop was the Palace of Parliament, the second largest administrative building in the world (after the Pentagon).  The Palace is 276 feet tall, has an area of 3,930,000 square feet and a volume of 90,000,000 cubic meters.  It is 12 stories high (with 8 underground), 1,100 rooms and has a vast nuclear bunker in the lower levels.  

The its construction was organized as a contest and was won by Anca Petresu who was appointed chief architect of the project when she was just 28 years old.  In total, the team that coordinated the work was made up of 10 assisting architects who supervised another 700 lower level staff.

The view from the balcony overlooked a massive square intended for holding massive rallies. It is now it is a big parking lot.  The view extends down a broad avenue that was said to have been modeled after the Champs-Elysée in Paris.

The facade is in the austere Soviet Realist style but the interior was as opulent as any palace we have seen.

The tour took a couple of hours, covered bout a mile and visited only about 5% of the building.  It is now used for the Romanian Parliament, is an international conference center and houses the National Museum of Contemporary Art.  However, most of it is never used and is deteriorating. 

The rooms we visited were gigantic.  

The auditorium seats over 600.  

The Human Rights Room has a gigantic round table and is used only for meetings and conferences focused on Human Rights..

Because the rooms were so big the chandeliers had to be equally big to light the rooms.

There were massive marble stair cases going from floor to floor...

and the corridors seemed to go on forever.

Even the ceilings and doors were incredibly detailed and opulent.

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More photos of the Palace of Parliament.
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After walking our legs off we were back at the hotel by mid-afternoon.  Then it was lunch and hanging out in the room taking naps and working on photos.