Tag Archives: Bucharest

Communist Era Apartments Bucharest Romania

Communist Era Apartments Bucharest RomaniaYou see these everywhere in Eastern Europe. The communists were really into building blocks and blocks and blocks of apartments where all the apartments were identical. Personally, I don’t see a problem with it. It only makes sense to me. That type of sentiment is why I will never get elected to public office. I’m much too practical. This Continue reading

Fifty Cent Generic Beer Bucharest Romania

Fifty Cent Generic Beer Bucharest RomaniaWhen I saw these it stopped me in my tracks for a moment. I looked at the cans and I asked myself if that was generic beer I was looking at. I thought for a moment and I told myself that it was generic beer. For some reason I thought that was odd. I guess the reason why was that I’m not sure that I had ever seen generic beer before. Yes, I had seen Continue reading

Yummy Bakery Bucharest Romania

Yummy Bakery BucharestLet’s talk Love/Hate for a moment. That’s the way I felt about the place you see in the picture. It is a bakery. You could watch them preparing the baked goods and sliding them into the oven. It was only two short blocks from the hostel where I stayed in Bucharest. While the bakery was not 24/7 like the store down the street, they opened early enough Continue reading

Chisanau Bus from Bucharest

Chisanau Bus from BucharestThis is the bus from Bucharest that brought me to Chisanau. You can see it’s rather large. I was told that there was a bus that left Bucharest for Chisanau every hour or so from early in the morning until midnight. Most of them were minivans that carried 15-20 people. This one carried closer to fifty people. It was over half full. It cost me $22 and nine Continue reading

Bucharest Pictures from Ride

Pictures of another day of riding a bicycle in Bucharest, Romania. Notes follow.

Pic 1: Bucharest has a lot of miles of bike paths. This is one of them. The very best bike paths are in the city’s wonderful parks. Unfortunately, too many miles of the bike paths are hardly in the same great shape that the bike paths in the parks are. Pic 2: I’m riding through a park and along comes a parade. Since it was a little difficult to try and ride through it I just stopped and enjoyed it. Pic 3: It’s the football (soccer) stadium in Bucharest. Pic 4: I saw a Domino’s Pizza in Bucharest and thought it would make a nice shot. Bucharest has many American fast food chains and the all seem to be doing well. Pic 5: I was riding along in one of the city’s many parks and someone was having a small festival. It seemed like I ran into a lot of festivals in the parks on the weekend. Most of them were smaller ones. At this particular festival they had the coolest bubble making machine I had ever seen. Pic 6: I went to Obor, a rather large open-air fruit and vegetable market in Bucharest. I smelled meat cooking on a grill. It turned out to be a stand that sold beer, sausages, and rolls. Two sausages and a roll cost me about 80 cents. It was really good.

Subway Train Bucharest

Subway Train BucharestThis is a picture of the a subway train in Bucharest, Romania. As you can see the platform is empty and the cars are hardly crowded. That’s because it’s an off-peak period on one of the stops that is less significant. While the Bucharest subway works pretty well it is not my favorite subway system. The reason why is that there aren’t a lot of signs or maps Continue reading

Restoring Old Buildings Bucharest

Restoring Old Buildings BucharestI took this picture while I was on the free walking tour of Bucharest. One thing I found interesting was what happened with the fall of Communism in Romania in 1989. It seems that property ownership became a fairly straightforward issue if you lived in a building built during the communist period. You got to buy the dwelling at a very fair price. However, for buildings that were built before the communists seized power in 1947 things were not so simple when the government changed in 1989. The owners prior to the communist seizure of all property in 1947 could lay claim to Continue reading

Rental Ride Bucharest Romania

I rented a bicycle in Bucharest for 48 hours. It cost me a total of $10. I thought that was a great deal. The bike was a single speed with a coaster brake. Not very flashy but it sure did work well. I had a great time with it, taking it around to see the sights of Bucharest. I decided I would pose the bike with several attractions in Bucharest. Okay, maybe the Surf ‘N Fries wasn’t on the list of big attractions, but it was an interesting place.

View From Palace Bucharest

View From Palace BucharestThis is a view from the People’s Palace in Bucharest looking out over the Boulevard Unirii. The Boulevard Unirii has a length of almost two miles or 3.5 kilometers. What was supposed to happen when the boulevard and palace were built was that the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu would give a speech and the area in front of the Continue reading

Palace of the Parliament Bucharest

Palace of the People BucharestWhat can you do if you are a dictator of a country? Anything you want. This building was originally named Palace of the People and was built under the orders of Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator of Romania from 1967 to 1989. It is one of the most impressive buildings I have ever been in. The building is huge, having about 3,700,000 square Continue reading