Romania’s capitol is our last stop. It is a city of just under 2 million people with the traffic of a city double the size. Nonetheless we make it to our Air BnB uneventfully. This is a city very different from the classical medieval cities we have seen so far. This was not built by 12th century German immigrants and prior to the accession of King Carol the first was an uninspiring city of basic wooden buildings, apart from the more solidly built churches. Carol was ashamed of what he had inherited and moved quickly to construct a grand city with architecturally eclectic buildings from the late 19th century.
Under 100 years later and this city is transformed again by one of the nastiest Soviet dictators Nicolae Ceasescu. He lead one of the most authoritarian and megalomaniac regimes behind the Iron Curtain. Ruthless and driven, he wanted to transform Bucharest. He toured the great cities of the world, Paris, London, Vienna, Buadapest as well as cozying up to the North Korean leaders. Inspired by what he had seen he created tree lined boulevards, fountains, redirected a river to flow through the city. The Budapest parliament he recreated but as a massive 9 story high building with 9 floors underground beneath it complete with bomb shelters and escape tunnels. In all of this the land was arbitrarily acquired with whole neighborhoods being razed to the ground, residents evicted without any compensation. The result is an incongruous fusion of classic French and contemporary Pyongyang. Trust me I have been to both. It is somewhat reaffirming of my belief in karma that he was arrested and summarily executed in 1989.
Sadly the post Soviet era has supplanted evil Communist dictators with equally unsavoury dictators in the guise of free enterprise democracies heavily into corrupt rule for their oligarchs .
