Bucharest

There truly isn’t much to say about Bucharest. It is a large city with a very communist feel to it. The communist housing blocks comprise probably over 80% of the city and quite often hide the true gems that are stuck somewhere in between, be it churches, villas or some other form of monuments.

The old city which was to be comprised of little cobblestone streets seemed to be under construction. The cobblestones were dug up, most of the old building fronts were crumbling with only the ground floors being occupied. Every now and then you would come across an excavated part of a street that was fenced off because apparently underneath there were ruins. However, the city seemed unsure what to do about these ruins and simply left them partly exposed like a half-completed construction site.

However, there were a couple noteworthy things about Bucharest. The first were their absolutely delicious doughnuts. These aren’t your usual Tim Horton’s doughnuts. They were more akin to the Polish ponczki except double in size and with enough jam to fill more than half of the doughnut. They must have just come out of the oven and were absolutely delicious.
The other item was the Romanian Parliament building. It is the second largest building in the entire world (after the Pentagon). Comprised of 330,000 sq meters and over 1000 rooms there probably is not much that can equal it in the world. Construction began in 1984 and about 70% of it was completed in the first five years, but to date it still remains unfinished. On an average day there are about 5000 people working in the building, meaning about one per every 60 square meters. The banquet halls, conference rooms, staircases, and halls are absolutely amazing. A carpet, in one of the banquet halls, weighed a staggering 3 tones. The rental of such a hall for a private function was a mere 70,000 – 100,000 Euro, perfect for a graduation party.