The Most Avoided Capital in Europe
Date: Friday, Aug 11, 2006
Place: Bucharest, Romania
By the sixth day in Romania, I had heard enough horror stories about Bucharest from fellow travelers.
One night, sitting at the dining table in Rolling Stone Hostel, people started to talk about the experiences they just had there (unlike me, they traveled northbound from southern Romania.) The stories unfolded like this:
1) Two Americans booked their hostel beds through hostelworld.com and paid 10% fee online, but surprised that Funky Chicken Hostel had overbooked when they arrived. It was already dark, but they had to head back to streets to find another hostel. They were surrounded by several Gypsy kids. With a lot bags and luggage on them, they found some of the bags¡¦ zippers had been opened. Fortunately, maybe the cops showed up or something, the kids suddenly flocked.
2) In Gara de Nord (the North Station), the same Americans encountered some ¡§helpful locals¡¨ who volunteered to take them to their train. Once they reached their wagon, the guy said he usually charged 25 Lei (7 Euro) for ¡§that type of service¡¨ (helping people find their train). With their tickets still in this guy¡¦s hand, they just paid the 25 Lei!
3) This one is the most scary: two Dutch guys walked out of the North Station, a guy approached them and said he was the representative sent by so-and-so youth hostel. Since these two Dutch guys happened to have reservation at the so-and-so hostel, they gladly left with this guy. They got on a taxi and the taxi took them to some vacant lot. The guy got off the taxi and asked them to bring their luggage and walk to the roadside with him. There was no house (or even something resembled a ¡§hostel¡¨) nearby and the Dutch guys only saw maybe 3 or 4 persons standing at the roadside waiting for them. The Dutch guys suddenly felt alert and worried that they may be beaten and robbed once they got to the roadside. They immediately ran back to the taxi, (maybe threw 50 Euro to the driver) and asked the driver to get off the lot as soon as possible. Wow, this started to sound like the movie "Hostel"!
Of course, many people I met in the Brasov hostel just simply avoided Bucharest all together. Some of them traveled only as far as Brasov in Romania (like those two Swedish girls I met); some of them headed directly to Black Sea resorts. Some planned to changed train in Bucharest (beware of the ¡§helpful locals¡¨!) but not even wanted to get out into the streets!
Is Bucharest so dangerous and undesirable?
"It sucks! It really sucks!" I remember three Irish girls told me.
"Mmm....I think we actually like it....maybe." After thinking for 20 seconds, an Austrian couple replied. They didn't sound too certain.
Opening Lonely Planet Romania, they makes Bucharest like a very fancy, newly trendy place: "
Forget Prague, forget
Budapest, because Bucharest is where travelers are heading. This is Eastern Europe's secret .. but it's about to get out. (p. 51)"(Well, this edition was published in 2004, is the "secret" out by now?). But in its "Dangers and Annoyances" section, it did remember to mention several scams: fake hostel reps (as the Dutch guys encountered), taxi drivers take you circling the town and charge you 10 times than normal (or maybe 200 times, depends on your lucks. I heard the record was 700 Euro for a half an hour ride!), fake tourist police (later a Kiwi traveler I met in Bulgaria said he did encounter one just right outside of Bucharest Gara de Nord), among others.
The book does not even mention pickpocketing kids and stray dogs until the later general info chapter.
Stray dogs? For all of you who are afraid of mean barking dogs, Romania is a hell for you. According to some estimates posted on Internet, in Bucharest alone, there may be 200,000 stray dogs. And a posting (not sure an urban myth or not) reported that a Japanese woman was mauled to death just last January. I like dogs but not those mean, big bitches that threaten me. Another negative point for Bucharest.
So here I am, even before I headed to Bucharest, I was already afraid and disliked that city. I have never heard a European capital so disliked like this. Moscow, Paris, and Athens all have their haters, but you also find quite a few of their admirers. I already had have my precious belonging stolen once and still in very vulnerable moods. Should I even go there? I was traveling alone, so there was no companion watching out for me.
However, my plan was to travel south into Bulgaria, so I had to change train in Bucharest's notorious Gara de Nord anyway.
Later I decided not to stay overnight in Bucharest (not able to trust the reservation system of Bucharest hostels anyway). However, I planned a layover of two hours, so I should still have (very little) time to walk out of the station and see how this city is like. Hopefully I wouldn¡¦t run into fake police threatening to see my wallet and passport.
So off, checking out of Rolling Stone, I headed to Bucharest. Maybe it was a good sign, unlike those crappy trains I had taken in the past few days, the train from Brasov to Bucharest is a new and modern one. It is practically like those I took in Western Europe, clean and spacious. This may be one of the trains CFR just purchased from Switzerland.
I got off at the Gara de Nord and found the train leaving for Bulgaria. It is actually the train heading all the way to Istanbul, Turkey ("Are you looking for the train to Istanbul?" a menacing guy next to the train bulletin asked. "No, thanks!" I lied and then walked away as fast as possible). I stored my luggage at the luggage storage service (at 6 Lei, since I had a longer stopover), taking a deep breathe, I headed into the mean streets of Bucharest.
If there is only one thing I want to see in Bucharest, it is Palace of Parliament (Casa Poporului, or House of the People). It is the second largest building in the world, only after Pentagon outside of Washington DC. It was built in the twilight years of Romanian communism, a grandiose pet project of Romania¡¦s tyrant Ceaucescu. The whole project cost 3.3 billion Euro and possibly consumed 80% of Romanian GDP at that time (while at the same time Romanians were starved, no wonder they rose up and killed Ceaucescus in 1989). To build it, one-sixth of Bucharest was bulldozed. Many old historic buildings were lost forever. Today, many rooms in the Palace of Parliament remain empty and it is largely underused. In many ways, it is the symbol of communist atrocities and egocentrism.
"It is morally incorrect to tour a place like this!¨ Someone told me in the Brasov hostel.
From Gara de Nord, I hopped on the metro (subway) to reach the Palace. Even the experience in taking Bucharest metro is quite depressing. There are only seven stops but it took almost 30 minutes.
The metro cars are almost all covered with graffiti. The graffiti actually block the view from inside, and thus people cannot even see which stations they just arrive at until the doors open. The stations are also dim-lit and not well-marked. If I didn't count it (7th stop, 7th stop...), I might have not known which station to get off. The train was slow and usually stayed in each station for too long.
I got out of Izvor station and arrived at the northside of the Palace. There is a large park right in front of the Palace but not many people walking or cycling around. The surrounding area is like an ¡§urban wasteland¡¨ as some article implies. North of the park at distance, there are some ugly old socialist-style buildings. Maybe because the weather was gloomy that day (the weather had been mostly miserable since I entered Romania), the whole neighborhood felt grime. I walked toward the Palace, saw its entrance and box office for sightseeing tour, but decided not to enter. I just wanted to walk around it and see it from outside.
Yes, it is a really monstrous building. Walking from its north entrance to its eastern entrance, it took at least 10 minutes. East of the building is B-dul Unirii (Union Boulevard), leading to Piata Unirii (Union Square). This boulevard was intentionally one meter wider than Champs Elysee in Paris and originally named "Boulevard of the Victory of Socialism." It's another example of Ceaucescu's grandiose vision. However, there are some beautiful fountains along the boulevard and some modern shops (though also many graffiti). This is no Champs Elysee, but it is also not as bad as I thought.
I did not have enough time to wander around for too long. After walking another kilometer or two, reaching the grand fountain at Piata Unirii, I saw another metro station (named "Piata Unirii" naturally). I knew I had to get on the metro and went to catch my train to Bulgaria. Bucharest¡¦s surviving historic quarter lies just north of Piata Unirii, but I did not have time to see it. Indeed, two hours' stopover was not really enough.
I went back to the Gara de Nord, picked up my backpack, bought some nice pastry from Fioretti Bakery. Looking around, this is actually a relatively nice and clean train station (you need to show your passports or train ticket to be allowed in, the way that the government to prevent homeless and beggars from entering the station). But it was time to leave.
I did not run into any fake policeman, menacing Gypsy kids, muggers, beggars, or even stray dogs that terrified me. However, I only stayed here for two hours, in this most avoided capital in Eastern Europe. I just touched the surface of this place. Yes, Bucharest felt grime and depressing, but I guess I will have to drop by again.
And I did, one year later, and then another visit 5 years later.
But these are other trips, I will need to tell them some other time.
You can read an interesting recent article in New York Times Travel Section here (but please, still be careful when traveling to this "newly Bohemian City":
Next Stop: Bucharest: A Checkered Past Adds Intrigue to a Bohemian City
Downloadable "In Your Pocket" Guide for Bucharest
