Freezing in Bucharest

Was in Bucharest the week when the crazy snow storms hit. Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and Ukraine were badly hit. Fortunately, I was in Bucharest a day after the closure of the roads due to snow blocks.

Romania is a country with much natural resources. However, many of their residents do not feel that they are rich. Reminds me much of Indonesia. Even the products in grocery stores are more similar to those in Jakarta than those in other European countries.

Here, we have the Parliament Palace, entirely built by Romanians with all materials from Romania (woods, marbles, stones, crystals, etc). A place built by a previous communist dictator who was subsequently removed and executed. Could just imagine his access to resources.

Huge and empty place now where halls and rooms are rented out for functions and event. Bottom left shows a motif on tiles that is commonly repeated and is the layout of the entire palace.


Throughout Bucharest, there are many other sites that look Russian.

For instance, the top left building looks like one of the Seven Sisters (see Moscow Oct 11) and the one in Poland (see Poland Dec 11). Then there is an arc d'triomphe too. Bottom right is the statue of the first person in Europe (and Romanian) who designed the engine of jet plane. The airport is also named after him (Henri Coandă)

Then, there are some impressive churches. In the evening, I had chanced upon a nice looking church with a "friendly" man beckoning me in. It had a glass wall fronting it, hence, I was unsure if it was a church or a restaurant. A gentlemen was also going in and translated that it was a Eastern Orthodox Church.

Interesting. What is Eastern Orthodox Church? Just like those in Russia, the insides are usually dark. There are paintings of numerous saints and the place will be heavily incensed. Each service holds only tens of people, which has a small seat that is against a wall. However, in the picture, we see a large one with a gold altar, probably because it's one of the larger/central/more important ones. Compared to a Catholic or Christian church that is often bright and accomodates hundreds in a service, an Easter Orthodox one is very "temple-like". I read it up and found that they also consider themselves a "Catholic" (Universal) Church. In fact, all were the same church until the 11th Century when the Roman Catholic Church broke away(East West Schism) and the Protestants from the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th Century.