I awoke to the sound of bass booming from the bar directly below our apartment on Smardan Street. It was 9am on a Saturday morning. Seriously, who on earth listens to music like that at this hour?
“Welcome to the Balkans,” my Romanian host Madalina said, as she awoke groggy-eyed.
The night before had been a whopper—we sampled beverages at a variety of bars in the ever-happening Civic Center, the historic center of Bucharest. Like some electric mixture between Istiklal in Istanbul and Oranienstrasse in Berlin, this was the place to be. Madalina explained to me that this area had exploded in popularity in an incredibly short period of time. When she had moved to the apartment two years ago, there were only a couple of bars and a bike shop scattered around in what was now the busiest part of the city for nightlife. It also seemed like plans for street construction hadn't anticipated said touristic boom—entire strips of road were completely torn out, leaving a seemingly permanent under-construction gorge where bars set up outdoor seating. It was funny to see everyone dressed in their weekend best while lounging in the rubble.
My excellent host had the brilliant idea of riding bikes in order to make the most of my only day in Romania's capital. We first rode past the National Museum of Contemporary Art, located in Bucharest's most famous communist building, the House of People (formerly the House of Parliament). At the request of the former Romanian dictator, Ceau?escu, an entire neighborhood and the hill it sat upon was bulldozed to make way for this building. In terms of surface area, it's the second largest building in the world—only Washington's Pentagon is larger. It's an embarrassment to most Romanians, said Madalina, since it's a gaudy and unpleasant reminder of the impoverished years under communist rule.
The National Museum of Contemporary Art was excellent. We met the visual artist-in-residence, Marilena Preda Sânc! She is considered to be the first Romanian artist to focus on feminist and women's rights topics in Romania, and I got to interview her.
After all that excitement, we met up with some of Madalina's friends and embarked on THE BUCHAREST BIKE TOUR! This was an improvised tour that kept getting more and more epic; friends of Luciano and Madalina continued to join until we rode seven strong. Bike riding is definitely not a very popular mode of transportation in Bucharest, but I was happy to have a break from the systematic German way of cycling, as we just tore our way through crowded streets and parks. The police were NOT about to give us a ticket for riding on the sidewalk.
We saw some amazing architecture in ritzy neighborhoods—the best of the few buildings that happened to be spared from the communist revamping, most of which now housed various embassies. Many of these edifices had seemingly Ottoman influences (Romania was under Turkish rule for 400 years after all), but Madalina explained that what I had seen was also typical of the Neo-Romanian style. Whatever it was, I liked it. We ended our grand tour with a loop around the Her?str?u Lake, and then chanced upon a public performance of the Romanian National Ballet near the National Museum of Art.
Bucharest gets a bad rap, but there are some extremely beautiful Parisian-style buildings in the center, and loads of charming cafes and restaurants. Even some of communism's architectural by-products have their charm. Things are quite spread out and it can take quite a while to get from one place to another on foot—if you're thinking about visiting, I would definitely recommend forming your own Bucharest bike gang!