By jadoerge
After a long day of sight seeing in Budapest that I described in my last post, Morgan and I were quite happy to be getting on our overnight train around 8pm with plenty of food for the road. Having taken a very nice (and fast) German ICE train down to Hungary, this next train, while nice, looked about three decades older. Despite its age, however, the two beds and bathroom that we got in our sleeping car were more than adequate and the journey was fairly uneventful and we woke up quite refreshed as we pulled into the main train station in Bucharest, Romania!
Having arranged our arrival with her before, the woman who we stayed with in Bucharest was nice enough to pick us up from the train station and pay for our Metro ticket to get to her extra apartment where we were staying while telling us all about herself and the city on the way there. Immediately after leaving the Metro station near the apartment, it was apparent that this city was unlike any that I had ever been to. Much like DC, Bucharest was a fairly low city with only a couple of skyscraper-esque buildings, which lent a very nice amount of sunlight to the streets. All around the sidewalks in the downtown area where we were, were stands and carts of people selling things from scarves to traditional red bracelets which are worn by women to celebrate the beginning of Spring. One of the most immediately striking things about Bucharest, however, is the architecture. Unlike other European cities that I have visited where buildings in nicer areas were well kept and more neglected areas had more run down buildings, these two levels of upkeep simply stood next to each other in Bucharest. For example, the Roman influences are very present in some buildings with towering columns, while other buildings echo the melancholy style of French architecture, and others still resembled Cold War era housing projects which had since fallen into disrepair. These mixing and often juxtaposing styles of architecture seemed to simply co-exist in this odd city which lends a very unique vibe to the entire experience of visiting Bucharest.
After settling in, Morgan and I took to the streets to see as much as we could in our one and a half day visit to the city on our way to Istanbul. Because of the short amount of time, however, I won’t dive into too much cultural postulating, and will rather share just a few observations from our time in Bucharest.
1) As compared to everywhere in Europe I had been previously, Bucharest was by far the least expensive. Morgan and I went to the oldest restaurant in the city with an amazing reputation (albeit expensive for the area) for some traditional Romanian cuisine and ordered an appetizer, bread, two rounds of drinks, and two main courses all for around $19 USD. My kind of meal.
2) The people were among the most hospitable we encountered on our journeys. From the woman who hosted us, to the kind tour guide we met on the street that gave us a brief tour and history lesson, the Romanian people were incredibly welcoming and not only curious to learn about where visitors come from, but also seemed genuinely interested in sharing their culture with us.
3) Bucharest truly felt (often even more so than Istanbul) like a true intersection of Eastern and Western culture. With beautiful, but very small, Orthodox Christian churches on nearly every corner sitting next to a lively university district and a culturally diverse population after the influx of South American immigrants, Bucharest was very much a mix of East and West that was unparalleled by any other city that we visited on our trip which was both surprising and incredibly enjoyable. In particular, this mixture of cultures provided a more gradual introduction to the cultural changes as one travels south-east from Germany, that would have been missed had we travelled directly to Istanbul by plane.
So that’s Bucharest in a nutshell, I suppose. We had a wonderful time and this was probably one of our favorite cities of the entire month and a half trip that we took. I truly hope that I can manage to spend more time there and better understand what makes it such a unique city. Stay tuned next week for the riveting story of our train ride to Turkey and all of our wacky adventures in Istanbul!