The Adventures of Wickse, Eric & Sharon: Bucharest

Okay, so I admit we only paid a fleeting visit to Bucharest, but I can safely say that's enough for us. I'm sure there are plenty of lovely non Communist sights to see and it has apparently some great museums. But after a couple of days vamp(ir)ing around the lolling countryside of Transylvania, and with the beaches of the (much anticpated) Black Sea beckoning, a somewhat ratty, hot and oppressive city was not the top of our priorities. Especially after the night before!

I see they really get into outdoor advertising over here

After a very long and slow drive from Bran, we reached Bucharest quite late. We were quite eager to push on through to the coast, but with another 3.5 hours of driving ahead to a relatively unknown destination, parking up in an ACSI (Dutch camping association) approved campsite on the outskirts of Bucharest sounded like the better option. If only! Lord knows how ASCI managed to pass this one. A lot of money must have changed hands is all I can imagine. The "camping" as it was, was little more than a small carpark between a series of seriously ugly chalets, painted all manner of distasteful colours. (Of course, as culturally insensitive as we are, we forget that "camping" to many Eastern European nations we've visited means staying in chalets, not tents and most definitely not campervans!). The most humourous part of the whole situation was that they wanted to charge us significantly more to sleep in the van in the carpark than to hire a chalet! After repeatedly pointing out the illogicality of this, and a bike ride down the road to pay a visit to the very moody and increasingly irate manager, we defiantly hired a chalet, paid the money, then promptly ruffled up the bedclothes and nicked the hopsitality soap before retiring to Wickse for a night spent locked in with the security straps belted on (lest the manager or someone else dodgy decided to come visiting). And then the party started! The sounds of Eurovision pop-cum-techno blaring away until daybreak courtesey of the neighbouring disco. Nice.

Hmmm, that corn doesn't look too appetising

Nocturnal experiences aside, we decided an early morning rip through Bucharest en route to the coast may be in order. Lonely Planet describes Bucharest as a "fascinating working experiment of mixed eras...wide boulevards with century old villas, fashioned in the best Paris style, mingle with (scattered and hidden) 18th century monasteries, communist-built housing blocks and statement-making government headquarters". Hmmm, quite a melange then. Curiously enough, it goes on to include in its 'Top Five Bucharest' the centre on a Sunday. And I can only guess why!

Arcul de Triumpf. Looks quite familiar doesn't it?

Architecture aside, in order to appreciate the state of this city (and the entire country I guess) you need to understand a little about its more recent past... Nicolae Ceausescu came to power in 1965. It's fair to say his rule was both chaotic and meglomaniac, creating posts not only for his brothers, but for his wife and son as well. He gave birth to some really bizarre policies. Not only content with the 'systemisation of agriculture' which entailed the resettlement of villagers into concrete city apartment blocks, some of his more famous ones included instituting power cuts to save money, and exporting much needed national food supplies in order to eliminate foreign debt and look good in front of the world - which in turn resulted in rationing of even the most staple of food stuffs. If this wasn't enough - and if you were game enough to oppose him, there was even more instore - his experimental methods of torture - which included the cancer causing radiation of his political opponents. Nice. You can begin to appreciate then the pleasure of many of Romanians in watching Ceausescu and his wife being executed by firing squad on live TV when they finally caught him in 1989.

Nonetheless we were well enough intrigued to spend a stress free Sunday morning hour's drive around this very odd city. Here's some of our highlights...