Romania
Other than the gymnast Nadia Elena Comaneci, who became the first gymnast to be awarded the score of perfect 10 in the Olympic Games (1976, Montreal), the only other fact that I knew of Romania was that it was part of the USSR’s sphere of influence. I didn’t even know that Transylvania was part of it. When I went looking for a tour guide book in the library, I ended up picking one on Budapest, which of course was the capital of Hungary. But who could blame me for mixing up Budapest for Bucharest?
The trip to Romania was postponed once and again but we finally left for Romania in the fourth week of February. As with every long flight, there were unpleasant characters who would irritate not just me but fellow passengers and even the flight crew. However, that’s not what I am going to write about.
It was the end of winter and not yet the beginning of spring, and it even snowed the week before we arrived. Thus the temperature was mostly below 10 degrees Celcius.
The first surprise was the size of the  Henri Coandă International Airport. I don’t have the specifics but I thought it felt quite small. I found out later on the way out of Romania that it has only about 10 gates. Oh, and photo taking is strictly not allowed.
The next thing I learned was that the people resented the former president, Nicolae Ceauşescu, so much so that the Palace of the Parliament with a total area of 350,000m², 1,100 rooms and 12 storeys tall, was left unused for a very long time since 1989.
On my first day in Bucharest, I had the opportunity to interact with the local young people. They speak good English and were very fashion conscious, but much better behaved than some in Western European cities.
During my daily travel to the office via the Metroul BucureÅŸti, I noticed the female office crowd were very neatly attired and fashionable too. And maybe it’s just the area that I was in but I thought they all walked like Ally McBeal.
Well, there are much more nitty gritty details that I have whined about but I felt the above observations made a significant impact on my impression of Romania. Perhaps I should make another trip, and visit Prague too.
This entry was posted on Sunday, April 9th, 2006 at 6:25 pm and is filed under Guest Blogging, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.