Categories: phd, places, holiday
Tags: Romania, mosquito, Bucharest, PhD
Date: 14 July 2006 14:40:29
So here I am in Bucharest - as grotty as I remember it, I'm glad I'm leaving tomorrow, but I haven't felt personally unsafe at all so that's something - thanks for prayers. I'm staying in a youth hostel and remembering again (too late) that actually I'm an antisocial old fart who doesn't do dormitories. Oh well, at least the french guys who were drinking beer at breakfast had been at the bar all night and not disturbing us (they're leaving this afternoon so were planning to sleep on the train), so apart from the mozzie in my ear (how do they do that? How do they know it's your ear? It's DARK!) I actually didn't have too bad a night's sleep.
[talking of mozzies - the bite is now much better. So I was wrong in my diagnosis and was just being a drama queen. Whoever would have guessed?]
This morning's adventure involved trying to visit the organisation I'd emailed/faxed/written to and who hadn't contacted me at all. I found myself in the middle of a suburban Bucharest housing estate, and my goodness it took me ages to find the right block, but eventually I got there - with the organisation's name on the postbox and everything - and ... the apartment was totally empty, being rewired by the look of things, and so although according to Google they were still at that address and receiving EU money at the end of last year, they're certainly not there now, which at least explains the lack of a reply. More happily for me, it means that I can justifiably tell my supervisors that I don't have any Bucharest contacts and it will be much better for me to do my fieldwork elsewhere. There is a good reason for this, as well as the personal "I don't like it there" reason - as Bucharest is so big you generally find that if things happen, they happen there first. So what's happening (or not) in other parts of the country may well be more interesting, as well as more representative of the country as a whole. Do you think that sounds convincing enough for a supervisor?
I took a quick peek at the Palace of Parliament (previously the Palace of the People, known to the locals as the Madman's Palace), and even if you know nothing else about Bucharest you've probably seen a picture of this humungous wedding cake. It's reputedly the 2nd largest administrative building in the world (after the Pentagon), and was built by the Ceausescus after bulldozing large parts of historic Bucharest to the ground (it used to be known as the Paris of the East - now the boulevard leading up to the Palace is modelled on that well-known architectural hotspot Pyongyang). It really is a monstrosity, but is strangely compelling (kind of like staring at a car crash). Just incredible to see the lengths to which one man's ego will go.
Anyway - I bought my bus ticket to get to the airport tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to seeing my friends in Moldova again, and also seeing how the two countries compare (this is the first time in 10 years that I've done both countries in the same trip, and the last time I was only passing through Romania so could only make a superficial comparison). I'll catch up when I can.