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From Worldtraveller

It was hot and humid in Bucharest, and I stayed in a hostel above a really sleazy nightclub. I went for a late night walk around the city when I arrived. I'd read about Bucharest's amazing stray dog problem before I came, and when I'd arrived on the night train from Chişinău I'd seen a few running about on the tracks. Now, in the quiet city at midnight, I was a bit worried about walking down some dark streets. Often there would be a bark from the shadows, and occasionally a dog would run past.

There are 300,000 stray dogs in Bucharate, apparently, and they bite about 50 people every day. They are supposedly the result of Ceauşescu-era redevelopments of housing, in which people were moved into higher quality housing but not allowed to take their pets with them. Ceauşescu was very fond of vast building projects which saw historic parts of Bucharest and other cities razed to the ground and replaced with communal housing or government buildings.

But I managed to avoid getting bitten by the dogs of Bucharest, and I thought the city looked pretty impressive in places. It slightly reminded me of Beijing in a way, with its broad streets filled with pounding traffic, the activity and bustle carrying on late into the night, and the hot sweltering air.

I only spent one night in Bucharest. I spent the final morning of my trip walking from my hostel to the Palace of the Parliament, which is claimed to be the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon. I could well believe it - after a hot walk in blazing sun to Bulevardul Unirii I found myself in front of the huge squat white building and could hardly believe the size of it. I wanted to go to a contemporary art gallery in the grounds of the Palace, and this involved walking along two sides of it. This took about half an hour, along punishing shadeless pavements in the morning heat. I was then extremely disappointed to find that the gallery was closed on Tuesdays. I walked back to the front of the Palace, thirsty and lacking in cultural experiences.

On all this trip in these far flung parts of Eastern Europe, I kept thinking back to what I remembered of 1989, when Europe changed so quickly and so spectacularly. I was 11 years old at the time and I wish I'd been a bit older, and been able to appreciate the history a bit more. When Romania revolted in December 1989, I was in Jordan, and I vividly remember seeing an English-language newspaper on Christmas Day, 1989, carrying the news that Ceauşescu and his wife had been shot. His downfall was astonishingly rapid, coming within nine days of the first major act of the revolution, and four days after his disastrous attempt to address the people from the balcony of the Central Committee Building. And now, 18 years later, the former Soviet satellite state was part of the European Union.

I walked all the way down Bulevardul Unirii, which was another of Ceauşescu's grand projects and is a few metres longer than the Champs-Élysées. Apparently some historic parts of the city were bulldozed to make way for this, but despite this I quite liked it, probably because I was again reminded of Beijing, and of Chang'an Avenue which carves through the city and which also sits on top of a lot of history. Fountains lined the street, making the hot day seem a little bit cooler, and trees kept it shady. I ambled along, enjoying the stern but grand atmosphere of it.

All too soon it was time to leave. I should really have sacrificed a lazy day in Braşov for a more active one in the capital, but it was too late to worry about that now. I bought a snack from a shop and then got on the airport bus to Otopeni airport. It took me past lots of things I'd have liked to see properly, and I thought I'd probably like to come back to Bucharest. But all there was left to do now was allow myself to be relieved of a shocking number of lei as I bought a drink at the airport, board the plane and fly home.