The alarm woke us at 0530 and we walked to the station at 0600 leaving some time for coffee and sandwich at the station. Our train to Bucharest originated from Budapest Keleti station and was a few minutes early.
We were seated in the last wagon. On my explorations during the journey, I wandered to the tail-end of the train. This train was fitted with push-button doors, including between wagons. Yes, the tail-end wagon door had it too. I was very tempted to see if there was any safety mechanism to stop it from opening, as it opened up to nothing … no balcony, platform or even a step. So I pushed it, and it opened right up! Ooops!
I suppose if it had been a manual door, I wouldn’t have been surprised. But with a modern electric one, I somehow expected some kind of safety mechanism.
The 5h17 journey to Bucharest went slowly, passing through the town of Brasov where we had spent a couple of nights.
After a rest, we took the metro to Casa Ceausescu, the home of the former dictator Nicolae and his wife Elena. It could easily have been “another house” to visit but the guide personalised it by telling us more about the leader, his wife and his three children (two sons and a daughter).
All of them except the leader himself had a private apartment of workspace, bedroom and bathroom. Nikolai himself had an office downstairs.
Much of the house wasn’t too ornate or beautiful. I have only posted pictures of my favourite areas below. What was impressive was the condition after all these years … it was as if they had only moved out recently. The guide said that there had been minimal refurbishments.
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- Living room.
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- The couple’s bedroom.
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- The couple’s bathroom.
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- Winter garden.
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- Swimming pool.
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- Courtyard.
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- Today’s peacocks are descended from the ones the family had.
The weather was gloomy by the time we got back to our part of town. It started pouring after we ordered dinner. We shifted a little to keep dry under the awnings of the cafe as it was full and stuffy inside.
Our dinner took forever to arrive and when it did, the waiter said he got wet going to get it for us. It appeared they had gone to a takeaway to buy our cabbage rolls. The dinner was cold by the time it reached us. Very disappointing after the long wait.
Tonight is our last night in Romania. Friends gave us funny looks when we said we were bound for Romania; they still have memories of orphanages and some who have spent time in the UK don’t have fond experiences with Romanians (and Bulgarians). It has been a good visit and the only “trouble” we’ve had was finding tea for Kim … he likes normal black tea or English Breakfast … not herbal, not Earl Grey and people find it strange that he likes milk in his tea. [Edit: this continued in Bulgaria and was our only problem too, so it was good stay as well]