Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Tag: Bucharest

Bucharest – National Museum of Art (Hall in the Hradcany Palace by Aegidius Sadeler the Younger)

A rather lovely painting of the interior of the Hradčany Palace, or Prague Castle. It was painted by Aegidius Sadeler the Younger, who lived between 1570 and 1629, when he died in Prague. This is another mildly frustrating effort by the National Museum of Art, with no background offered to the artwork at all, other than it was part of the collection acquired by King Carol I of Romania. Beyond that there’s no provenance, no date of painting or anything to tell more of the artwork’s story.

My photo of this artwork is pretty poor, but there’s a lot going on in the painting, it makes the castle seem like quite the hive of activity in the early seventeenth century.

February 20, 2020
Bucharest – National Museum of Art (Hercules and the Nemean Lion by Pieter Paul Rubens)

This is one of the highlights of the National Museum of Art, although there’s not much made of it in terms of providing a background to the painting, even on the museum’s web-site. The artwork was painted in 1608, although the gallery don’t mention that, and it was part of the collection purchased by King Carol I of Romania. There seem to be copies and sketches for this painting located in numerous galleries dotted around the world, but none of them make reference to this artwork in Bucharest. All moderately confusing….

February 20, 2020
Bucharest – Dying for Freedom

Aici s-a murit pentru libertate means “here he died for freedom”, a reminder of the revolution which broke out in this area of Bucharest on the 21 and 22 December 1989. The sign is placed on what is now known as Piața 21 Decembrie 1989, the day it all went a bit wrong for Nicolae Ceaușescu.

February 19, 2020
Bucharest – The Coffee Shop

This small chain of coffee shops has outlets primarily in Romania, but it also now has a presence in Hungary and Bulgaria. It’s not the most innovative of shop names, but at least it’s descriptive I suppose. This shop is the one on Strada Academiei, in the Old Town area of Bucharest.

There was a friendly welcome from someone stacking the shelves when I entered, with the staff member serving at the counter also smiling and seeming being keen to engage. Unfortunately, his English was just a little limited and my Romanian isn’t quite fluent, but we were doing well until he asked what type of bean I wanted. I asked for a rich or dark coffee bean, primarily as I don’t really know anything about coffee, and fortunately another staff member in the shop overheard and was able to decipher me and was able to suggest the Burundi bean.

And the coffee was absolutely delicious, rich, chocolately and smooth. It’s not a large cafe, primarily two tables by the windows and a longer table at the rear, but there was a relaxed feel to the environment and it felt like a welcoming place to be. The cafe was also spotlessly clean and the coffee itself was well presented. If I see any of this company’s other outlets in the future, I’m sure that I’ll pop in.

February 19, 2020
Flights – Bucharest to Heathrow T5 (British Airways)

With my time to Bucharest over for this year (or at least I have no plans to return this year), my flight back was the BA887 service from the Romanian capital to London Heathrow T5.

I don’t always see the British Airways aircraft landing whilst waiting to go back to London, indeed I very rarely see it due to the layout of airports, but I did today. Here’s the aircraft landing in Bucharest, just a few minutes late. The aircraft is an Airbus A320, registration G-TTNH, introduced to the BA fleet from new in January 2019.

The boarding process was well managed, Groups 1-3 boarded first in what seemed an organised little arrangement, then Groups 4 and 5. The staff members were friendly, it was all quite a relaxed affair.

I had an exit row seat by the window. I’m going off these exit rows a little as I have to put my bag into the overhead lockers, and I like it being nearby. Anyway, there wasn’t too much pressure on the overheads today and so it wasn’t a difficulty. The seat next to me was kept clear, which is a handy feature of FLY, with a gold status member in the aisle seat, and my lesser status by the window.

The flight was free from any issues, which is just how I like them. I fell asleep for about an hour, watched everything I’d downloaded from Netflix and then, a few minutes early, the aircraft was ready to land. The crew and pilot announcements were all professional and timely, but I miss the drop-down screens as it was nice to see how much progress we’d made. I think on airlines with wi-fi fitted that this information is freely available, but this wasn’t a wi-fi enabled aircraft.

I still don’t really like the Buy-On-Board (BOB) strategy that BA implemented, when they started to charge for food and drink in Euro Traveller. The food and drink is a little immaterial, but it allowed the crew members to engage with customers and it also broke the time up a little bit. The BOB didn’t take much during the flight, or at least, it didn’t whilst going by the rows near to me and before I fell asleep….

The aircraft landed at A Gates and that meant just a short walk to border control without walking from B or C Gates. Very impressively, it took me less than twenty seconds from entering border control to leaving it, as there was no queue for the kiosks and my passport was processed within two seconds. Marvellous.

February 19, 2020
Bucharest – Hotel ibis Bucharest Gare De Nord

Located near to the railway station which it takes its name from, this is a large Accor hotel and it’s ideal for the metro which is about 50 feet away. The check-in process was smooth and the staff member was pleasant and helpful, so all positive first impressions.

Very kindly, the hotel had upgraded me to a suite. I liked this.

The welcome gift. There were also around six tea bags, but these never got replaced during the week. I’m never sure of the logic of giving a few tea bags and then not replacing them, but I asked at breakfast if I could take a few, and I think they were happy if I took the entire box. But I didn’t, I have enough to carry.

The drinks voucher.

Frankly, the beer choice were dreadful and the Ursus had no discernible flavour, taste, aftertaste or indeed anything positive about it at all. A completely pointless product. It’s fair to say that I don’t like Ursus.

The breakfast selection, with a decent amount of choice. The staff did struggle some mornings keeping this stocked though, especially when larger groups all came down at once.

And here’s one of my random selection of items….

Incidentally, on that day I went back for something else leaving the tray above on the table. A staff member decided that it must be finished with, and I only just salvaged the tray back before everything on it was thrown away. I’m not quite sure why she thought someone was abandoning that much food, but there we go….

OK, as to the hotel. There were serious noise issues from the rear of the building, namely the glass recycling bin which created problematic levels of noise throughout the night. The worst problem though was the temperature in the hotel, which was set to be permanently too hot, a complete waste of the hotel’s resources in my view. I left my window open the entire time, and that only mitigated the problem with the temperature rather than completely solving it. Unfortunately, the seating area room of the suite didn’t have a window, so I didn’t spend that long in there. It’s hard to complain that I had a room in the suite that was too hot, since I didn’t pay for that extra space, but it was a shame. The hotel needs better air conditioning, but it’s clear that the building is due for a refurbishment, so perhaps it’ll be added at that point.

Anyway, cleanliness was excellent throughout and the staff were always helpful and friendly. For the price, which was around £25 per night including breakfast as part of the Black Friday offer, I was suitably impressed. All rather lovely.

February 19, 2020
Bucharest – 780 Bus Service from City Centre to Airport

And so, back to the airport…. It’s not too long a bus journey back to the airport, it takes around 50 minutes from the city centre.

For those leaving from Gara de Nord railway station, the bus stop to the airport is at the red dot. It’s not amazingly signed when there, but there is a timetable on the little ticket office (well, ticket shed) door. Many people will already have a ticket as, generally, you can only buy a return from the airport (although two people can use the ticket at the same time instead of one person using it twice), which is what I’d done. For those who haven’t got a ticket, it needs to be purchased at the shed door before boarding, I’m fairly sure that the bus driver can’t sell tickets. After boarding, it’s essential to validate the ticket on the, well, validator.

For those not paying attention there is the potential for error as the airport bus goes by Aurel Vlaicu Airport, which is no longer in use for scheduled flights. I did see two people getting out with big bags, either they knew what they were doing, or they’d got off at the wrong airport. The city’s main airport is Henri Coandă International Airport at Otopeni, which is the last stop on the bus route so it’d be hard to miss it. In a few years, this bus isn’t likely to be the best way to get to and from the city centre, the Metro system is being extended to reach the airport. But, for today, the bus turned up on time, was clean and everything ran to schedule.

February 19, 2020
Bucharest – Holocaust Memorial

There were something like 350,000 Jews in Romania before the outbreak of the Second World War, today it’s something like 3,500. A large number of Romanian Jews who survived the war went to live in Israel, with Romanians forming their second largest population. Anyway, all of this meant that the Jewish population was somewhat forgotten about and there was no memorial to those who lost their lives during the Second World War. It was only in recent years that the Romanian Government accepted that some of the country’s own people were complicit in what happened to the Jews during the Second World War.

This Holocaust Memorial building was completed in 2009, at a cost then of around £5 million. It’s quite a brutalist design, although that stark look is what the designers were looking for.

These are grave stones from Odessa Cemetery which were part of a consignment of 24 railroad cars being sold as construction material. Some of these stones were salvaged by the Romanian Federation of Jewish Communities and were kept safe. There was another display of grave stones saved from the Bucharest Jewish Cemetery, but the glass in front of them was so dirty that it neither possible to see them clearly, nor take a photo. That probably needs fixing, as the memorial was otherwise beautifully maintained with the exception of one small piece of graffiti on a sign.

This symbolises the Roma wheel, a community who also faced the hate of the Nazis.

These stones represent those who lost their lives after being taken by rail to concentration camps.

And the Jewish symbol. It’s a rather different memorial and there’s a limited amount of information for visitors to read to understand what happened during the Second World War. However, the memorial is a bold statement that those who died won’t be forgotten. After many years of delay, the Government announced in the last few weeks that the city is going to get a Holocaust Museum, which is expected to open in around 2024 and will be at the Banloc-Goodrich building in Bucharest.

February 19, 2020
Bucharest – La 100 de Beri

My favourite pub of last year was the Hop and Vine in Hull, something I’ve bored people about many times. There are many things that pubs should do, but the finest ones offer something extra, which is in my view engagement beyond the norm.

My first impressions were neutral as there were no customers or staff members visible, so I wondered whether I’d walked into a pub that was closed. However, this changed soon enough, a staff member came over and seemed friendly and helpful.

This is my first drink, which was an imperial stout, a brave choice and that was noted by the barman. But, it was the only dark option on draught, and I’m fine with a little strength in the afternoon. It’s the Never Over BA beer from Hop Hooligans, who I can only describe as Romania’s Tiny Rebel. I’m running out of time to try more beers from this brewery, so I’ll just have to come back to Romania, I’m prepared to do that in my quest for beer perfection. As a beer, this was top notch, a richness of flavour, chocolate, coffee and perhaps even a bit of vanilla in there.

That screen at the back has a stream from Untappd and I stupidly tagged the wrong beer, but not before the brewery themselves had liked my review. So, since it was the correct brewery and nearly the right beer, I left it. If anyone is bored and clicks on the above image, my check-in is visible in the bottom-left of the screen.

A couple of pages from the beer list, which was extensive and had some interesting options from Poland that I recognised.

My second choice, not quite as rich a flavour as I hoped for, but the peanut butter was still evident and it had a smooth taste. The barman told me that this brewery produces Belgian style beers, but I’m confused as to how that works with dark beers. I’ll ask Nathan, he’ll likely know…. Back to the drink, the barman wouldn’t let me drink it for a few minutes, he wanted it to come down to the right temperature and something about it being unfiltered, unpasturised and naturally carbonated. Nathan will probably know about that as well.

The barman showed me these after I had ordered the above, something quite tempting, I mean, barrel aged and peated? Marvellous!

Anyway, my main memory of this visit would be the member of bar staff, who enthused about beer and made clear his thoughts about many aspects of beer and culture. I think I agreed with nearly everything that he said, which was rather lovely, but it’s clear that he was a character who absolutely loved beer and that is quite marvellous. His mantra of quality over quantity is entirely right in my view, it’s far better to get a third of something excellent than a pint of something average, even if they’re the same price.

I can say with some certainty that any British person coming here wanting to drink pints of Fosters won’t necessarily be given a vast of respect, but I’d say that the barman wouldn’t sneer, he just knows quality and excellence in beer. Actually, he might sneer, but in a way. Generic lagers are becoming tiresome and I’m always disappointed when venues that should know better keep prioritising them.

I intended to spend no more than 30 minutes in this pub as I wanted to visit a couple of others, but I managed to accidentally spend over two hours here. And it didn’t seem that long at all. It’s going to take something special for this not to win my pub of 2020 award, but the year is yet young….. But, this is definitely a recommended location, it dripped character, soul and authenticity and that isn’t common enough.

February 18, 2020
Bucharest – McDonald’s

After a fine coffee experience and before a fine pub experience, I thought I’d ensure that I had a story for Dylan and Leon in case they asked what Romanian McDonald’s is like. And, also, I haven’t tried McDonald’s Spicy Chicken McNuggets and as I don’t go to McDonald’s in the UK, I have to try these things overseas.

OK, so it might be generic, but they were lovely, although two of them were a bit over-cooked. The Hot Devil sauce, with Tabasco, had a pleasant kick to it as well, so this proved to be a satisfactory afternoon snack….. There’s not much I can add about the Fanta and fries, they were like everywhere else. Price-wise incidentally, it’s not much cheaper than in the UK.

February 18, 2020