It’s hazy as we fly in to Bucharest, flat fields and parts of the city only viewable for a few miles before it disappears into a sfumato of beige. The flight from Amsterdam was noisy: the first cultural difference we encounter is that no one in this part of the world seems to use headphones. Phones chime around us as most people on the plane play games and watch videos at full volume. At one point during the flight, a woman behind me answers a phone call. (Second cultural difference: everyone in this part of Europe smokes.)
We’ve been warned against hailing cabs from the curb due to potential scammers, but travel blogs say that prebooking a taxi or using ride share apps is easy and secure. We use a kiosk to order a taxi; our driver smiles a lot, talks almost not at all, and drives like he stole the car. Traffic is bad, and it takes almost an hour to get to our hotel. At one point we pass a demonstration and he says “Protest!” and points. I ask what they’re protesting and he laughs and shrugs. When we get to the hotel, he says “Cash only, no card,” which we don’t have. He seems quite happy to take an American fifty dollar bill from Jason; with the exchange rate, he gets about half the fare as a tip.
First photo in Bucharest
After we check in (Hilton Garden Inn; not fancy but central enough in Old Town and clean so I’d recommend it) we take a short walk around a block. We’ve been awake for about 26 hours by now, so even though it’s only 6pm local time we go back to the room to sleep, skipping dinner or seeing more of the town.
I’m up before Jason and impatient to do something, so I wander around for several blocksi. I see a cat with a bobbed tail, and the most unafraid pigeons. I pass a church we want to visit together, so instead duck in another that Jason won’t care about. The “Goldsmith’s Church”, Zlătari Church (Biserica Zlătari in Romanian) is dedicated to the birth of the Virgin Mary, something I didn’t know Catholics cared so much about but probably should have guessed. There’s a carafe of holy water, with spigots like a coffee urn. I watch a woman kiss the feet of every figure in each painting along the wall.
Stained glass reflected in a painting of Mary
Chandeliers, paintings, and stained glass
(Unnecessary sidebar: I sometimes think of myself as “culturally Catholic”, meaning I deeply care about both pageantry and guilt. The stained glass and the incense and the ritual and the paintings of fey little angels gently stepping on dragons is all very much my vibe: it’s just too bad the Catholic Church is responsible for so fucking many of the horrors of the last thousand years. We didn’t go to church growing up: I just knew mom was raised Lutheran, and dad was raised Catholic but was kicked out of parochial school in 11th grade for saying “hells bells” during football practice. As altar boys in elementary school, he and his brothers used to get each other in trouble for laughing during service by farting.)
The Palace of Deposits and Consignments: a bank
Jason joins me, and we have breakfast at the Van Gogh Cafe . Inexplicably, my omelette comes with a side salad. Their chocolate frappe is basically a milkshake made of whipped cream, and is in the running for the best thing I ate on this trip. (Third cultural difference: it seems like you don’t wait to be seated at a restaurant: you just sit. I will not test this theory though, and will instead keep awkwardly hovering by the restaurant’s door until a server looks at me, confused.)
A different cafe with better lighting
We visit the Stavropoleos Church (Mănăstirea Stavropoleos in Romanian), a historic site and functional Eastern Orthodox monastery for nuns. Built in 1724 by a Greek monk, Stavropoleos Church is the oldest church in Old Town. The church is built in the Romanian architectural style known as Brancovenesc or “Wallachian Renaissance”, and is small but breathtaking. Over the years, parts have been demolished by people and by earthquakes; the only original section of the complex that remains today is the church. The paintings were restored in the 1900s, but the old stonework is original. The outdoor courtyard is titled with broken bits of old stone carvings; more carvings line the walls and surround the lone tree.
Inside it is dark and cool, and the woman speaks only enough English to remind Jason to remove his hat (sorry, god). We’re able to sit in silence for a few minutes before a tour group floods the small space. Outside, we see one of the nuns, clad all in black and with a curious box-like cap. The nuns here spend their time restoring old books, icons, and sacerdotal clothes. Their choir is known for singing Byzantine music.
A travel blog recommended walking Calea Victoriei (Victory Boulevard) between Piata Victoriei (Victory Square) and Southern Piata Unirii (Union Square) as an easy way to see several sites, including museums and public art. Unfortunately, the National Museum of Art is closed, and I’m too shy to go into one of the galleries we pass because I can’t tell if it’s open to the public or just for auction clients. We check out an antique shop but it kinda sucks, mostly books and expensive art.
Pasajul Victoria, the Umbrella Street of Bucharest
Pasajul Macca-Vilacrossej, the covered Vilacrossej Pasaage in Old Town. It’s open-ended and houses restaurants and hookah lounges
An Italian restaurant using a still from The Sopranos to advertise
We booked a “
Darkside of Bucharest” tour that goes to a cemetery and a few other sites of creepy interest; the meeting location is a KFC. We meet our guide, Andra, a born-and-raised Bucharesti (author’s note: I made that title up). Our tour also has a woman named Maggie who’s an artist from Texas, and two men from Israel. Maggie is cool, but I dislike the men pretty quickly for how much they interrupt and how little they listen.
Andra has us take the subway to the largest and oldest cemetery in Bucharest: Șerban Vodă Cemetery. No one calls it that, though—it’s commonly known as Bellu Cemetery, after Baron Bellu, who donated the land the cemetery is on. Before the 1850s, burials took place in churchyards. But as the city grew, and Romania began to free itself from 400 years of occupation by the Ottomon Empire, it needed a large, centralized place for its dead. Baron Bellu donated the land his orange grove was on to become the cemetery: Andra shares an apocryphal quote, in which Baron Bellu says, “I will give my garden of orange trees for a garden of souls.”
Before our tour, Andra shares a bit of Romanian history. “In the Middle Ages, we got in a lot of trouble with some guys called the Ottoman Empire,” The Ottoman rule, and centuries of warfare kept Romania “almost in the dark ages,” says Andra. But in the 1850s, the Ottoman Empire was fighting with most of its conquered territories, meaning the nobles of Romania had a chance to organize a revolution. “They thought, ‘Let’s bring in a foreign king and let the Ottomans deal with it if they have time.’” As Andra tells it, the Romanian nobles went to several European kingdoms and said “Do you wanna be the king of a country that doesn’t exist?” A Belgium royal said no, but a Prussian German—Carol I of Hohenzollern, aka King Karl—said yes. “He did a good job,” is Andra’s judgment. Under King Karl and the Romantic Movement, Romania copied much of France’s architectural style, as Paris was seen as the most elegant place in the world at that time.
Bellu Cemetery cannot be described as elegant, but it can be described as compelling. The place is acres and acres of a complete jumble of mausoleums, monuments, and crosses in competing styles and multiple eras. Cats weave in and out of the tombstones, popping out at random places or chasing one another down the narrow paths. This is immediately my favorite thing I’ve seen so far on our trip.
The first notable grave we
visit is that of Iulia Hașdeu, a child prodigy and poet who died when she was just 18 years old. “When it comes to school, she goes though it like cheese,” Andra says in what might be my new favorite “idiom that doesn’t quite translate into English”. Sadly, Iulia caught tuberculosis while in Paris for school, and returned to Romania just in time to die in her parents’ arms.
Iluia’s tomb
Two days after her death, her father goes into a trance at his desk. When he awakes, he is holding a pen, and in front of him is a letter written to him in Iulia’s handwriting, telling him she is at peace. “He dives headfirst into Spiritualism after that,” says Andra. Through channeling Iulia, her father and mother erect a grave that will become a Spiritualism meeting point. Sphinxes carry a globe atop a throne, which itself is perched on piles of books. An inscription asks one to stay awhile, but it’s unclear if this is Iulia’s parents speaking to her spirit, or Iulia herself asking the visitors to spend time with her earthly remains. From the beyond, Iulia communicated that she wished for four pillars shaped like rolled scrolls to surround her tomb, but that her father must order five. During installation, a workman knocked over one of the scrolls, breaking it, and so the reason for the fifth scroll became clear. (Why she couldn’t have just asked her dad to tell the workman to be more careful is beyond me.)
Said earthly remains will not stay awhile. Under her gravestone and down several stairs is a crypt, which used to be open for people to visit. Iulia’s father had installed a window in her sarcophagus to her body so he (and others) could see her. As a site of pilgrimage, people began taking souvenirs with them; first Iulia’s hair, and then, grotesquely, parts of her body. Eventually, her few remaining remains were removed from the sarcophagus, placed into a small, sealed wooden box, and the crypt was closed.
We continue walking. More cats appear, and I see a man riding his bicycle between the rows. We come to another famous tomb, this showing a larger-than-life figure of a man kneeling at the bedside of his dearly beloved, who had just dearly departed. “The stories say they are husband and wife, but also brother and sister,” says Andra. She tells us that the father, Mr. Porroinianu, left his wife and small son to study law in Paris. While there, he had an affair with a French woman, but left her to come home to his Romanian family after law school. In time, his son grew to follow in his father’s footsteps, himself heading to Paris to study law. He fell in love with a French woman, bringing her home as his bride. However, after learning her age and her mother’s name, Mr. Porroinianu deduces this is his own illegitimate daughter, who has now married her half brother. He tells the lovers, who cannot be together now but also refuse to part, and so they commit suicide. Learning this, Mr. Porroinianu hangs himself.
Porroinianu Family monument
“It’s a made up story,” says Andra. The people sculpted here really were brother and sister, but they did not get married, did not have a love affair. The sister died young, and her mourning brothers erected this monument to show their grief. The element of incest was introduced by the communist regime, shares Andra, who upon taking power in the years following WWII spread disinformation about the monarchy and aristocracy to control the historical narrative and paint wealth in a poor light.
“They made us forget our own stories,” says Andra of the communist party. The two men in the tour ask why people didn’t just talk to the older generations to hear the true history, to learn facts instead of listening to the communist regime or the histories written between the 1940s and 90s. “There are old people who know the real story, but they don’t talk loud enough, and no one listens to old people,” says Andra. “If you look at them, they are completely traumatized by communism. They belong to a very mean and desperate time, and if has turned them very pessimistic.” Andra shares that even her parents’ generation, born in the 1960s, are unused to challenging the “facts” they learned in school during communist occupation. It is Andra’s generation that is beginning to dig into the false histories to try and uncover the real stories.
This is the grave of Mihail Eminescu, who is “Hands off, the most famous Romanian to Romanians,” according to Andra. He is buried next to Ion Luca Caragiale, a playwright with whom he had a bitter rivalry. Eminescu died first, and in a petty power move, Caragiale purchased the plot next to him so Eminescu wouldn’t be rid of him. (The communist party squeezed a grave between the two, reasons unknown.)
This is the grave of Sophia Mavrodin, a woman mountain climber from 1900s. She fell to her death in 1905 while climbing a mountain; this stone was brought from the same place she died. The carved bird at the top is commonly thought to be an eagle, but Andra theorizes it’s actually a type of vulture that was once prevalent in the area but is now extinct in that part of Romania.
This colorful grave is typical of the style found in the Merry Cemetery, a graveyard in northern Romania. Unlike most of this part of Europe that views death as solemn, the Merry Cemetery honors its dead with colorful crosses, painted in a naive folk art style, which bears a humorous poem poking a bit of fun at the departed.
Andra says “I love this angel. He’s looking at you and saying, ‘You’re gonna die one day, I’m coming for you, and it’s going to be glorious’”
We end the cemetery tour at the mausoleum of Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino, a former prime minister and possibly the wealthiest man in this cemetery. He had a rivalry with King Karl, a financial dick-measuring contest to prove who was wealthiest. (Jason likens this to Scrooge McDuck and Flint Glomgold’s rivalry, which I would call a duck-measuring contest if it wouldn’t result in him divorcing me.) Karl built his summer home, Peleș Castle, in the German style. Cantacuzino built his own mansion in the Neo-Romanian style to make a point about Romanian (and his own) superiority, and made sure to build it on the same hill as Karl’s, and on the route Karl would have to take to get to his own castle.
Cantacuzino’s mausoleum, which has copper knights on each corner and gold mosaics on the interior
Petty and ostentatious, Cantacuzino wanted a roof of gold. This dismayed his architect, as the Neo-Romanian style was supposed to reflect down-to-earth rural stylings. Adding to this monument to passive aggression, the architect suggested they use gold coins to tile the roof to achieve the effect. When Cantacuzino approved, the architect said “Sure; but do you want them placed with Karl’s face or Karl’s crest up?” because of course the coinage bore the image of the king. Cantacuzino obviously wanted neither, and so the architect was able to install a tasteful and movement-appropriate red-tiled roof.
We take the subway back near Old Town, where Andra tells us (or tries to, despite a litany of interruptions from the men) a bit more about life under communism. She takes us to the site of the first violence of the revolution, which happened in December 1989 (almost 2 months after the fall of the Berlin Wall). This is important history, but I’m over it: my feet hurt, and I’m really over the two dudes and all their questions.
A monument commemorating the first protests of December 1989
At the end of the tour, Andra gives us each a chocolate bar called ROM. “I can’t eat this anymore,” she says, “this is the taste of my childhood and my parents’ childhood.” Under communism, there was no butter and very little sugar and other sweets. They came up with a candy sweetened with rum (the name is a phonetic play on rum and Romania; it tastes first of chocolate and cherries and then of medicine. Jason and I take a few polite bites and then discreetly put the rest in the trash.
Before we leave, I ask Andra where we’d find authentic food, and she suggests we go to Vatra, which is not frequented by tourists but very good, she says. Jason and I find the restaurant, and I order Mămăligă cu brânză și smântâna ţuică (MBS), which is polenta topped with sour cream, a friable white cheese, and a fried egg, as well as a glass of ţuică, which is a plum brandy drunk across the country. The MSB is absolutely delicious. The ţuică could double as a paint stripper. After dinner, Jason and I walk back to our hotel, hand in hand, and the city lights are the same pale gold of the liquor.
