Thursday, June 7, 2007

From Bucharest: Some additional views of the Palace








There are literally hundreds of room such as these. All this in one of the poorest countries in Europe, where the populace could not get light bulbs of more than 40 watts because of a lack of electircal power.
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Emil Perhinschi said...

>> All this in one of the poorest countries in Europe, where the populace could not get light bulbs of more than 40 watts because of a lack of electircal power.


That does not make sense: electricity rationing (by setting prohibitive prices for consumption above an arbitrary quota) and planned blackouts during peak consumption hours have nothing to do with electrical bulbs availability; whoever told you that probably also asked you for some favors afterwards: typical "poor us, how we were oppressed" line usually used by the former "culture" aparatchics.

I expected more from a historian, I guess. Yes, we lost the Cold War, and being condescended at is something I can live with, but I still have to wait until the economic growth will be based on greenfield investments and not on buying the old "industrial mammoths", whitewashing them and selling the products under Western brands.

That monster of a building should not have been build, or at least not until the street network was fixed: the interwar politicians cared more about keeping the Jews down, the newly acquired provinces in and any potential economic competition out, rather than caring about city planning. Most of the "old city" areas that survived Communism (and there are lots, just the tourist guides avoid them) turned into slums, since it's much more expensive to restore the old, frail blockhouses (and the infrastructure too) than to build new ones.


just my 2 eurocents ...

June 25, 2007 4:24 PM

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