Weekend Update

Hello everyone! S and I have not written a new post in a several days, and there is actually a lot to say, so here goes. . .

On Wednesday, I went to the Holocaust Institute, where I have an affiliation. The day didn't start out too well, as I had a difficult time finding it and ended up being thirty minutes late for my appointment. It is located on an extremely short street, tucked within a maze of similar small streets, and even when I asked some cabbies if they knew where it was they couldn't tell me. Eventually I did find it, and after apologizing profusely, I spoke with the director and two historians for about forty minutes about my research project, what I hoped to accomplish while in Romania, and the archives and libraries I intended to visit. They then provided me with a list of people to contact, and offered to provide me with letters of introduction to some of the instiutions mentioned during our conversation. Afterwards, they showed me to the reading room--the Institute has a pretty decent amount of material from the National Archives on microfilm, and their reader is capable of creating .pdfs from microfilm, which will save me money down the road . They're even providing me with a desk and computer!

While walking home I stopped in a tiny shopping mall on the more run-down end of Calea Victoriei and poked around for a bit, eventually finding what I wanted: a good umbrella and a toaster for S! I thought they'd make nice Thanksgiving gifts. That evening S made a declicious dinner--creamy rissotto with oven-roasted vegetables.

On Friday S did a bit of shopping and cleaning, while I worked. One of the staff from the Holocaust Institute walked me over to the Library of the Romanian Academy and helped me get my credentials established so I could work there, and I spent the rest of the day looking up periodicals and books to request. They have an excellent collection, including some obscure Roma publications from the 1930s that aren't available in the States. After coming back home, S and I finished the leftover rissotto and watched one of our favorite movies on the laptop, Bend It Like Beckham. A nice, cozy evening at home!

After running some basic errands on Saturday (paying off our cellphone bill, picking up dry cleaning, etc) we worked up an appetite, and inspired by the previous evening's movie selection, we decided only Indian would do! I will write a separate post about that, but I wanted to take a minute to talk about the journey there. After taking the metro to Piata Unirii, we walked a total of three miles to the restaurant. On the way, just as the sky began to darken and as autumn mist clung to the air, we walked past the Palatul Parliamnetului (Palace of the Parliament), formerly known as the Palatul al Poporului (Palace of the People). As S would agree, there is nothing I could say to really impress upon you just how dauntingly enormous of a monument to Nicolae Ceausescu's arrogance it is. To put it in some perspective, it is the second-largest building in the world, after the Pentagon.

It sits in the center of the Centru Civic (Civic Center), which Ceausescu hoped would eclipse all other city centers in Europe. In 1977, Bucharest suffered a massive earthquake which damaged a great deal of the city, and Ceausescu decided to remake Bucharest into his idea of a socialist paradise. Huge communist apartment blocs were erected both on the city's outskirts and center, and Ceausescu levelled roughly one-fifth of the historic district to make room for the Palace and Civic Centru, destroying hundreds of beautiful homes, synagogues, and churches. His mad dream failed, however, and now Centru Civic is like a ghost town. Most of the large buildings are only partially occupied (some even remain unfinished), and as for the Palace itself, which houses both chambers of the Romanian Parliament, only about 10% is actually used on a day-to-day basis. The rest of the complex can be rented out (for an exorbitant sum). I took a tour once, and one day I'll go through again with S, as the interior is every bit as overwhelming as the exterior. The entire structure, inside and out, was created solely from Romanian materials, a source of some national pride, but on the whole Bucharesters hate the building with a passion. Walking past it in foggy twilight gloom evoked just the right feeling dreariness.

Past the Palace, we saw the Marriott Grand Hotel. I had always heard of this place, but never actually seen it. The hotel is enormous (though a dwarf compared to the Palace) and contains within it a high-end shopping mall called Grand Avenue (think Rolex and Louis Vuitton, etc). As we were on a mission for food we didn't go inside, but one day we'll have to check it out just for the experience. To encounter the Marriott after the Palace represented a stark contrast in grandiosity, to say the least, although ultimately in both we find the driving force of Ego.
The night ended nicely, Skyping with our friends Jake and Aerin (and little Edy!) and S's parents and ultimately zoning out.

Today we did quite a bit of grocery shopping, which left us both exhausted due to a combination of walking, negotiating crowds, dealing with rude people, and carrying a ton. In the Unirea department store we found some Christmas decorations, which we'll put up tomorrow, and this time visited the top floor--where we found a schnazzy food court and an arcade. Skeeball, billiards, video games of all sorts, and even bowling! -B