the palace of parliament is worth a mention itself. i visited about 5% of the world's second largest building [square-meters-wise] after the pentagon, which still took us almost an hour. it mainly consists of unused fancy halls. those are used for the senate, trade fairs and exhibitions.
the materials exclusively derive from romania and are manually produced into meaningful symbols. e.g. the birds on this carpet stand for peace, the tree for recreation.
the museum of contemporary arts can be found on the backside of the building.
the two elevators lead to three exhibitions..
..and a stunning terrace with a great view.
during the tour i learned some interesting details about the former dictator nicolae ceausescu, who apparently was not the smartest. besides the fact that he could not write and only read badly, he planned the building himself. as it is so big, maps were needed.. and they can be found everywhere:
good luck finding your way!furthermore he did not want to become tired when using the steps to his private chambers. therefore they were only half as high as the rest.. that he consequently had to take twice as many stairs apparently was no issue.
ceausescu also suffered from a weird form of paranoia.. he was afraid that people could poison him with gas in the halls. hence he let build holes in some of his halls' ceilings, so that in case the toxic gas could unwind rapidly.
what he considered too late was the fact that now he could be intoxicated exactly through these holes. so this idea did not pay off quite well, either.the balcony was finished 1994, when ceausescu had already been dead for 5 years. therefore he did not experience two major american faux-pas..
both michael jackson and george w. bush used this great view for their speeches to greet the people. two years in a row the citizens of bucharest were addressed with 'hello budapest!', which kind of rocked the boat; twice.
No comments:
Post a Comment