I'll say it again and again, I've found that my main activity lately is... walking. Like all of you, I love to walk, but only now I have realized that walking has become my main mode of relaxation. Slowly, slowly overtaking the other pleasures I still have.
The explanations are these, among others... age, the need to do at least some semblance of sport, the pandemic. There's probably more but I can't identify it now.
Most of my walks are in parks because I like to lie to myself that the air is cleaner, around trees and lakes, even though these parks are surrounded by neighborhoods with concrete blocks and car-filled parking lots. Now I want to break this monotony and show you what it was like to walk on some streets in a special neighborhood in Bucharest.
The northern part of the city is the most expensive part. It is the place where aristocrats, rich people, and politicians built their villas in Romania before the wars and especially after the First World War when the country had a period of economic and cultural flourishing.
Here are the widest boulevards running through beautiful parks and quaint neighborhoods. It is also a walking area and that's why the inhabitants call it "The Road".
This autumn is wonderful! It's the ideal weather for walking, neither cold nor hot, gentle sunshine, no wind, and wonderful colors before the eyes. What's more, we did this walk early on a Sunday and the boulevards were almost deserted, an unbelievable sight during the week.
After an early morning stroll through the parks, I arrived in a part of the city that has a certain meaning for me and always arouses nostalgia. The place where I went to high school! The place of adolescence and friendships. Right in front of it, I have the park where we gather our colleagues after classes.
The high school is two hundred meters from the park but I didn't think to photograph it. A famous high school in the city, with very good teachers but not for this reason it was so well known. The fame came from the fact that all the children of the country's rulers studied here. At the time I went to high school, the 70s, Romania was a communist state, actually a communist dictatorship.
The reason why all these privileged kids were studying at this high school was simple. They all lived in this neighborhood, very close to the high school. I was an outsider, I came from far away, from the outskirts of the city, and it was only by chance that I was admitted to this high school, it was lucky and unlucky at the same time. The luck was because the high school was very good, at the high standards of the leaders' desire for their children to be well educated, the misfortune was that I was marginalized and could not be in that world of the communist elite. That didn't stop me from having a few good friends among those who lived in the neighborhood.
Arriving by chance in the area, I wanted to walk down a street where many of my colleagues lived, about whom I knew nothing.
On a very quiet street, we met almost no one but of course, because it was a weekend morning, most were resting or off to their holiday homes. Because the people who live in these places have that. They are rich people. This is what the entrance to one of the villas looks like.
Let me tell you a few words about the troubled history of these places and these houses. Most of them were built about a hundred years ago and the richest Romanians of the time, businessmen, politicians, and aristocrats lived in them. They built the neighborhood.
After World War II, Romania became a communist state. The owners of these houses, who failed to flee the country in time, ended up in prison and most of them died there.
The new political class, the communists, moved into these houses which were confiscated by the state and then given to the new rulers.
After 1989, after the revolution that led to the fall of communism in Romania, the new power in the country was also made up of former communists and they managed to pass laws that prevented the restitution of these houses to the descendants of the owners.
After many years, some owners managed to get the houses back and the unclaimed ones could be bought by the people who lived in them. In general, both some and others sold the houses to the newly rich. Because after every revolution new rich people appear.
Most have renovated homes and some are very nice. I particularly liked this one.
Some houses do not have a large yard, but the space that is there is pleasantly overwhelmed by the vegetation.
Like I said, nobody on the street. Quiet and peaceful, it's nice for walking. I think only people who want to see these houses walk on the street, the residents just drive their cars.
I also saw a villa that had not been renovated, probably because the old tenants didn't want to sell it and didn't have money for repairs. I guess they are old... probably not many years from now and this house will change its appearance.
One can still guess the former beauty of the house with its imposing exterior staircase. I think in the future it will change its appearance, it might look like this...
Before leaving this small street in the beautiful neighborhood, one last look.
Certainly many of my former high school classmates lived in some of these houses. I don't think they're around now, a lot of them have left the country.
This slightly atypical walk, because it happened to be in a neighborhood that is not mine, ends in the same boulevard where it started, only a few hundred meters further.
There is a beautiful villa that has been uninhabited for thirty years.
It was bought with the intention of being demolished. So that extremely expensive housing could be built on the site. But they were unpleasantly surprised that the house was declared a historical monument and could not be demolished. But neither is it renovated. They're all waiting.
Because housing costing millions has already been built around it.
The big real estate deals. We have our own sharks!
We ended our walk by reaching the boulevard.
Because I said at the beginning that this fall is wonderful, a little splash of color.
It was a pleasant walk. I was able to admire some great houses and reminisced about my teenage years and high school classmates. I also did a little history. Many rewards after just a simple walk.