I have to confess the attraction I have for water, and I don't mean drinking water, where I am always in a backlog because I am almost never thirsty. I'm lucky with the recent TV campaigns urging people to drink water, at least two liters a day. Another problem, even though I am determined to drink water, I still fail to get the recommended two liters... Oh, I digress, but this drinking water problem obsesses me.
I'm also obsessed with flowing water, standing water, rippling water, and fresh or salt water.
I've noticed that the vast majority of cities are crossed by at least one river. Paris, Rome, and London, to name a few places known all over the world. The city where I live, Bucharest, in Romania, is also crossed by two rivers.
The explanation for the fact that there are rivers in most cities is simple. Every place where a city or a human settlement was formed, had to provide water for its inhabitants. The first houses were built near the river and then, as the place developed, more and more buildings appeared and the river remained in the middle.
One of my dreams is (I mean not anymore, it was...) to have a house by the river. If I had lived six hundred years ago, when Bucharest appeared, I would definitely have had a house on the river bank. Now, from my home to the river are more than ten kilometers!
The river that crosses Bucharest is called Dambovita. It looks as you see it in these pictures.
The river crosses Bucharest municipality for a distance of about 22 km, crossing the city from northwest to southeast. Although it is the main source of water supplying Bucharest, over the years the river has posed various problems due to hydrological phenomena resulting from the crossing of the city: flooding, and swamping. As a result of these phenomena, the course of the river has undergone a series of improvements, and today its entire course is canalized.
Well, that's a problem. This river sewer, because now it really looks like a sewer. The reasons for choosing this development are correct, primarily for flood control, but they have destroyed the beauty of the place. I, who have lived in this town for over sixty years, remember how the Dambovita was in my childhood. It was a much narrower river than now, with irregular banks, with earth and grass, and many willows under which the inhabitants of the town walked.
Now there are rivers of cars flowing along the banks of the river, on both sides. There are narrow sidewalks that no one walks on. I took a walk on these sidewalks near the river, in the city center, to remember the old times, in my youth, when I often walked in these places.
In the central part of the city, the Dambovita river separates two distinct areas. On one side is the so-called Civic Center, built in the 1980s by the communist leadership of Romania, in fact at the will of the dictator Ceausescu. He, after a visit to North Korea, wanted to reproduce the architecture seen there...
In this area is the most famous building in Romania, the second largest in the world, after the Pentagon. It is, of course, the building that was called the People's House during the communist period, and is now the Parliament building.
This is an impressive building in size but hideous in appearance. A desire for grandeur and eternity, like that of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, which the now-deceased former dictator had. He died of a cold! The lead in the firing squad's cartridges was too cold and he fell ill... this was a joke of the Romanians happy to have escaped the dictatorship in 1989!
Tourists from all over the world come especially to visit this palace of communist grandeur. I have never visited it and never will.
I thought the mania of grandeur died with the dictator, but I was wrong. We now have the Orthodox Patriarch of Romania who wanted a Cathedral of the Nation! Hundreds of millions of euros have been spent so far on its construction. The Patriarch's ambition and desire are that this cathedral is taller than the Parliament building... and it will be. It would have been good if it had been a copy of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia!
Already it can be seen that the dome of the cathedral has surpassed the height of the parliament building, but a cross will be mounted at the top of the dome, several tens of meters high, and thus the Patriarch's wish will be fulfilled.
I don't want to talk any more about this part of the city and move on to the other side of the Dambovitei, which is towards the Old Center. This is the part of the city I like the most. Here are the old buildings, which escaped the communist demolitions, some buildings are still unrestored but extremely beautiful, in my opinion.
Here we see a new building and I think it's a mystery how it got planning permission in the old center. It creates a contrast that I think is not bad.
Here, in the foreground, is a museum reminiscent of ancient and tragic times, the Holocaust Museum. In the back, the police headquarters is in a beautiful historic building.
Here we can see a street leading to the old center of Bucharest. A street that I will show in another walking post, along with more pictures of the Museum.
Another walk around the city where I live. A walk showing places and sights that I think are worth seeing for any foreign tourist. A walk for the community WednesdayWalk, created and moderated by @tattoodjay ("Wednesday Walk is a challenge started by me, the idea is to get out for a short walk and get some shots of what you can").
Traveler to the city where I live is what I've been doing for many years, that is, I try to show what is more interesting, more important, and not necessarily what is more beautiful in the city where I live. I don't bypass the ugly places or the sometimes uncivilized behavior that I try to explain through the history of these places but I focus especially on what I think a visitor would like to see when he arrives for the first time in Bucharest. Bucharest, the capital of Romania, a member country of the EU, is located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe. I'm going to use this tag #traveltomycity and then put these places on the Pinmapple map for those who want to discover them more easily!
