Around Bucharest

Here is a view down Unirii Boulevard looking at the Palace of Parliament. This is the building that Ceausecu built at the end of his time. The parliament not meets there. It is the second largest building as far as square feet in the world. The largest is the Pentagon. This area of Bucharest was the old part and was full of old buildings and churches before Ceausecu decided he needed to build a huge building to house the government and also build a boulevard to rival the champ elisee in Paris. So Unirii Blvd. is a little longer and a little wider that the one in Paris. All of the buildings in this view were built at the same time as the People's House (which is another name for the building)

The fountains on Unirii Blvd represent each of the counties here in Romania. This is a view of the largest, which is for Bucharest.
I thought this one was interesting because you can see this kind of thing all over Bucharest. New buildings right next to old ones. So here is a new office complex right next to two old and run down buildings. One of the people I have met here said one of the problems with fixing up the buildings is that the ownership of many of them is in dispute. When the communists took over they took control of all the buildings, the state owned everything. Now that the communists are gone there are many cases in court as to who the buildings belong to. So no one will invest to fix them up until all of that is cleared up. Anyway I thought this was an interesting view.