We are in Piata Romana — Roman Square. Traffic swirls around us, funneled into and out of the circular intersection by six converging roads. This is modern Bucharest: shiny vehicles shuffling for space, ornately European commercial buildings framed with gaudy advertising billboards, crowds of purposeful pedestrians milling at every crossing.
Qualquer estrada que escolhermos aqui nos levará a uma viagem não apenas pela capital da Romênia, mas também por um corte transversal da história da cidade.
As rotações do tráfego no sentido anti-horário neste cruzamento movimentado são apropriadas: No decorrer de uma viagem de 30 minutos, voltaremos no tempo.
Let's go south, along General Gheorghe Magheru Boulevard. If this broad, tree-lined avenue reminds you of Paris, the French planners commissioned by Romania's King Carol I in the 19th century did their job. Under their guidance, a haphazard patchwork of medieval neighborhoods was flattened and replaced with a sophisticated layout of mansion-lined streets and leafy parks. It was not the last time that a ruler stamped his mark on the fabric of Bucharest.
The boulevard passes within a couple of blocks of Revolution Square, where four decades of communist rule came to an end 22 years ago. We pass the distinctive skyscraper housing the InterContinental Hotel, then cross University Square, the scene of some of the heaviest fighting during the 1989 revolution. Look carefully and you'll see that some of the buildings are still bullet-pocked.
The revolution culminated with the execution of the country's communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. Nearly a quarter of a century later, his ideology has been comprehensively swept away by free-market economics, but his memory stubbornly lingers in one of the greatest follies of 20th-century city planning.
As we drive south, we cross an avenue designed on a monumental scale. The receding lines of the road, with neatly planted trees and ranks of stone apartment blocks on each side, converge in the hazy distance at the foot of the world's second-biggest building (after the Pentagon), Ceausescu's "House of the People."
One-sixth of Bucharest was bulldozed in the 1980s to make way for the avenue and the mammoth marble edifice at the far end. Around 70,000 people were relocated from their condemned homes, while 26 historic churches, three monasteries and two synagogues fell victim to the wrecking balls.
The project was on too grand a scale to undo after the fall of communism, so the city has had to make the best of the deceased dictator's overblown architectural legacy. The House of the People (which, in fact, was intended to house Ceausescu and his wife as well as the Communist Party headquarters) has become the seat of Romania's democratic government.
We continue onward, passing between the bleak rows of concrete apartment blocks that betray the true face of the old Romania. In the outer suburbs, the apartment blocks are increasingly interspersed with quaint wooden houses behind picket fences.
With a final flourish of brand-new industrial buildings and a vast French-owned supermarket, the city ends and the countryside begins. Centuries of development and political upheaval are left behind. We pass through villages that appear timeless. Elderly women in traditional dress amble along the roadside. Horse-drawn carts loaded with hay trundle along the highway. Signs warn of crossing livestock.
While Bucharest has already marched into the 21st century, its rural hinterland is only just beginning the journey. The percentage of the Romanian workforce employed in agriculture (30 percent) is nearly 10 times the average of most European countries, yet the contribution of agriculture to Romania's gross domestic product has halved in the past five years and continues to decline.
Desde que a Roménia aderiu à União Europeia em 2007, a modernização do sector agrícola do país tem sido uma das principais prioridades, com um total de 14,5 mil milhões de euros de investimento prometidos até 2013.
In terms of population and land area, Romania is the seventh-largest country in the EU, and yet it currently produces the lowest yields for important crops such as corn, wheat and sunflowers. There is huge potential for agricultural growth, with both foreign investors and local farmers standing to reap the harvest — literal and metaphoric.
Already there are signs that the green revolution is beginning to gain momentum in Bucharest's rural backyard. Antiquated farm machinery is being replaced. Acres of farmland are now encased in efficient plastic greenhouses. And in most villages you will notice, among the traditional homesteads, newly built mansions with top-of-the-range BMWs parked outside. Times are changing.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that it has taken so long. From 1989 onward, admission to the EU was the overriding aim of democratic Romania. Preparation was protracted and painful and involved overhauling the centralized economy and dismantling the communist bureaucracy.
Since the momentous treaty was signed in 2007, many Romanians complain that they have been treated as second-class EU citizens. Several EU countries, including the U.K., France and Germany, have elected to maintain restrictions on immigration from Romania until 2014.
The delay in sharing the full benefits of EU membership may ultimately work to Romania's advantage. Other EU countries with emerging economies, such as Greece, Ireland and Portugal, rushed to join the euro and then indulged in an orgy of debt-funded spending. Romania has retained its currency, the leu, and is enjoying an export boom.
From January through April 2011, Romanian exports to the rest of the EU were up over the previous year by an astonishing 30.6 percent. In the same quarter, the industrial sector expanded by 10 percent. Car manufacture has led the way. In 1999, the Romanian car maker Dacia was bought by Renault and is now producing a competitive range of vehicles that appeal to increasingly cash-conscious consumers in the EU and Russia.
A newfound sense of pragmatism is starting to reach other sectors. In the first flush of free-market optimism, Bucharest's hospitality industry rushed toward high-end prestige development. A host of 4- and 5-star hotels blossomed around the capital until supply greatly outstripped demand.
The upmarket Continental Hotels logged a €4.8 million loss last year but discovered that its budget 2-star Hello Hotels brand was flourishing. "We want to keep building Hello Hotels and give up 4-star hotels," says Continental's owner, Radu Enache. "The economic outlook suggests that it is better to develop 2-star hotels."
The lengthy delays ahead of Romania's accession to the EU were once a sore point. Today, with an increasingly uncertain economic climate throughout Europe, it appears that the country will be able to learn from the mistakes of other EU members as well as from the lessons of its own totalitarian past.
Moving forward, there will be less reliance on grandiose projects. Bucharest has had more than its share of those. Instead, there is a focus on constructing the future on solid foundations, steadily, field by field, brick by brick.
DIVERSIONS
Nicolae Ceausescu was not the only ruthless leader to cast an indelible shadow over Bucharest. In the 15th century, Romania was under the grip of a man whose brutality has become the stuff of legend: Vlad Tepes - Vlad the Impaler. His family name was Draculea, thus providing the name and inspiration for Bram Stoker's famous creation, Dracula.
Tumba do Drácula está localizado dentro de um mosteiro em uma pequena ilha no meio de Lago Snagov, 20 miles north of Bucharest. The best way to reach the island from the shore is to row there in a hired boat (ideally on a weekday — the lake is a favorite weekend hang-out for day-trippers from Bucharest and gets very crowded). Vlad the Impaler's simple tomb is located in the gloomy stone interior of the UNESCO-listed Mosteiro de Snagov. When, in 1931, the tomb was found to be empty, the Dracula legend was chillingly reinforced.
Voltando a Bucareste, vale a pena parar em Palácio Mogosoaia, uma residência de verão construída em 1700 pelo príncipe Constantin Brâncoveanu da Valáquia para sua esposa. Há um modesto museu dentro do palácio, mas para muitos visitantes a principal atração é Cemitério de Lenin, fora dos muros do palácio. Foi aqui que as estátuas de Lenin e do primeiro-ministro comunista romeno Petru Groza foram abandonados sem cerimônia após serem removidos do centro de Bucareste em 1990.
O ponto de inflexão da revolução de 1989 foi um discurso proferido por Ceausescu às massas reunidas sob sua varanda em Praça da Revolução. The boos of the crowd signaled the end of his autocratic regime. Visibly confused, he was whisked away by helicopter and soon after was caught and executed close to Lake Snagov. That fateful episode is commemorated in the square by the $2 million Memorial of Rebirth, a controversial 75-foot sculpture that has been described as a "potato skewered on a stake."
O Museu Nacional de Arte da Romênia occupies the former Royal Palace beside Revolution Square and boasts a collection that includes works by Rembrandt, Tintoretto, El Greco and Monet. But its most important collection is of medieval icons and wooden altars salvaged from Romanian churches demolished during the communist era.
Várias dessas igrejas foram destruídas para dar lugar à igreja de Ceausescu Avenida da Vitória do Socialismo (agora conhecido como Bulevardul Unirii - Union Boulevard) e a enorme massa de mármore do Casa do Povo, agora oficialmente denominado Palácio do Parlamento.
Guided tours of the huge palace are available daily 10 a.m.–4 p.m. and can be booked through your hotel concierge; prepare to be inundated with mind-boggling numbers. The 12-story building has 3,100 completed rooms, including 64 reception halls. When fully lit, the building burns through the equivalent of the entire city's electricity every four hours. Underneath the building there is a network of tunnels, garages and even a nuclear bunker.
A parte traseira do palácio agora abriga o Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea (aberto das 10h às 18h, de quarta a domingo), que é um ótimo lugar para experimentar a reinvenção confiante da expressão cultural da Romênia.
O Museu do Camponês Romeno — a past recipient of the European Museum of the Year award — provides an introduction to the country's timeless rural heritage. The centerpiece is the "house in the house," an actual village cottage that has been deconstructed to allow visitors to peer into it from every angle. In the grounds outside is a relocated 18th-century Transylvanian wooden church.
Levando ainda mais longe o tema rural é a Museu Nacional da Aldeia, situated on the shore of Lake Herastrau in northern Bucharest. Originally opened in 1936, this open-air museum recreates Romanian village life with a rambling collection of authentic buildings.
One aspect of Bucharest's heritage has been lost forever. Before World War II, there were 800,000 Jews residing in Romania. Today they number just 10,000. What remained of the old Jewish Quarter was demolished by Ceausescu in the 1980s. One fragment — a 19th-century synagogue on Ma.mulari Street — survived, and today it houses the intensely moving Jewish History Museum.
Informações para ir
Voos internacionais chegam a Henri Coanda. Aeroporto Internacional (OTP), 16 km a noroeste do centro de Bucareste.
Táxis do aeroporto: espere pagar US$ 25 pela viagem até a cidade.
Existe também um serviço regular de ônibus, que leva cerca de 60 minutos (se o tráfego permitir), com saídas a cada 15 minutos.
Mais informações sobre Transporte público de Bucareste
Apenas os fatos
Fuso horário: GMT +2
Código do telefone: 4 Romênia, 021 Bucareste
Requisitos de entrada/saída: Os cidadãos dos EUA devem ter um passaporte válido para entrar na Romênia
e pode ficar até 90 dias sem visto dentro de um determinado período de seis meses.
Para estadias superiores a 90 dias, obtenha uma prorrogação de estadia junto ao Escritório de Imigração da Romênia.
No século
Moeda: Leu (plural, lei)
Idioma Oficial: O romeno é a língua oficial. O inglês é a segunda língua mais popular, especialmente entre os romenos mais jovens.
Principais indústrias: Financial services, IT, retail, food and beverage production, agriculture
