As of today Bucharest has eight new metro stations. Or, to put it correctly, Bucharest has eight metro stations which have changed their names.
Or does it?
Erm, no, actually, it doesn’t. It has seven stations which have had a name change, and one pie-in-the-sky, figment-of-somebody’s-imagination which has had a name change.
For now we think about it, we realise that one of those stations which has been renamed, Laromet (renamed Laminorului), doesn’t actually exist.
It must take a certain kind of evil genius to rename stations which do not exist. A little like Hitler launching counter-attacks with armies he no longer had, we wonder how on earth you can rename a station that is little more than a dot on a drawing board? According to the admittedly unreliable source that is Wikipedia, Laromet station is scheduled to open ‘by 2020′.
Good job they renamed it now then.
Yet we can see how attractive the idea of renaming things which do not exist must be for Romania’s government. Indeed, you wonder why nobody thought of it before. We can see a great future for the concept here. There are hundreds of kilometres of non-existent motorway to rename for a start. After that they could rename Brasov airport, or the high-speed train link to Otopeni airport.
The full list of those stations renamed is:
Laromet > Laminorului
Semanatoarea > Petrache Poenaru
Armata Poporului > Lujerului
Industriilor > Preciziei
Depoul IMGB > Berceni
IMGB > Dimitrie Leonida
Policolor > Nicolae Teclu
Linia de Centura > Anghel Saligny
Of course, the next step when renaming all these stations should be the publication of a new map.
Given that it’s almost a year since the extension to Linia de Centura/Anghel Saligny opened and yet official maps still show the line ‘under construction’ (we’ve written about this before), we are not holding our breath.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I don’t understand Romanians’ obsession for naming streets (and now metro stations) with people’s names. WTF, seriously? I remember while I was living in Cluj almost all the streets were renamed to use famous people’s names. It’s pretty hard to find a street whose name is a common noun.
I very much prefer the old names. :-/
Agreed. The more industrial the better.