The Atheneum, pictured shortly after it opened in 1889. A number of people hoping to attend the opening are still waiting to leave their coats in the cloakroom
It’s easy to see why: the exterior is a gorgeous neoclassical affair, while the interior manages to be at once grand, opulent and understated.
The legendary acoustics were also to the fore last night for an excellent performance by the Belcea Quartet, which, alas, we only got to hear two thirds of: we had a seven-year-old boy in tow who made it manfully through Haydn’s 20th for quartet and Shostakovich’s 14th, but for whom George Enescu’s infamous 45 minute long Octet in D major probably would have been a violin concerto too far.
So we slipped out and headed off home.
Anyway, it wouldn’t be Bucharest Life if we didn’t find something to complain about, so here goes:
We were a tiny bit late. Just a minute or two. We ran into the cloakroom to leave our coats, to find three women of the old school (old school as in ‘a customer is a pest‘) sitting down gas-bagging about the price of beetroot, or whatever it is Romanian women talk about.
‘Can we leave our coats with you?’ we asked, with a hope that we now realise was woefully optimistic.
‘No,’ came the reply. ‘The cloakroom is full.’
Needless to say, they had room for about 400 coats. But the look on their faces made us realise that it was useless arguing the point.
Coming less than a week after we ranted about the state of the Romanian post office, it’s comforting to know that there is another part of Bucharest that will forever be stuck in 1956: the Atheneum’s cloakroom.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Now you mention it Geronimo, I do have a few things to say on that subject.
And in more breaking news, Turp goes to the library and is unimpressed with the indexing system
Craig you really are a boring old fart.
@Davin: Don’t think that only foreigners get ripped off by taxi drivers. If you get into the wrong taxi it does not matter who you are (be you young, old, black, white, Romanian, Russian, American, handicapped, gay, poor, rich…): they will bleed you dry. Rip-off taxi drivers are in that respect far more enlightened when it comes to equal rights than much of the rest of the country.
I actually like the little things that remind one of Communism. That’s indeed why I am here—for the adventure. If I wanted to live in a normal place, I would live anywhere in Europe but here. I go out each day in Bucharest excited by the weirdness and backwardness I might find, by the disgusted looks I might get from people who have never seemed to have seen a person taking pictures. In a way, I revel in the perverseness of Bucharest, the paranoia, getting ripped off by taxi drivers, people yelling at me, people commanding me, telling me what I can and cannot do. I have started playing with the people of Bucharest throwing back at them their stupidity.