Mihai Eminescu's grave at the Bellu Cemetery. Essential?

As part of what will be a fairly serious overhaul and rewrite of the What to See section in Bucharest In Your Pocket, we are currently reconsidering what should be labelled as ‘Essential Bucharest.’

Right now, these are currently our ‘Essential Bucharest‘ picks:

Arc de Triumf
Bellu Cemetery
Casa Poporului
George Enescu Museum
Grigore Antipa Museum of Natural History
National Art Museum
Peasant Museum
Village Museum

The accompanying text reads:

The first port of call for any visitor to Bucharest these days should probably be the Historic Centre, or Old Town.

Once you have ticked off Old Town, you can head for the sights, museums, churches and buildings we list here.

The Peasant and Village Museums should take priority, as well as the Grigore Antipa National History Museum (as and when it reopens).

While still the most famous building in the city and usually top of the agenda for most visitors, Casa Poporului/Palatul Parlamentului tends to be a bit of a let down for most, mainly due to the stilted nature of the compulsory guided tour.

Art lovers – especially fans of religious art – should pencil in at least an afternoon at the National Art Museum.

Last but not least, half a day at the Bellu Cemetery is a wonderful trip through Romanian literary, artistic, political and architectural history.

We think that the Arc de Triumf can probably go: it would warrant a place on the list if it opened to the public more than on two or three days per year, but as such should you really go out of your way to see it (especially as almost every visitor will pass it on their way in to the city from the airport?) We also think that the Village Museum might be a tad overrated (not least by us!), especially as we recently visited Stockholm’s Skansen and saw what a real village museum looks like.

Anyway, comments and ideas welcome. Most importantly: is there anything which should be part of the Essential list that we currently ignore or list elsewhere?

A tripod, yesterday

The plot, in a nutshell, is this: humanity has been conquered and enslaved by The Tripods, unseen alien entities who travel about in gigantic, terrifying three-legged walking machines.

All very well you say, but what’s the Bucharest connection to The Tripods?

Well, last week, we spent a great couple of days making a batch of very short videos in and around some of Bucharest’s most famous sights for the In Your Pocket channel on You Tube.

To do so, we used a very ordinary HDD video camera, a remote microphone which was tucked discreetly under the collar, and… a tripod.

Now, the consternation that said tripod caused in any number of Bucharest’s churches and museums would have had you believe that The Tripods had been broadcast in Romania the night before, and that much like the orginal Orson Welles staging of War of the Worlds, people had thought it was for real.

At the Stavropoleos Church, the old lady who ferociously guards the entrance looked at the tripod as though the devil himself had walked in. She ran off to find one of the resident nuns, who, falling for our ‘we’re just tourists’ story, agreed to switch on the lights inside the church so that we could film the quite stunning interior.

(We should point out at this stage that there is in general no great problem with filming inside Romanian churches: every wedding, Christening etc. we have ever been to has been filmed from every possible angle. It is simply the tripod that appears to throw people).

At the Old Court Church we were unceremoniously shooed off the premises by the elderly yet fierce-looking caretaker, though not before we had heroically sneaked some footage of inside the church.

At the Village Museum the woman selling tickets said the presence of the tripod meant we must be professionals (when she sees the results she will know that we aren’t), and that we needed to pay a fee if we wanted to film.

Aware by now that we had already lied to a nun, and that eternal damnation therefore probably awaits (although the donation we made to the church should help a little), we decided to play it straight, and said “OK, we’re professionals. How much?”

“You need to go and negotiate,” she replied.

Ah. Negotiate. That wonderful word.

We thought better of it, and went back to plan A. “Actually, we are just tourists,” we said. She amazingly didn’t question us anymore and promptly sold us tickets, the tripod being admitted for free.

Elsewhere around town it is refreshing to report that we had no hassle whatsoever. Even outside the Interior Ministry the men in suits sitting in their cars left us alone. Only one lone policeman objected to our presence, though that was merely to say he didn’t want to be filmed. The only other place we were prevented from filming was at Piata Universitatii, but again, we were simply told to keep off the grass.

So we should count ourselves lucky. Others (including one regular contributor to this blog) looking a bit too professional have had far more hassle than we did last week.

Now, if you will excuse us, we’re off to church to ask for our souls to be saved.

On Saturday we went to Bucharest’s Village Museum, one of those few sights in the capital that we can safely label Essential without looking stupid.

We’ve always liked it, though we have a few reservations (mainly the fact that it presents a somewhat false idyll: most Romanian villages are simply not like this).

Anyway, this weekend the Village Museum was even better than usual, as it was playing host to an arts and crafts fair, this one in honour of the patron saint of Bucharest, St. Dumitru/Dimitrie.

There was dancing from some Macedonian girls and boys (boys not pictured)

There was kitchenware for sale a plenty...

We also – while wandering around – found an old carousel we had never seen before, and which might just make the cover of the next issue of Bucharest In Your Pocket.

A possible cover for BIYP 63

Anyway, we came to the conclusion that the Village Museum should have something like this on every weekend, or at least once a fortnight, if only during the summer months. The place was packed on Saturday; packed with locals and with foreigners, and almost made you think that Bucharest might just have a future as a tourist destination.