Romania - Some culture (Art, Music, Gardens, Buildings, etc.)

We were privileged to experience a great deal in our brief week in Romania and I wanted to communicate some of the high and low lights.

   

For me the highest light was the opening of the season of the Bucharest Symphony at the dazzling Atheneum playing Mahler's 3rd with two choruses; the place (seating 900) is a real jewelbox for something so fine.

 

Second was the Museum of Fine Arts - the European section - with its impressive collection containing El Greco, Tintoretto, Brueghel, Rubens and Rembrandt, not to mention a sizeable collection of impressionists and post-impressionists.  I was not impressed with the Bohemian crystal exhibition advertised above, however.

   

My morning joggies/runnies/limpies were in a lovely park with its inevitable packs of abandoned feral dogs.

 

Unfortunately the architecture is starky, greyly Stalinist for the most part and the Palace of the Parliament,

   

where I had to speak, is Ceauşescu's revenge, the second largest building the the world and a monster.