Yesterday was a day for the rulers. It started out with visiting the People's House in Becharest and touring just 4 of the 200+ halls in the building. The amazing part of it all, was the sheer likeness of the building to Loius XII's Verseille, later used by Louis XIV to rule more completely over his subjects. Each of the halls was vast and decorated with very ornate moldings over every surface, and each contained a liberal amount of crystal and gold plating. The whole building was built with dimensions that are far larger than they need to be, with 16 meter high curtains and rugs that are so large they needed to be installed by placing 6 different pieces together before laying it into the ground. The place is so large that 6 different conferences for international businesses were being held on that same day, closing off many different halls to touring. The People's House was built by Chachesceu as a place to rule and was in fact modeled after Verseilles. During construction, more than 30,000 homes were destroyed to make room for the building and the Soviet appartments that lined the fountained boulevard that leads up to the main driveway. So after visiting that hulking scar of revered hatred by the people, we left the hotel and went of to Peles, (the s with the lemecont is pronounced like sh, so it is like Bucharesht), the mountain palace of Romania's first king Carol I. He was the son of the king of Germany, and had a great reserve of wealth to create his palace in the Carpathian mountains. Peles is a very small and warm house that is fairly large, but not so massive as to seem imposing. It is made primarily made of wood, carved and inlaid by over 10,000 workers almost 40 years to complete this castle from 1883. It was all some very inspiring wood work, and he interior was for the most part designed by Carol I's wife, Maria. That man though, was one creepy guy, he was obsessed with weapons. He had over 4,000 pieces in his weapon collection. He kept most of them just outside his study, so if he didn't use his secret passage, he would wake up, walk through his massive gun and sword collection, possible look at the armored horse and gaurd set, then sit down and start working out the taxes of Romania. I mean, how can a man work like that? His mind drifting off to his favorite musket or the point sword over his mantel. So we left, and headed into a one hour and thirty minute traffic jam for a 100 meter stretch of paving. All of the waiting was particularly frustrating as the other side of cars just kept coming for about twenty minutes before our direction was let through for about two minutes at most. So we finally made it into Brasov (again, Brashov), a fairly large city in the mountains about 80 miles out of Bucharest. We checked into our falsely advertized hotel, that was supposed to be one star better than it is. Which is apparent in walking up the flight of stairs from Bev and Buz's "unacceptable" suite that could have passed as an appartment, into my tiny room with two single beds and a little tiny fan for air conditioning. So we left out for dinner, and were greeted with the same music echoing through the alley as we had heard at the orchestra concert several days before in Bucharest. The square, as it turned out, was full of musicians playing Carl Orff's music for the city. We sat down at a little resteraunt on the edge of the square and listened. After dinner was finished, but before we left, and about 2/3 of the way through the piece, it began to pour. I mean, 30 seconds later, the whole square was fully covered by a river of running water, near the edge of the square (which is more than a block in size) the water was running more than an inch deep. This lasted for about 45 minutes, in which we went inside and ordered desert and met two professors from Colorado University, and then went back to the hotel for the night.
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