Bucharest, part zwei: Herăstrău, Cotroceni

Analiză pă text:

In the near plane, the reader can readily observe the Herăstrău lake. The name Herăstrău doesn't really have any deep meaning, it's just an alternate spelling for ferăstrău/fierăstrău, which literally means "saw": the Colentina river once hosted sawmills and the Herăstrău lake is part of that stream, and it even has a small reservoir, and that's that. Anyway, the lake covers a pretty large area (about 70 hectares, give or take), so it's well-suited for small boats, while the paths going around it make a good circuit for jogging, cycling and the likes, if only it weren't so damn crowded.

In the far plane, behind the lake and the park, lies the so-called House of the Free Press, ex-Casa Scînteii, home to the printing presses which brought forth the official party newspaper, Scînteia, back in the days of the shoemaker, and the dude before him -- The Spark coming from The Spark House, y'know.

In fact, Romania not only had a Stalin City, it also had a Stalin House (Casa Scînteii) and a Stalin park (the Herăstrău park). Nowadays Stalin park is also named -- actually, it recently got officially renamed King Michael I park, because the guy died recently and the local orcs decided they should name some stuff after him... which has no relation whatsoever with the fact that the park was also at some point named after Carol II The Priapist.

Below, more of the same. Some people were kayaking on the lake that day; and as the reader can see, there are other big buildings surrounding the lake. Point: not only the communists had a mania with building mastodons, mkay?

Further below: really colourey autumn colours. Really, it's been a beautiful sunny autumn all over the country these past few weeks, I for one welcome all this global warming that keeps warming "our" globe.

Above: a cat sitting in a tree, bein' all curious about this guy and his black object pointed at it. Frickin' humans, I tell you. Below, a nice alley and more autumnal excretions.

Speaking of nice colours, take a look at this one (click the photo for a full view):

Above: ducks ducking on the lake. Below: a very modern clock from Bodet, followed by a most likely defunct surveillance installation from Big Brother.

We leave the park, and wandering through the neighbourhood, we notice this:

Analiză pă text is left as an exercise to the reader.

Further down the street, one can find the Cașin monastery (pictured above). The architecture is quite something, if you're into that kind of thing. I don't know where this "cașin" comes from (there's a place with the same name and a river flowing somewhere in the Moldova region), and I bet neither do expert etymologists.

Moving on to other autumnal images, remember the botanical garden? It doesn't look particularly spectacular in the autumn, as they were already preparing the seeds for the winter and the next spring... Except, it does look really nice in places:

Right in the garden section that lies under Cotroceni, I found this small pond with wild ducks swimming about and posing for photos:

The fixed lens did wonders here. Also, here:

That last one is from that very same Japanese garden. Below, the alley of the system; we got the system to fuck the system:

Above, various flowers (mostly rosaceae) bombing my photos. Below, other various flowers:

Aren't these last ones really weird? Anyway, leaving the Botanical Garden, close to the Presidential Residential (not pictured here), one can find the Carol Davila university (pictured below, among wires, streetlights and trees).

Above: houses and places in the Cotroceni neighbourhood. Below: a view of Cotroceni, including the central emergency hospital, some apartment blocks, Casa Radio and many automobiles crowding the town.

Further to the right from the same spot, one can notice, in order, from left to right: the moon, the so-called People's House (nowadays the Palace of the Parliament) and the yet-unfinished Cathedral of the People's Salvation.

Yes, you read that right: the Cathedral of the People's Salvation, that's how they call that huge motherfucker. This church business is still going strong around the place, what. Anyway, that spot was a pretty good one otherwise, so here are a couple more noisy photos taken from it:

This kinda, sorta concludes the photo series started back at the end of July/early August, then broken by two months of silence during September and the first part of October, followed by the torrent of stuff that I'd gathered in the meanwhile. I bet it's not the last series either, but finally, our spyked of the plains has had enough of being a walking being and can finally return to being a thinking and productive one.