Day 6 - Wednesday, August 28

Day 6 - Wednesday, August 28 - Bucharest

August 27, 2025

Another early morning. We had to have our luggage outside the room by 7am and then check out of the hotel by 8:30.

We were surprised that there were 3 Russian-speaking couples in front of us on the bus - most Viking customers are from the US with a few from the UK, Australia and New Zealand. One man we spoke with had parents who were at Aushwitz (they survived and lived to 100). He was the manager at a factory with 750 employees at age 22. His wife said she would have to wait in line after school for a little bread and margarine while he had plenty of food as a manager. They all live in the Russian area of Brooklyn.

Adrian, our guide, is 33 years old and has degrees in film production, although guiding is his "day" job.

At the parliament building, our guide gave us information about the modern history of Romania under the communist dictator Ceaucescu. In 1968 he gave a speech in which he indicated that he would be for the people and different from the USSR. This encouraged foreign investment but things quickly went downhill as he became more authoritarian. In the 1980s, he decided to eliminate all foreign debt and in order to do this, all possible production of goods, food and electricity was exported so that people were in a state of dire poverty and hunger. There was a high degree of state security and anyone opposed to the state could be arrested and have a mock trial.

We went to a museum of historic houses that had been moved from all over Romania. It was interesting to see the different styles. The most fascinating was a "stave" Orthodox church - this style is typical of old churches in Norway. Orthodox churches typically have gold domes and are very ornate. There were also half-buried houses that looked like hobbit houses.

The most significant part of our day was a visit to the Revolution Square where the dictatorship ended in December 1989. Ceaucescu had a major speech in an attempt to calm uprisings in other parts of the country but it backfired with people starting to boo his speech. The soldiers started to fire on the crowds and over 1200 people were killed. A man spoke to us who had been there on that day when he was 15 and a leader of youth opposition. His friend next to him was shot and killed, he was injured on his arm. He saved the flag his friend had been carrying and showed us the flag which had the communist insignia cut out. The next day Ceaucescu left from the old parliament building in a helicopter but was captured by the army which had switched sides. Two days later there was a 1 1/2 hour mock trial in which resulted in televised execution of Ceaucescu and his wife. His wife was shot many more times by the firing squad as she was even more hated. When people were starving, she said it was good for people to be fit and thin. The speaker's grandfather had died when sent to a work camp to build the Danube - Black Sea canal and his family became strongly anti-communist. It was exceptionally emotional and many people had tears streaming down.

We had lunch in the old town area with 150 of our closest friends.

It was a 2 1/2 hour drive through the countryside to the Danube. There were large fields of sunflower, corn and wheat although most had been harvested. This was different from the area we flew over when we arrived which had smaller farms around small villages. There were also large solar arrays.

We arrived at the ship around 6. Three ships were docked and we had to cross over two ships to get to ours. We were very surprised when we checked in that the room assigned was not the one we reserved - we had been upgraded to a 2-room suite on the top level!

During the orientation the ship departed and I was surprised when we docked directly on the opposite side of the river less than half an hour later. We are docked in Nikola, Bulgaria, not Ruse, Bulgaria where we were supposed to be! Nobody on the Viking staff said anything about this.