Bucharesti 1

Ok I have had already 1.5 days in Bucharesti, as the Romanians say, and most of what I have to share is only about the inside of a very large building and the impeachment of the president.
Arriving into the city is really impressive as there are majestic impressive old buildings everywhere. However once you start looking more closely they are a mixture of buildings that still look active and those that look abandoned. The building that is housing the ramsar meeting I am attending, the COP, is the second largest building in the world, second only to the pentagon. It is the monument to himself built by Caescescu before he got run out of town by the 1989 revolution. It is called the palace of the people but locals say many people will not go Near the place as it represents bad things for them.
Moving around through the building is challenging as each floor is very high from floor to ceiling so to go from one floor to another often requires 4 staircases.
There is no doubt about it, the Romanians were not quite ready for us as they were madly planting beds of marigolds along the entry way all day today.
The building was also being used by the romanian parliament today and It was obvious something was up because there was a huge pack of media camped at the far end of the Hallandale they certainly did not seem to talk about wetlands. Turns out that the president was possibly going to be impeached and they were waiting there to be on hand for the story.
So as the Romanians were managing the opening of the COP next door their president was being impeached.
Heading back to the hotel via the metro with david stroud from the UK, we ran into a crowd of protesters that were happy, we think...If you want to get more info type bbc Romania into google
Photos include the building internals, some very fancy power provision and some of my partners on the STRP doing some very technical Work to cool down our work space.