Ceaucescu walking tour

I've spent most the day with a friendly Australian guy called Dave doing a walking of the city highlighting the best and worst of what Bucharest has to offer, and to see the giant mark that Ceausescu put on it. Most of the city is in a bad state of disrepair but the biggest tragedy is what the hated dictator forced upon it. Old churches that escaped the bulldozers during the construction of thousands of high rise concrete tower blocks lie nestled in betweenm somehow lost amongst all the concrete, but many historical buildings amd monuments were simply destroyed. We stumbled across a small but impressive church that wasn't part of our tour that used to be situated under the tower block next to it, it was forcibly shifted 200 metres to allow for the construction of the tower block.
Next on our route was the Palace of the People, it's old pre '89 name but still used by the locals, or the Parliament Palace to use it's contemporary name. It's hard to describe the sheer size of this building but suffice to say it's the biggest building in mainland Europe and the 2nd biggest building in the whole world behind the Pentagon. Biggest tragedy is the 20,000 families that were forcibly evicted from their homes along with many churches and synagogues which were demolished in order to create the room needed for it's construction.
It's been a good day but very tiring, we must've walked 4 miles in 32c+ heat. I love doing walking tours independently, I emphasise the word independently, the day you find me following a guide on a tour who's holding up an umbrella or a flag on a stick is the day to take me quietly to one side and tell me to give up this travelling lark!