Word: victoriei
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Paris of the East. Small wonder it is that the lobbies and bar of Bucharest's famed Athénée Palace swarm night & day with as conniving a group of spies, agents, buyers, diplomats, eavesdropping newsmen as ever inhabited a Grand Hotel. On the twisting Calea Victoriei-less than 20 years ago a thoroughfare distinguished for its dust in summer and its mud in winter-intriguing Frenchmen rub shoulders with scheming Germans, plotting Britons encounter counterplotting Russians...
...lonely, pleasure-bent males, and the Colorado, more elegant and respectable cabaret, keep open nightly until 5:30 a.m. On the less naughty side of Bucharest serious politicians relax at famed Café Capsa. The big, swanky outdoor terrace of the Cercul Militar (Army Club), facing the Calea Victoriei, is filled nightly with resplendently uniformed officers and smartly turned-out women. Caviar, juicy steaks, pastries oozing with whipped cream-all verboten in many a war-nervous area-can be ordered to the tune of a gypsy orchestra. In the shops can be bought everything from U. S.-made toothpaste...
Meanwhile, Bucharest is having such a face-lifting that the city's Polish refugees, fresh from Warsaw, wondered if Nazi bombers had not paid it a visit. The Calea Victoriei is half boarded up as the street's smaller twists are being straightened out. A wide boulevard is being cut through the old Jewish bazaar quarter. The River Dambovitsa, long an open sewer dividing the city, is being covered over by a broad thoroughfare...
...will look like a small Buckingham. To complete the work in record time, night shifts work under floodlights. Throughout the city, as new buildings go up, old ones have come down, but around the Palace whole blocks have been demolished to make a new Royal Square between the Calea Victoriei and Boulevard Bratianu, a quarter of a mile away. Centerpiece of this new square will be the equestrian statue of Rumania's first Hohenzollern King, Carol I. Meanwhile, Carol II is staying at Cotroceni Palace, his late mother's favorite home, on the outskirts of town...