Oradea, Romania

My Lufthansa flight from Munich only took 1.5 hours across Austria and Hungary. I checked into a small apartment near the center of the Old Town right away. What a great introduction to Romania! It's an absolutely beautiful city in the center.

The Hapsberg's built a lot of the buildings in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the Secessionist style, which is known usually as Art Nouveau. And to quote the movie "In Bruges", it's like a fucking fairy tale.

The plazas are newly repaved, the buildings have fresh paint jobs, and the lighting on them at night is astounding. As a bonus, there's really not too many tourists here. I'm noticing lots and lots of local Romanian families out and about. I heard some young Hungarian tourists today. The Hungarian border is a short drive away. I see the occasional tour group, but those are seemingly Romanians.

It's just such a nice treat to not be in a city with hordes of toursists, yet it's everything a European city should be.
I came here for the architecture and it's mind blowing. The city hall here looks as nice as Paris' Hotel Deville.

I spent my day and a half walking all over and taking lots of photos. I went to a couple museums, including the fortress museum on the edge of the center. It was falling apart and ready to be torn down in the 70s but it's been totally rebuilt. The museum had a little bit about every period of Romanian history.

There was even a room with a collection of old calculators and adding machines and computing technology all the way through modern computers. I'm so old that the first computer I ever used, the Mac SE, was prominently displayed.

The highlight was the Darvas-La Roche House, a Secessionist house full of period piece furniture. Wow. Just wow.

I'm trying Romanian food for the first time. My introductory meal was Sarmale (stuffed cabbage rolls). Delicious. Another meal was a chicken dish with a mushroom cream sauce. And I just had to try the tripe soup. Amazing stuff.

More photos and videos are here.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/NDgWJtxcmjjvNAav8

And if you're into Art Nouveau, here's photos from the Darvas La Roche house.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/UYayLS68YiwxSGbs8Weiterlesen