My friends have decamped – with baby, no less – to a friend’s house so we can crash at theirs and save on accommodation for the week that we’re here.
Mr Host arrived in the morning to show us how the coffee machine worked (answer: gloriously) and then take us for a stroll around the city.
Oradea is a strange mix of run-down and shiny baroque and art nouveau buildings in various states of repair, remnants of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which the mayor is on a mission to fix. As a result, there’s something being restored or dug up pretty much anywhere you look. It’s unsettling at first – as if they still haven’t actually finished building the city – until you realise just how much has been accomplished already and that the locals are perfectly happy to tolerate the disturbance – apart from some unfathomable wanton aboricide which saw a significant number of plane trees “disappear”. For some reason or other.
The centre of the city is incredibly pedestrian-friendly and will become more so, to the point that cars will, for the most part, actually pre-emptively and voluntarily stop for pedestrians on pedestrian crossings – even the Audi drivers! Longer journeys are served by trams and buses, which we have yet to try.
There are a lot of churches. Quite why 201,000 people need so many churches is beyond me, but ours is not to reason why.
Today’s tour was whistle-stop. The weather was just right – slightly overcast, with a little breeze, but warm enough for shorts – which gave us sufficient excuses for sitting on a terrace overlooking the Piata Unirii with a succession of bottles of nice cold Nenea Iancu.
There are some nice squares – mostly surrounded by churches – but the most impressive is the Piața Unirii which was recently turned into a large esplanade and boasts the stunning Palatul Vulturul Negru, or Black Eagle Palace, a large covered shopping arcade dating from the early 1900s with cathedral-like glass corridors that meet under a splendid cupola, and stunning stained-glass representations of the black eagle that take you by surprise.
On the same square is the Biserica cu Lună, the orthodox cathedral, which was built at the end of the 18th century – of course, with involvement from a Hungarian architect. We didn’t get to go inside, which is apparently our loss as it’s stunning, but we did look at the tower which sports a black and gold moon-phase complication with a mechanism the same age as me.
In the evening I got to see some more of the city by night, when it appears to really come alive with people and music everywhere. This discovery was aided by consumption of a pint of Guinness and a bottle of cider, for extra class.
