Breathing in La Belle Epoque - Oradea by night

You know those revelations you get about a city in your country, that you've passed around multiple times, but you never took the time to visit?

You don't...? Then that's just one stupid guy over here eh? Me!

We got to the hotel pretty late in the afternoon. This damn Ramada Hotel is not really in a "walking distance" to the centre but it is going to compensate later through the wine spa and the top floor jacuzzis they've got. Otherwise, they've got a good restaurant, looks fancy, probably serves fancy steak (looked like it in the menus) but I didn't order that the night we ate there.

We hit the room, changed our clothes, put the walking sneakers on and went out. There was that rush we had in us like when you want to check out and debunk things you see on TV. The thing is that last winter and this spring there was so much air time dedicated to Oradea that we just had to go and take it step by step... slowly so we get as much as possible of its beat.

Finding plenty of parking space in the centre was great. You know the hassle of having to look for a parking spot, dead city centre in a totally new place. Sometimes you get to feel like that old lady, driving some car from the 70's, ruining it for everybody while she's doing 30 on the second lane. It wasn't the case in Oradea because this city really looks ok to me from the parking places point of view. It's either that or the fact that I'm a Southern guy that really sees every inch of the sides of the road as possible parking places. That's just how it is down here in the South. You steal-park.

Of course, they do have SMS parking fees and that's just great. I just hope I'll remember, 10 years from now, just as I would remember a bad dream, the ladies coming to your car to take the money for the parking. That was the fashion in a lot of parts in Romania until 4-5 years ago when the SMS miracle started to happen in the bigger cities. But still, a good chunk of the money incoming from parking is cash, given to the lady that either stays in her booth and you go to her or, she's walking in the parking and picks up the money. I swear to God that the second ones, the ones that do not operate some barriers, I always try to bypass in a stupid internal game I have with myself. It's like staying low, under the radar, avoiding the enemy while being on his turf type of game.

I guess that I've parked somewhere around the old centre. Pretty dark alley, being surrounded by old buildings and some communist ones. We went on the walking zone and we started our journey through Oradea with a shaorma place and dark places. Not the best way to start the visit in this advertised city but we kept pushing on. Already we could see the buildings that we've heard so much about, especially because the ones that were redone were also given some incredible lights, reflecting during the night the colour the buildings have.

I don't know how many of you know that, but Oradea is the clear capital of Art Nouveau buildings in the country and among the cities with the biggest density of this architecture art.

This art expression, the Art Nouveau, was, as its name is stating, the alternative art to the expressions it took up to the end of the 19th Century. It's part of the "La Belle Epoque" culture period and it came as a response to the real fact that art was getting farther and farther away from what the architecture of nature was. So, Art Nouveau came and proposed the idea that architecture (and usually visual arts) should get a new dimension that is closer to what nature intends when it's constructing things. This meant more curves, more framing inside the golden ratio when speaking about the way the decorations were made. When thinking about structure, Art Nouveau manifested (also in Oradea) through buildings that served multiple purposes, in its beginnings. Space was well balanced and rooms inside the buildings were designed from the beginning to not lose too much space but keep its proportions pleasing to the eye and to the sense of space that humans need.

You can find in Oradea plenty of buildings in the Art Nouveau style, that have been repaired. You can find even more that are still waiting for their owners to give the green light to mayorship to start finding solutions to repair them if they don't have the money. The Mayor has done incredible things when it comes to pushing private owners to accept the help of the mayorship for this, in exchange for different, economical solutions that keeps the property and the ownership intact.

The photos I'm sharing here are inserted in chronological order so in the case that you will park the car exactly where I've parked it, you will get the same trip and you will meet the same buildings I did in this walk. This is how I discovered the beauty of restored Oradea (or at least part of it) and this is how I started feeling that beat of the city, the one I'm not yet entitled to say that I know but I think I tasted it. It is different from other major cities of Romania that I've presented in the past here, on Steemit. For example, it's different from Brașov's, that's for sure, but that doesn't mean that the groove of Oradea is lower in quality. It's just different and it's a little more bohemian, a little bit more Western Europe in terms of looks and buildings. And the fact that I didn't get to catch the crowds of tourists, like in other more tourist-frenzy places from Romania, made me feel the pulse of the city, of its walls and of its inhabitants. At least during that night, having a coffee close to its centre, under some incredible chandeliers and cupolas, I relived the same feeling of "dolce far niente in a big city" that I had during my student years when I discovered the Macca-Villacrosse passageway.

After passing the State Theatre we hit jackpot. The Town Hall was rising on our right while on the other side of the piazzeta that was unveiling in front of us, the famous "Black Eagle" building was sharing its warm lights upon the people having a drink at one of the terraces. Oradea was "naked" in front of my camera, like a damsel that was sleeping, but now, after hard years of Communism, was resurrecting more beautiful and awesome than ever.

IN CRE DI BLE buildings!

...and I'm not saying that only because it's about some city in my country. No! The buildings looked to me like they were built out of gingerbread. So freshly painted, the details were so crisp that it felt like Hansel and Gretl are getting roasted inside by some old witch. And the decorations are, in their majority, full of traditional motifs. That's the cherry on top of the cake, those small details that make this city authentic and gives weight to everything you see, hear, taste and smell.

The lights that have been implemented now, during the last restoration of these buildings, is that touch of modern that really helps during the night, creating patterns with the shadows casting on the niches and other decoration elements sticking out of the facades. I guess that at the beginning of the XXth Century they were not lighting the buildings so this is a new touch on the Art Nouveau buildings here, a touch that manages to emphasize the might of the original architects.

The square that opens right as you cross the bridge of the river "Crișul Repede" is not small at all. It creates that historical sensations you get in the big cities of Europe, where the central square has been inherited since the 16th-17th Century. And you can see that. All the buildings surrounding this square have survived the Communist Regime and are old but in great shape. These are that kind of buildings that you can touch and really get connected to the past because they have been there for some time and have seen some real shit going on.

This building, "the Black Eagle", it was some kind of mall when it was built, around 1910. It contained a casino, a restaurant, offices and a hotel set in 3 different wings, which are visible today. And apart from its emblematic stained glass (depicting a black eagle, of course), the galleries inside, with its incredible glass cupola, are an architectural piece of art.

It seems that the centre of Oradea is a good place to go check for stained glass paintings. That's because they also have another two churches, a few hundred meters away from the "Black Eagle" building, with some remarkable stained glass paintings (and I'm not a religious sort, by any means) which popped up in my photographic frame like neon lights on the highway in Nevada.

I didn't have the time to go on into the history of the place, I'm sorry about that. By day I spent all my time seeing the citadel and roaming outside of the city.

Oradea seems like the place we've barely discovered (as Romanians who start to be aware of themselves) and we are "unearthing" the sweet past that gives us roots and reasons. It's nice to roam around here, now, when everything starts to be "put into the light". We only need a highway to connect the city to the centre of the country, while the city's cultural core continues to grow and thrive. This city seems to have the power to place the crown on top of what means to be a part of the real Transylvania, a place ready to welcome its visitors with quality services and a tale to tell.

  Posted also on my blog www.ddma.ro, a place on the world wide web where I'm trying to promote Steemit, my writings and my country. In that order. I post through the @steempress-io plugin and I make my life easier (writing and formatting in Wordpress is much easier than on steemit.com or busy.org)