Soulmate & Shadow –Entering Oradea (Lost Lands #171)

I have longed for and dreaded this moment ever since I began to research western Romania as part of my itinerary for the lost lands beyond Hungary’s borders. I am finally closing in on Oradea (Nagyvarad), a city that in my opinion is the most beautiful in Europe. From the moment my itinerary began plotting its way northward from Timisoara, I had Oradea fixed firmly in my sight. No matter what detour I took, Oradea loomed large just over the horizon. I find the idea of it comforting and intimidating. Comforting because Oradea’s city center proves just how beautiful the world can be. Intimidating because the city deserves more than a day or even a week. A lifetime could be spent studying the city’s architecture, cultural, and historical wonders. I know to start my explorations of Oradea in the city center. I also know that they may never end.?

Pure Elation – Manic Depression

I fell in love with Oradea on my first visit to the city. It was a December day six years ago when I first set foot there. I had no idea what to expect. The sky was blue, the air crisp, and the sunshine shielded me from the cold. I had read that Oradea had once been called Little Paris because of its cosmopolitan elegance. That had been prior to the Second World War which put an end to any designs Oradea might have had on greater glories to come. By the time I arrived in the city, the look and feel of fin de siècle was alive, but not well. Oradea was still smarting from the communist era. Many of the buildings from the Austro-Hungarian era and earlier times were dressed partially in rags. Grime was clear and present. Indifference and willful neglect made visible. Restoration efforts were ongoing and still had a long way to go before Oradea’s architectural wonders would recover their original splendor.

At first sight Oradea astonished and frightened me. On some streets I would look at the buildings and see a supermodel. On others, I would see a harlot that only covered half her face in makeup. There was a bipolarity to the city that spoke to its schizoid 20th century history. One minute I saw architecture that represented pure elation, the next minute I saw manic depression. The condition of Oradea’s architectural wonders was romantic and lecherous, sensual and depraved. I found those external contradictions seductive in the extreme. I knew right then that Oradea would always be for me. A soulmate and shadow. The history of Romania, Hungary, and Eastern Europe was written all over the facades of buildings. The exuberant eclecticism of Austria-Hungary. The cracked facades and busted plaster of communist disdain. Somewhere caught between the two was interwar Romania, stranded Hungarians forever referring to the city as Nagyvarad, and the city’s Jewish population which had no knowledge that most of them were to perish in the Holocaust.

In & Out of Love - Rituals of Romance

The city reminded me of all the first times I fell in love and all the times I subsequently fell out of love. Oradea was breaking up and getting back together all in one day. It was the loves of my life, and the fallout that followed from yet another bad breakup. There were caresses and animal instincts. Love without sex and sex without love. Oradea was a passion project write large in and around the city center. To find my way there, I first had to puck through detritus of communist era apartment blocks that had plenty of personality, all of which was bad. The historic city center was surrounded by an eyeful of Ceausescu era architectural atrocities. A style that somehow made concrete look ramshackle. I guess the idea was to put the most beautiful parts of the city at siege. If so, these substandard abominations had failed. They were not quite big or brutalist enough to intimidate the city center into submission. Instead, they were the essence of mediocrity. Less malevolent and more milquetoast. Ceausescu and his cronies prostituted the outer part of Oradea to debauched designs. ?The style was symbolic of the worst kind of defeatism, one that only defeated itself.

The apartment blocks were meant to get in the way of the city center. As soon as I was a block away from them, they vanished from my memory. So much for another failed attempt at a brave new world. After picking my way through the residue of Ceausescu’s Romania, I stumbled into Oradea’s city center and have never been the same again. Here was what I had spent my whole life looking for. A miracle that recreated reality. Fantasy non-fiction written on the facade of the Oradea State Theater. Eclecticism writ large on an urban landscape courtesy of Fellner and Helmer, the famous Viennese architectural duo that together built forty magnificent theaters across Austria-Hungary. Sometimes you need just one. The theater was the start of an unexpected entry to an open-air architectural museum at Ferdinand Square and extends in all directions into the surrounding streets and squares. I have never been one for beauty pageants, but Oradea has a case for the world’s greatest. Its architecture makes an appearance every day.

Delight & Decadence – Soul of a City

The city center of Oradea mesmerized me. I walked about it dazed and bemused by the scale of architectural treasures on display. Surely this was some sort of sublime joke. A festive feeling pervaded the place. Walking around the city center I could not help but feel better about life. Oradea was a city suffused with imagination and inspiration. Even its downside was a fascinating study in contrast. Delight and decadence combined to form the pulsing soul of this city. I knew that I could never come back from this. Oradea changed my idea of what a city could be. Several years later, I returned and found the city more fantastical than before. Oradea is the only place I have ever seen the best get better. And so now I am on the verge of returning to a magical place I have never left.