Oradea, RO

What can one do on a Saturday afternoon? We know, we know! One should take a trip to Oradea! And that’s what we did this weekend. You know, we always dream about city breaks, about a few days in a beautiful far far away city.. and then we get disappointed because the plane tickets are expensive, or the accommodation is, or the full city break is, but what if we think smaller and start looking around us and notice the beautiful cities Romania has (I’m talking about our fellow Romanian readers here). And these cities are hours away from us and it’s quite cheap to travel from a city to another one, especially nowadays when you can fly from Cluj to Iasi or from Timisoara to Bucharest in one hour and super super cheap. So based on those facts, we ended up in Oradea this Saturday having an amazing time with our friends. We actually remained breathless by its beautiful architecture, its quiet streets and not-so-quiet town square, where there was some kind of a protest and a wedding gathering at the same time! But, being architecture students and in search of inspiration, we have to say there are tons of valuable buildings on every corner of Oradea’s old city centre. Literally every single corner surprises you with Secession, Art Nouveau or Eclectic architecture masterpieces which one can rarely see in Romania. Some of the buildings are in amazing shape, recently restored, such as the well-known “Vulturul Negru”, but unfortunately some of them are in a bad shape, or going to be in one if they will not be taken care of soon. But, stay calm, we have faith that in a few years from now, all the buildings from Oradea’s city centre will look as good as they should. And now, enjoy!