Tour Stop: Oradea

Mihai Viteazul statue -- Oradea


6 April, 2010. Universitatea de Nord din Baia Mare, camera șase, cāminul trei.

Two weeks have passed since I was in Oradea already. My neglect in updating has come not from lack of anything interesting to say or report, but from sheer busyness. As I'll write more about later, I've been to Suceava and Sibiu since my travels to Oradea....

My journey to Oradea involved my first instance of relying upon a bus for travel purposes (the only train to Oradea from Baia Mare would have dropped my off in Oradea at 5am, or something like that). Although almost all Romanians I've talked to say that traveling by bus is "better" than traveling by train, I've become accustomed to the trains here, and feel more comfortable/trusting of their schedules. Traveling by train is much slower than one might expect (the infrastructure of Romanian railways is lacking, I'm afraid), but I can conveniently check schedules online and buy my tickets ahead of time at the CFR agent across the street from my accommodation in Baia Mare.  All this to say that I was a little hesitant to take a bus to Oradea, as my only other experiences with buses in Romania involved a long/uncomfortable ride on a minibus from Budapest two years ago to Baia Mare, and a bus that never materialized (thus I ended up taking the train anyway). My journey to Oradea also involved a minibus, but I had a better seat, and the early hour (departing at 6am) meant that I was able to sleep for a good portion of the (bumpy) drive.

Upon arriving in Oradea, I was met by Professor Lia Hantui and a colleague from the Faculty of Letters at the University of Oradea.  After a short tour of the university campus, I spoke to a good-sized crowd of undergraduate students and some faculty. Professor Hantui and a colleague then took me out for a fine lunch (at an awkwardly decorated restaurant, which we all had a laugh at), and later introduced me to two graduate students who took me on a nice walking tour of Oradea.  Perhaps because of its location in northwestern Romania, closer to Hungary and Austria (particularly during the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Oradea is architecturally rather different from other cities I've visited in Maramures and Transylvania (although I've since visited Satu Mare, briefly, and could detect some subtle similarities to Oradea -- again, the Hungarian influence, perhaps). My walking tour was very pleasant and helped to familiarize me a bit with the city (which I was rather impressed with).  I'm grateful to Professor Hantui and her colleagues and students for showing me such warm hospitality.

The following day I met Professor Liviu Cotrau from Universitatea Creştină Partium, a relatively new private university funded by the Hungarian government. Although Professor Cotrau apologized ahead of time that he feared "not many" students would attend my lecture (as it is a small university), there appeared to be more students at this talk than at any other talk I've given on this tour.  Even better, these students were not shy and had several questions for me after I finished (I've discovered that Romanian students in general are rather shy to speak-up with questions or comments, for whatever reasons). Perhaps this is a not-so-subtle difference between students at a private university, versus those at public institutions, or perhaps the culture of education at this institution is just different (for cultural/linguistic reasons, perhaps). Whatever the reasons, I was very impressed with the my audience and hosts at Universitatea Creştină Partium.

With some time remaining before my departing train to Baia Mare (see, I'm more comfortable with the trains!) I walked around Oradea by myself, snapping some more photos (as part of my tour the previous day was in dark/evening conditions).