Oradea, Day 1.

Blech, legs a bit sore from 3 days of fighting the wind, decided to take a rest day (yeah, and you know that the fact that I'm making up the excuse means I didn't even believe it myself, but hey, subsumption rule #3: "there's no need to hurry" sort of applies, even if I am at least 2 weeks behind schedule and I'm racing the winter weather, by now).

There's not all that much to see or do in Oradea except see their Cathedral. I'd never been inside an Orthodox church before. They are very pretty, with a large, square-shaped central nave, walls all painted in bright reds, blue, and gold, and no places to sit. At the center of the vault under the dome hangs a chandelier, not very high off the ground, so perhaps it is actually a censer, I do not know. But it was very beautiful (see pics).

Otherwise, I rested and pretty much watched TV all day (this TV was satellite connected so I got several channels in German plus English films with Romanian subtitles, not to mention, can you believe this? "Rebelde", a well-known--and very addictive--Mexican "telenovela" series, so it was a dream!). And yeah, for those who read that statement with disdain let me remind you I'm no couch potato so I deserved it, won this day of TV lazy buming fair and square. Look at the kilometer count above.

What else? Looked at some shops. They had this very strange department store, it was very run down and unkempt. The floors were falling apart (i.e. cracked) and dirty, not shiny marble like they should be, selling old polyester low-quality clothing, lots of different vendors with things arranged helter skelter and without organization in a huge ugly, fluorescent-lighted building. It reminded me of the poorer towns in Mexico of 20 years ago. These guys are pretty scrod, I think.

Apparetly, the devastating effects of communism are a lot worse (i.e. they last longer, for one) than I thought....