Timisoara
It’s colorful in Romania’s third largest city, in the cityscape and in the togetherness. Many of the facades in the old town have been extensively restored and painted mint green, light blue or dark red. In the streets you will hear very different languages, in addition to Romanians, many Germans, Hungarians, Serbs, Roma, Czechs, Slovaks and Bulgarians have lived in Timișoara for centuries, a legacy of the imperial and royal era. The city is also known by its German name Temeswar.
Cultural diversity is cultivated, the Romanian National Theater has a venue in the opera house, as does the German State Theater Timisoara and the Hungarian State Theater “Csiky Gergely”https://www.sueddeutsche.de/reise/.”Timișoara is significantly more European than the village, where I grew up because it’s much better at dealing with diversity, multilingualism and the juxtaposition of ideas,” says Mayor Dominic Fritz, and the village he’s talking about isn’t somewhere in Romania, it’s in the Black Forest: the Germans caught the multicultural atmosphere of the city during a voluntary service, since 2020 he has been a member of the town hall.
The university town with more than 300,000 inhabitants is the economic and cultural center of the Banat region in western Romania. Herta Müller, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, grew up in a small village there and went to the German Lyceum in Timisoara. It is 550 kilometers to Vienna, 300 kilometers to Budapest, 150 kilometers to Belgrade. At the end of 1989, the revolution against dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu began in the city. The demonstrations were initially bloodily suppressed by the army and the Securitate secret police. More than 150 people died, but the protesters continued to take to the streets: On December 20, 1989, Timișoara was proclaimed the first city in Romania to be liberated from communism on Opera Square – today it is called Victory Square.
The most important sights Three large squares characterize the old town: the elongated Victory Square with the opera on one narrow side and the Romanian Orthodox Cathedral on the other, Union Square with the Roman Catholic cathedral, baroque palaces and a geometrically laid out green area in the middle and Freedom Square with its circular cobblestone pattern on which the revolution began.
The Bega Canal flows along the edge of the old town and can be explored either by water bus or along the banks on cycle paths. On the other side of the canal stretches the so-called factory town, where craftsmen first settled in the 18th century and later the first factories were founded. Many crumbling houses have been restored there in recent years. The historic suburb is also the focus of a multimedia theater project by the German State Theater in Timisoara. The play is conveyed through an app developed in collaboration with the city’s polytechnic.
The Capital of Culture program “Let your light shine – brighten up your city” is the motto of the Capital of Culture year, very appropriate for a city that was the first in Europe to introduce electric street lighting. Hundreds of events are planned, many in the open air or in unusual places, such as in former factory buildings, in an airport or on a ship. Exhibitions are dedicated to the sculptor Constantin Brâncuși and the surrealist painter Victor Brauner, and the project “Paths of the Revolution” commemorates the uprising of 1989. (timisoara2023.eu)
Veszprem
Veszprém extends over several hills, the rock walls rise almost vertically over the old town.
(Photo: Bernadett Pogácsás-Simon/Alamy Stock Photos/mauritius images)
Not just a city, but an entire region is culturally staged in Hungary for a year: Veszprém in the west of the country successfully applied for the title of Capital of Culture together with the Balaton region. It is only around ten kilometers from the city of 60,000 inhabitants to the northern shore of Lake Balaton. The largest inland lake in Central Europe is a typical summer holiday destination for sunbathing and splashing around, but now they want to show an international audience that the region has more to offer, with a program that should be characterized by cosmopolitanism and a European spirit – as is done in Hungary in the Prime Minister Viktor Orbán should be interesting to watch.
The hilly northern shore of the lake in particular is scenically attractive, white wine and sparkling wine are produced here. The Balaton Upland National Park protects still undeveloped shore sections, the swampy areas of Little Balaton and the rocky cones of extinct volcanoes.
Veszprém is also situated on several hills. The city is one of the oldest places in the country. Gisela, the Hungarian queen with Bavarian roots, is said to have donated the cathedral around the year 1000. Her husband, King and founder of the empire, Stephen I, pushed ahead, often violently, with Christianization in Hungary.
The most important sights The castle hill rises above the old town, a 50 meter high and 500 meter long rock, some of which breaks off vertically. The view over the city and countryside is correspondingly good. At the top you will not find a typical castle, but a small district around the cathedral and the bishop’s palace, accessible only through a single gate. You can get even higher via the spiral staircase inside the former fire tower, formerly the watchtower of the castle and one of the city’s landmarks. You can take a nice walk at the foot of the castle hill along the river Séd.
The Capital of Culture program “Culture creates region” is the motto of the program, which can be called up via the “VEB 2023” app, among other things. The Gisela Days, an art and culture festival, take place from May 1st to 7th. A dance, film, operetta and street music festival are also planned. Many events are not only planned in the city, but also in the surrounding area, with the aim of establishing new, also unusual, event locations beyond the Capital of Culture year, for example the site of a former lignite power plant. (veszprembalaton2023.hu/en)