Restored post (originally posted Feb. 17, 2025)
During our recent outage, we lost material, including our latest Have Your Say personal essay — an essay titled Discover and Connect – How Tourism can make a Difference, by Flavia Matei.
We have now restored Flavia’s essay — but the URL is different from the that of the original post.
Flavia was born and raised in Oradea, Romania. Though she is not Jewish, she has had a deep love for Jewish culture since her teenaged years, when she first learned about the Jewish history of Oradea and began immersing herself in books, articles, travels, and conversations to learn more.
She recently completed a Masters Degree in Cultural Heritage and Jewish Studies at Central European University, with a dissertation titled “The Art Nouveau Palaces of Oradea: A Jewish Innovation of Yesterday, a Common Heritage of Today.”
Flavia now works as a travel guide specializing in the Jewish heritage of Oradea and Budapest.
In her personal essay, she describes her strong belief that cultural tourism can be a powerful tool to teach, educate, and transform people’s lives.