This week’s dream: unspoilt Transylvania
A bucolic corner of Europe “cradled in the elbow” of the Carpathian Mountains, Transylvania is a “semimythical” place where rural life has been “preserved in aspic” by the vicissitudes of its modern history, says Andrew Eames in The Daily Telegraph. Long part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it was handed to Romania after the First World War, beginning that country’s so-called “Great Unification”. Two large ethnic communities – Hungarians and German-speaking Saxons – were trapped behind the new border. Following communist persecution, many fled to the West in the 1990s, leaving behind swathes of empty houses. Now foreigners are picking up the slack, attracted by the region’s “pristine” state.
Half of Europe’s brown bears live in the forests here, and you’ll see as many horse-drawn carts as cars in the villages. Chemical fertilisers and sprays have never been used, so wildflowers are abundant in the meadows. The old houses are beautiful, with pastel-painted gables decorated with scrollwork flourishes, and large courtyards where family life unfolds. Among the Britons involved in their conservation are Prince Charles (who has a guest house in the village of Zalanpatak, and visits every year) and Jessica Douglas-Home, founder of The Mihai Eminescu Trust, which has restored some as holiday lets that are “almost Amish in simplicity”.
The region is home to 150-odd fortified churches, and the “handsome” old towns of Sibiu and Sighisoara, where Vlad Dracula was born. But the main reward for visitors is just being here – walking in valleys quilted with vegetable patches and orchards, and savouring the wonderfully fresh and “unflinchingly traditional” food and drink, with specialities including numerous cheeses, homemade jams, potato bread, polenta, venison, smoked sausages and pálinka, a wildly invigorating plum brandy. Visit zalan. transylvaniancastle.com and experienceromania.eu