That first night I met Pete, we talked about adventures in foreign lands. It was January; shadows danced on the walls of the dark little pub, a ripped packet of crisps littering the table separating us. Outside, snow lay on the ground. Something sparked; searching for a journey, we flirted with the letter T, alliterating an ever-increasing list of distant lands that we might want on a shared horizon. “Turkmenistan,” Pete said. “Tbilisi,” I answered. “Tajikistan,” he returned. Transylvania shifted between us. Gypsies and castles in the air: Transylvania was a land I’d always dreamt of.
He wasn’t yet my boyfriend, but I knew, instantly, that Pete was, as the Polish expression goes, a friend good enough to steal horses with, because I felt I could rely on him completely.
Two seasons passed. Snow melted; blue skies and pink cherry blossom framed those first months, when I found myself, delirious, falling, falling, falling; I didn’t resist. This was Big Love. We held on tight, plotting adventures as we gallivanted through spring, and into mid-summer. August, and suddenly, we had to get practical: book flights, organise hotels. I have to make a confession here: until then, though I’d toyed with the idea of Transylvania, I’d been hazy on where it actually was. I associated it with The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and like Lapland, wasn’t entirely certain that it was a real place.
Vampires filled the cinemas and bookshops around me, so it seemed appropriate to be heading to the land where the Count Dracula legend originates, and one in which bears, wolves and eagles are part of the landscape
Now I can tell you it’s a region in central Romania, north of Bucharest, bordered to the east by the Carpathian Mountains, just three hours’ flight from London. With its wild landscapes and turreted medieval castles, it’s a place filmmakers swoon over: the end of Cold Mountain was filmed in the Piatra Craiuliu Park in southern Transylvania. Vampires filled the cinemas and bookshops around me, so it seemed appropriate to be heading to the land where the Count Dracula legend originates, and one in which bears, wolves and eagles are part of the landscape.
While this had seemed beautifully romantic while it had just been a dream, the reality is that planning a holiday – any holiday – is stressful. I’d imagined a meandering road trip through dusty villages, stumbling upon gypsy weddings, sleeping under the stars… but struggling to get information from a chaotic tourist board, and wrestling with a Romanian train timetable on a website that was, bizarrely, only sometimes available, wasn’t fun. I felt a chill of anxiety: we might be going to Dracula-land, but had we bitten off more than we could chew? Would the reality of Transylvania be less castles in the air, more run-down pensione and bad food? Suddenly, I wished we were going to Tuscany, or the south of France. Predictable, sure, but at least it would’ve been predictably lush. And, given the expectation that already hangs on the first holiday a couple takes together, perhaps I should have played it safe?
Bran Castle
Then someone told me the train from Budapest to Bucharest, crossing Hungary into Romania, followed the old Orient Express route. I’ve a weakness for sleepers, so we flew to Budapest, and because I wanted a taste of luxury before plunging into the unknown, we checked into the high glamour of the Four Seasons for a night. Even if Transylvania disappointed, well, we’d always have Budapest. The following night, we boarded the night train, and our adventure started.
Rattling across eastern Hungary, we crossed into Romania by night, and were deposited the next morning, blinking in the early sunlight, in Alba Iulia, a one-horse town east of Sibiu. Trundling incongruous pull-along suitcases across train tracks lined with wild flowers, we stopped for breakfast at the only café at the bus station. Gypsy music blared from a transistor radio, and a girl with a glossy black ponytail and a wrist full of jangling gold bracelets answered our pleas for espresso by mixing shots of very strong Nescafe. We chased them with shots of plum brandy called tuica, because we were on holiday and so we could, and then the morning dissolved into hot sun, blue sky and that fizzing excitement of foreign ground beneath your feet. The next bus was hours away, so we threw our bags into the back of a taxi and headed to Sibiu.
Vlad the Impaler
A tangle of medieval houses and cobbled streets, Sibiu has an easy European charm. The sun-drenched main square was a dazzle of painted houses, lined with multi-coloured umbrellas where students flirted over Amstel and endless cigarettes. It was August, and heat shimmered off the pavements; we explored the Baroque Catholic church, the Passage of Steps connecting the Upper Town to the Lower Town, and the Bridge of Liars, named for the lies young lovers told each other there. Later we had a drink at Café Orient Express, decked out with gorgeous vintage train paraphernalia, so losing track of time that it was nearly 11pm before we sat down to dinner at Taverna Romaneasca. We ate sarmale, cabbage stuffed with pork, and mamaliga, or polenta, a feature of most dinner menus; I was relieved I wasn’t vegetarian, as meat was on every dish, but dinner and drinks cost little more than £20 for us both.
A road trip had always been part of our plans, so we hired a car the next morning, stopping at Sibiel, a village in the Cindrel Mountains west of Sibiu, that’s famous for its collection of glass icons. Twinkling with translucent colour, the 17th and 18th century icons are like strings of jewels within the dusty little museum; when we emerged, the churchyard was full of old ladies in black, tending the waist-high pink daisies growing amongst the graves. The smell of jasmine was in the air, and a lyrical spell of chanting drifted from inside the church. I felt dreamy, sitting in a tiny bar in the village, watching teenagers riding ponies bare-back down the rocky main street, the bridles decorated with red rosettes for good luck. It was impossible to leave, and because all good road trips are made of unplanned diversions, we abandoned our plans to drive east to Brasov that night, and instead spent the night at a little hotel, Lunca Sibielului, talking quietly evening fell, the marigolds blanketing the garden closing their faces as the sun vanished.
Because Transylvania is inextricably associated with counts, we willingly accepted an invitation to stay at a 16th century manor house belonging to a real life count in Miclosoara, in the foothills of the Carpathians. Crossing that empty landscape was like entering a Mediaeval painting. A quality of magic shimmered all around – in the red dress worn by the girl with gold earrings walking along a busy main road, in the sharp sweetness of blueberries sold by the cupful at the roadside, and at the lake where we disturbed a lone heron, which rose as if in slow motion into the evening light. That night, we slept in a guesthouse in the village, in fairytale wooden carved beds, heavy linen curtains shielding early morning sunlight. Here was romance and here was adventure, just as I had dreamed.
We were both restless for the mountains, so drove north east along the Olt River valley, our journey slowed by the cattle that wandered into the road, and the occasional cart, laden with hay, that made passing the hairpin bends challenging. Even in the mountains it was hot, so we stopped for the afternoon at a volcanic lake, Lacul Sfanta Ana, which sits like a tea cup in the basin of the long extinct Mount Ciomat. On the shore, three children splashed about with a toy boat. The still of the afternoon was disturbed only by the crackle of a campfire, where a family cooked kebabs and flatbreads. That night we sat outside drinking palinca – a twice-distilled plum spirit – at the one little bar, just up from the lake, where kids camped or played table football. I felt dizzy with that meandering ease of a real holiday, when the day, or date, or even time itself, loops away from you into irrelevance. That night we stayed in a cabana near the lake – just a room and a bed, lit by candles. It was the most basic room I’ve ever stayed in; the mountain air smelt sweet and cool, and I know I’ve never felt happier.
I was still dreaming of castles in the air, so as the days slipped away from us, we drove to the 12th century Saxon citadel town of Sighisoara. Climbing the long steps up into the ramparts to the main square overseen by a fairytale clock tower, with faded mediaeval houses tottering above narrow cobbled streets on all sides, I felt a memory of Count Dracula shimmered on every corner. This thrill is real: Count Vlad Dracul, “Vlad the Impaler”, lived here during the 15th century.
We ate in a courtyard restaurant at Hotel Casa Wagner, drinking shots of the coldest vodka, the return of real life galloping up on us as fast as the late night turned to early morning. I remembered, then, our first meeting, in that little dark pub months before, and the road we’d chosen together since then. Nothing about Transylvania disappointed. It had felt like our own discovery, too. It’s still there, a special jewel of memory I pull out sometimes, on a wet Tuesday afternoon in winter, when I want to remember the glitter and promise of romance. Transylvania was just the start. C
Clover Stroud travelled with Romania specialists Exeter International
Clover Stroud is a UK-based writer. After graduating from Oxford where she read English, Clover went to live in America, where she spent 18 months working on a ranch as a cowgirl and riding bucking horses in rodeos