Romania - Transylvania

Bistriţa street art-Marg

Leaving the beautiful Bucovina region, we headed south, stopping to visit the lovely little town of Bistriţa on the way. 

It had some interesting street art as well as lovely architecture.

We drove onwards through Târgu Mureș, where we saw a lot of gypsy people in colourful outfits, grand architecture and a lovely town square. 

Târgu Mureș gypsies

Then lots more lovely towns and villages with a great range of attractive houses and churches.

We turned off the main road and came upon a railway crossing with the barriers down. 

While waiting, we were approached by two little girls who were begging. 

Blajel-Wilma, Leigh & flag

They were very persistent and continuously knocked on the side of the van until Marg gave them her best ‘teacher glare’ along with glares from Leigh! 

They gradually moved away, but it took ten uncomfortable minutes.

There is organised begging here and while we have also seen poverty, we decided that we would not succumb to beggars.

We reached our next camp site in the tiny village of Blajel run by a delightful woman called Wilma, and her husband.

We found this Dutch run camp to be very attractive, clean and a pleasant place to stop.

Wilma’s hospitality was great. After a ‘welcome’ drink we got settled, then Wilma knocked on our door to show us two flags.

It turns out that she displays the country flags of her guests.

Medias tower-Leigh

She did not have a New Zealand flag so gave us the choice of an Australian one or a rainbow (peace) one to put up. 

Of course you can guess which one we chose!

Leaving Blajel, we visited the nearby town of Medias which has a delightful medieval centre with part of its original wall and towers still intact. 

There were lots of very attractive renovated buildings and it had a very relaxed feel about it, which we enjoyed.

After what turned out to be a mediocre lunch in the lovely town square, we headed off.

Our next series of stops was at several ancient and small Saxon villages, each having a fortified Saxon church.

Nemșa colourful houses

The first village was Nemșa with its very colourful houses. The next was the tiny ancient village of Moșna.

At both of these wee places, there were more horses and carts than motorised traffic.

Moving on, we stopped at another fortified church, this time in Biertan.

Nemșa horses & carts

It is on the tourist trail but we were disappointed because it was expensive to get in, and we were not able to see it all as it was being renovated.

A fairly short trip from there took us into Sighișoara and our next camp ground. 

Sighișoara Cathedral

We pulled up at the gate and were a little daunted to see it pretty full of German vans with only one small spot left!

However, an Austrian couple who had just arrived offered to move their tiny van into the small space to leave us the bigger one. 

What lovely people. 

The next day everyone else left and we were alone until two huge 4xwheel drive vehicles arrived with some Dutch and German travellers.

It was a very short walk from camp into the town and what a delightful place it was!

Sighișoara is a medieval town from the 15th century with a citadel, towers, narrow passageways and cobbled streets, burgher houses and ornate churches and beautiful cathedrals.

It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is also the birthplace of Vlad Dracula, nicknamed Vlad the Impaler, ruler of this area in the 15th century. 

More on Vlad later…..

Sighișoara old town-Leigh

We loved the gorgeous houses and shops of so many different shapes and colours built along the winding streets and up the steep hill. 

It had a citadel right on top of the hill with many towers still intact.

We stopped for a delicious frappe to refresh ourselves at a cute little café in the side of the hill.

Then we walked up the steep cobbled streets to visit the ancient church at the top, and came back down the long wooden ‘Students Steps’ to the Piaţa Cerâtţi (Central Square) by the ornate clock tower. 

We really enjoyed Sighișoara.

Moving on, we side-tracked along a narrow and potholed road to Viscri to see its small Saxon village and its amazing fortified church.

We thought that the Viscri church was amazing and almost decided not to do any more fortified churches.

After all, see-one-seen-all we flippantly thought.

Sighișoara Evangelic Church-Marg

But not so (and we really knew this saying is not true because in all of our travels, we have not seen any two churches, citadels, villages etc alike).

So we drove on to Prejmer which has the biggest fortified church in South-eastern Europe.

Viscri Fortified Saxon Church

What an amazing find.

We thought it was quite spectacular and really enjoyed seeing it.

It was built by Teutonic knights in 1212-1213. 

In its day, each family in Prejmer village had a designated room within the fortification, which was used for shelter in case of attack. 

Prejmer Fortified Church-Marg

There were 272 rooms, stacked over four stories and linked by tiny wooden staircases.

The thought of living in one of those tiny dark rooms was not pleasant, but when the arrows were flying around, it sure would have felt safe.

Prejmer church courtyard houses

We drove from there to the lovely town of Braşov.

There we were able to enjoy its amazing gothic, baroque and renaissance architecture.

Then it was on to the wee village of Bran. 

In Bran, we aimed to visit Bran Castle aka Dracula’s castle.

Bran-Camping Vampire

The Castle has been made famous by the myth created around Bram Stocker’s characterisation of Dracula – the same Vlad Dracula that we came across in Sighișoara.

“THE” Dracula of Transylvania!

We found a camping place aptly called “Vampire Camping”! 

It was a great spot just one kilometre down the road from Bran Castle.

Bran-Dracula Castle

We walked to the castle, which is perched high on a 200 foot tall rock, and had a wonderful time exploring. 

It is made up of many passageways, narrow winding stairs, small rooms and turrets. 

These housed collections of furniture, weapons and armour dating from the 14th to the 19th centuries.

Roadside berry sellers

We had been told it would be very busy, but we must have timed it right as it wasn’t too bad and we didn’t feel too rushed or crowded as we worked out way through the many rooms.

It was one of the best castles we have seen.

From Bran we drove south back to Bucharest to get Vanni’s skylight replaced after the storm damage on our first visit there.

Sibiu wall & tower

Initially, the drive was through lovely hills and forest, and every 50 metres or so there were people on the side of the road selling colourful berries from either the boots of their cars or they had little stalls usually with an umbrella.

Then it gradually became more industrialised as we came closer to the big city.

Sibiu architecture

We headed for the same camp that we used on our first stop in Bucharest, so found it easily. 

The next morning we delivered Vanni to RomCaravans to be fixed and spent the night at a local hotel.

The following day, we picked up Vanni, with her new skylight (great job RomCaravans), and headed back to our camp for the night, ready to move on the next day.

Sălişte village

Heading north-west now, we stopped at the old city of Sibiu. 

It still has part of its fortified wall intact as well as several imposing towers.

The town has a very old lower quarter and an upper one which is not quite so old. 

Snow near Sibiu

The old part was made up of narrow, winding, cobbled streets and many smaller houses, often joined together to make a wall of houses.

The new part had some of the same but also a lot more grand and large buildings. We thought it was a pleasant town.

We found our way back to Vanni and drove on to find our nominated camp site for the night.

Vale village 

When we got there it was decrepit and looked as though it had been closed for years! Not good!

Plan ‘B’ – head to the next camp on the list. This was in the village of Sălişte, supposedly about 40 minutes away. Then we made a wrong turn and found ourselves on a brand new motorway – woo hoo – a very quick 130 km p hr drive, we thought.

Shepherd villages

Then we realised that there were no signs for Sălişte and very few exits so we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to get off the motorway before we reached the Hungarian border! 

Luckily for us, they haven’t built it past Sălişte so we were ok.

A quick 30 minutes later, and we were driving down small winding streets, following the “pension and camping” signs. 

Transalpine road

Finally, we reached a set of big gates and were warmly welcomed into a lovely little camping spot by the owner, Iulian. His welcome included a glass of the local blueberry drink (some alcohol), and the local Pálinka (lots of alcohol). 

We eventually staggered back to Vanni - it could be said that after the Pálinka, preparing dinner that night was easy!

The next day was lovely and sunny; perfect for the necessary washing, and a walk around the pretty little village.

It is definitely getting into autumn here as the nights are much cooler and we saw the first snow on the mountains. 

We thought it was very pretty but are worried that it is now getting well into autumn and we are going further north toward the cold….. brrr!

After a few days, we moved on and drove through several ancient and small shepherd villages that Iulian recommended we visit.

The first was the tiny little village of Vale where we walked up through the cobbled narrow street to meet a man and his horse and cart coming down. Everyone was so friendly and said hello or waved to us.

The roads were pretty narrow as we passed though the old village of Sibiel and then even older, Orlat until we got to Cristian.

We then drove up even narrower roads (deep breath Vanni!), dodging the cows and carts, though little hill villages such as Tilișca, Rod, Poiana Sibiului and others. They were all delightful.

As we climbed higher and higher, we got great views from the top of the mountains. Then we started to descend – and it was a very steep and twisting road. Lots of braking and low gears got us down OK. We were then driving through much more urban towns to the quaint medieval centre of Sebeş.

A quick look around Sebeş, a supermarket stop, and onwards to the tiny village of Miniş for our next camp.

We eventually found it and settled for the night – although not comfortably because of the non-stop and deafening noise of several dogs competing for the loudest bark! Dog barking has been a noise issue throughout our Romanian travel – for some reason, owners let them bark on and on and on……

The next morning, as we were leaving the camp, we ended up buying a bottle of local white wine and also a bottle of red. We were a little dubious when the camp operator gave us the wine, as we had seen him bottle himself from a large keg! We tried the white that night – all good. Now we are looking forward to trying the red.

So it was goodbye to Romania and the lovely people we had meet there, the overall friendliness of everyone, the gorgeous mountain villages and village culture, and beautiful churches and monasteries.

We have absolutely loved this country and it is one of the highlights of travels in Europe over the past four years. Now we continue west, into Hungary.