The countless wonders of Romania

There’s more to Dracula country than creepy castles and vampires. Samantha Laurie visits a land time forgot

×

Expand

Explore Staff Timothy Cooper

Little fair bear

The first sign that we’re in the presence of creatures bigger and scarier than your average forest fauna is the half-mauled leg of a deer.

“Wolves, maybe bear,” says our wildlife guide, examining the snowy forest floor. A giant paw print close by confirms the likely culprit.

Romania’s Carpathian Mountains have the highest concentration of carnivores in Europe, and one in particular is flourishing – the brown bear. Some 6000 roam these parts, compared to just a dozen or so in the Alps and Pyrenees. So numerous are they that they regularly forage in the dustbins of nearby Brasov, and sightings of beasts as huge as four metres tall, weighing nearly 500 kilos, are not uncommon.

This is the best place in Europe to see these magnificent creatures in the wild: spend the evening in a bear observatory and the chances of spotting one are high. Sadly, we’re only here for a few hours, on a guided walk through a forest teeming with life: wolves, deer, lynx, wild boar. Years of Communist underdevelopment (very few motorways) and dictatorial bans (under Ceausescu only he was allowed to hunt bears) have left Romania’s pristine forests a naturalist’s delight.

Nor are bears the only surprise in a country little visited by modern international tourism. Our trip starts in Bucharest, known as ‘Little Paris’ in the early 20th century for its tree-lined boulevards, elegant parks and neoclassical architecture. Today, its pre-war beauty is pitted with reminders of more troubled times: brutalist Soviet housing blocks and the grandiose Palace of the Parliament, the world’s second largest administrative building (after the Pentagon) and the most infamous legacy of the 25-year Ceausescu dictatorship that ended with revolution in 1989.

×

Expand

Brasov

Curiously, Romania has more of a Southern European aesthetic than a Slavic one: big plazas full of families eating together, a Latin-based language – buna dimineata for good morning; la revedere, goodbye – and a people famed for passion, warmth and impatience behind the wheel. They say that you know you’re in a Latin country by the speed at which the horns start when the traffic lights turn green. In Bucharest, it’s instantaneous.

But it’s beyond the capital that the unique cultural legacy of a country known as ‘Europe’s great survivor’, a nation continually invaded and occupied, is most evident.

We are heading to Transylvania, where centuries of churning incursions have left a remarkably mixed landscape: fortified Saxon churches, where men still sit on the outer pews, braced for a rapid exit to repel attack; jaw-dropping Gothic castles, the most famous of which – Bran (or ‘Dracula’s’) Castle – is a surprisingly cheerful pile with rather spurious links to the fictional Count; and lost-in-time villages, with pastel-hued gingerbread homes, seemingly untouched by the modern world.

Stopping off at these villages is a real joy. At our guesthouse in the mountains, our host welcomes us with a bonfire, serving homemade apple brandy from a teapot while we gaze up at the night sky. In Viscri, a beautifully preserved Saxon village where Prince Charles has a home, traditional crafts are cherished and the cows and goats are herded to and from the main street to the fields each day. On horse and cart, a mode of transport that feels decidedly less hokey when widely used by the locals, we visit the 12th-century church with its smoked lard tower – lard was the villagers’ most precious commodity in times gone by – and the local baker and blacksmith. More time, and we could have joined the truffle hunters, or hiked across the meadows as Charles does, enjoying the exquisite peace of a world unchanged for centuries.

Once, most of Europe looked like this, and the sense of having slipped back into another age is compounded by the glee that greets each restaurant bill. In the picturesque main square of Brasov, fresh from snowshoeing in the nearby ski resort, we pay £50 for pizza and drinks for seven. Even in the capital’s touristy old centre, a main course costs £5-10, a half-litre of beer £1-2. Add in a growing reputation for excellent wines, and there is really no reason not to visit. 

• Sam travelled with explore.co.uk which runs six different trips to Romania, including an eight-day Winter Adventure Trip incorporating many of the places she visited. Cost: £970 per person, including flights, meals and accommodation. It also offers a five-day trip, Transylvania Long Weekend (£789), which includes an opportunity to visit a bear observatory.

Click here to read more of our fantastic travel pieces

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates on our latest articles

Sign up to our Weekly Newsletter for exclusive competitions, offers and stories

Looking to advertise your business in Surrey or SW London? Check out our 11 different lifestyle magazines with a combined monthly distribution of over 210,000