Bite into Romania's colorful past

Immense wooden gates with intricate carvings, specific to this region, guard quaint one- or two-story houses. Tiny wooden churches and monasteries dot the velvety green hills.

Tucked into one wool-spinning village is the "Merry Cemetery," where brightly painted wooden crosses depict the departed through cartoonish pictures and funny epitaphs.

Instead of staying in a hotel, some visitors take advantage of "agrotourism" – booking a room on a small farm. It's a great opportunity to stay with local people and enjoy home cooking. Here, ingredients are always homegrown.

Preparing a typical dish of stuffed grape leaves or peppers and polenta with melted cheese begins by plucking leaves off the grape trellises hanging over every Romanian's courtyard, picking the peppers from the garden, and milking the sheep.

You'll never want to go to a restaurant again.

Venture about three hours south of Cluj-Napoca to the superbly preserved medieval city of Sibiu (Hermannstadt in German and Nagyszeben in Hungarian) in the foothills of the soaring Carpathian Mountains.

The old town, perched on a hill, is still surrounded by fortified walls built to defend southern Transylvania from the invading Turks. Soaring 210 feet in the air is the five-pointed steeple of the Gothic Evangelical church.

Now I understand why my husband, who grew up here, speaks German and wore lederhosen as a child. Stand in the middle of the square and you could be in Germany. Small round or slanted windows encased in fish-scale-tiled roofs stare back. Wrought-iron signs still hang above shops that used to house craft guilds.

An exquisite collection of paintings by Titian, Rubens, and Van Dyck are housed in the Brukenthal Museum, Romania's oldest and finest art museum.

A few craggy streets away is the market, the one place in Romania where the economy hums. Heaps of fresh paprika, herbs, beans, olives in great wooden barrels, every fruit and vegetable imaginable, nuts, and live fowl and rabbits vie for your attention.

I counted at least 20 women selling eggs. Walking down the cheese aisle, I'm offered more than a dozen varieties of sheep's milk cheese to taste. If you're short on guard dogs, you can pick up a German shepherd puppy on your way out.

The few tourists roaming Transylvania are usually bound for "Dracula's castle" in the village of Bran, south of Brasov – yet another exquisite medieval city.

But even here signs are few and the atmosphere is low-key. Romanians are bewildered by the Western interest in "Dracula." The book, published here only in 1990, is not widely read.

Some foreigners are disappointed to learn that the real-life Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, never lived in this castle and that Stoker's fictional Dracula lived farther north, near Bistrita, where no such castle exists.

This explains why Bran Castle looks more like a Mediterranean palace with its whitewashed walls, fairy-tale turrets, red-tile roof, and quaint rooms filled with baroque furniture.

Built in 1377, it was intended to protect a mountain-pass trade route. It was reconstructed in the Renaissance style during the 17th century and, from 1920 to 1947, it served as the summer royal residence.

Today, it's a museum of art and history. The only sinister sign is a solitary bulb of garlic resting on the bed in the largest bedroom.

But in Stoker's blend of fiction and folklore, some details of life in Transylvania ring true. Ropes of garlic and other herbs hang on the walls of many village houses.

In the novel, when Jonathan Harker embarks on his journey to the count, he observes his fellow passengers crossing themselves. Even today, some Romanians cross themselves at the beginning or end of a journey, whether they're going by horse and wagon or by plane.

And, just as for Jonathan, a trip back in time for them – as well as visitors – is just "beyond the forest."

• For more information, visit the websites www.romaniatourism.com (official travel information) and www.turism.ro(Tourism in Romania); write the Romanian National Tourist Office, 14 E. 38th St., 12th Floor, New York, NY 10016; telephone (212) 545-8484; or e-mail ronto@erols.com.

Austrian Airlines ( www.aua.com/default_e.asp ) flies to Romania from the United States.

Page: 1 | 2