Saes to Malancrav

The Mathias family welcomed us warmly at Saes. Theirs was the most modern tourist facility we had encountered in the villages to date - a large first floor living/dining/cooking area, and bedrooms off a corridor above. The bedrooms were small, and nearly all of us had to share two bathrooms, but it was very up together.

Outside, there was no sign of animals, dogs apart, but a large mobile still stood in the yard: we were given some of its product, the ubiquitous home-made Palinka, at dinner, as well as beer. I was serenaded to sleep by a nightingale, but awoke early, to find Julia already up and awaiting her taxi: sadly, the sprightliest amongst us was leaving the party early (to return home in time to leave for another holiday elsewhere in Europe!).

My pre-breakfast excursion took me well into the back streets of Saes, quite a large village it seems. The gypsy families live in smallish dwellings, some with pig pens alongside them. On one house an image of the Sacred Heart filled a window. In the garden of another, Romanian flags flew alongside a satellite dish. Walking round, my digital SLR camera prominent, I felt no fear. Far from cowering, threatening or begging, the young people - on their way to school - queued up for photographs to be taken.

On setting out later as a group, Ionut was soon pointing out the tracks made by a bear in the muddy path we were following, steeply upwards through the woods. Descending to the village of Stejarenii, we passed a huge bee hotel: suspended in front of it was a bee CD (hoho!).

By the time we arrived in the next village, Cris, we were ready for lunch, which we ate sitting in the courtyard of the huge Castle. Partly dating from the 15th Century, it belongs to the Bethlens, a Hungarian family, but there is no way they could ever afford to restore it to its former glory. The shiny new red roof looks rather out of place on what might otherwise be an impressive and romantic ruin. After our visit, kind John rewarded  himself and all his fellow sightseers with an ice cream each.

Our final walk yesterday took us over the ridge to Floresti, from where Gabriel bussed us to the altogether more prosperous looking village of Malancrav: we stayed there last night.

Our first Transylvanian trek

Our route from Viscri is taking us broadly Westwards, across the valleys of North-flowing tributaries of the Târnava Mare River. So, we are typically walking up through pastures and along forest tracks, crossing ridges, and then descending to another village in the next valley. Yesterday, however, riding in horse-drawn wagons was an alternative, the minibus carrying our luggage.

With us, the word "gypsy" connotes nuisance – crime and probably disease: how different to sit behind our driver Kostica, as he worked his pair of young horses (Maria, 4 and Stella, 3) so effortlessly, whistling a haunting tune as we bumped along, and using a stalk of grass to clean his ear! During our lunchtime picnic break, we tried on one another's hats, and he showed me how mine could be made to look different.

M. and I rode all the way to Mesendorf, and I then left her and joined the walkers. Earlier, riding through the forest, we surprised P. in the process of relieving herself behind an oak (or was it a hornbeam?): much ribaldry as she manoeuvred herself round the tree, in a vain effort to make herself invisible! (I was justly rebuked: "If you were a gentleman, you wouldn't mention it.")

Earlier, in the 13th Century Gothic church at Viscri, we heard from our guide, the gentle Walter Fernolend how marriages were arranged within each Saxon village, on the basis that "they'll learn to love each other later." And in the excellent museum, we read about "Reconciliation day", which took place each year on the day before Ash Wednesday. Men would wait outside the appointed house until the clock announced noon, then they would enter, in order of seniority, to find two neighbourhood fathers seated there: the younger read out the statement of accounts for the past year, and the penalties that had to be paid for absences from neighbourhood works or from burials. Fines were paid on the spot and recorded in the register. The neighbourhood fathers then talked about the works scheduled for the coming year.

The museum gives a good insight into a very different way of life. The villages may now no longer run on the controlled, collaborative, Evangelically-based lines they did in the seven or so previous centuries, but the bones of Transylvanian Saxon civilization remain: animals everywhere; the fortified churches still deemed worthy of restoration for some liturgical use; craftwork for sale; unfenced fields, unfertilised by chemicals.

Viscri - another world

It was a relief to arrive here late yesterday afternoon: I hate minibus rides, especially when the road twists and turns. And it's a rough route, from the main road to this village, large one though it is, and now made celebrated by the Prince of Wales buying a house here. ("If you don't want your Prince Carolos, then may we have him?") We hear he is arriving next week for a short stay: all hush-hush.

In the wide main street of Viscri, one farmhouse is aligned (end-on) regimentally alongside another, each a different colour and with its decorated gable end; baskets hanging from pear trees, for deliveries. Mark and I have been sleeping in a large room in one of the houses, number 12, a private home. After the luxury of Casa Wagner the night before, we were sharing with two others a relatively primitive bathroom, but it wasn't far from our bedroom door and everything more or less worked. Early this morning I heard activity in the street outside: opening our window, this photograph is one I snatched - something approaching a stampede, with horses and goats alongside the cattle, all on their way to a hillside pasture.

From the street you approach our house through an archway, which gives onto a farmyard with a barn at its far end. Hens (one peering out of a dog kennel) and their chicks, ducks with their ducklings, geese and turkeys, as well as dogs and cats, are all inclined to be milling around, and there's a tractor of the sort you might almost see in a museum at home. Walking through the misty village, I saw a horse and cart brought to a house to pick up a sick calf. In a street with less elaborate houses, a Gypsy chased after an escaped pig.