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.