TRAVEL: Romania, 2017

All pictures by Zachary V. Sunderman.
Please do not use without credit.

On her maternal grandfather's side, my wife descends from a long line of Transylvanian Saxons - ethnic Germans who, a thousand or so years ago, were exported to the interior of Romania to work. There, they built numerous cities, the historic centers and defensive fortifications of which are now likely to be found on the UNESCO World Heritage list. When I accompanied her on a heritage trip to this region, it ended up being just as rewarding to me, as it was a deeply enriching chance to get up close and personal with the world that was here before us. We Americans are not used to being in the phenomenal presence of hundreds or thousands of years of history, but Europe is one of the places where the modern life of cities is frequently grafted right onto the remains of the past. And Transylvania is particularly special in this regard because you don't have to imagine: the medieval cities are so amazingly well-preserved that you feel time folding, your eyes beholding the same sights that were seen by people centuries before you.

It was in Sibiu, particularly good at this modern-medieval hybrid, where I realized I loved Romania. That feeling only strengthened in Brasov, a town with a classic European square and a vibrant street culture, with the added benefit of being high in the cool air of the Carpathian Mountains. Along the way, we saw other towns like the living-museum that is Sighisoara (where we ate dinner in the room where Vlad Dracula was born) and the heavily graffitied Bistrita (pronounced "Be-streets"), discovered the glory that is the gogosi pastry, and visited many (...maybe too many) beautiful Catholic-cum-Lutheran churches with nearly a thousand years of history to each of them.

We also had a few experiences that were not quite as fulfilling. Despite being the home of the wonderful Origo Coffee, we found Bucharest to be a fairly depressing city, and though there was some historical interest in Bran Castle, the whole "Dracula's Castle" thing is a total sham, which makes it all the more offensive to have to deal with the sludgy throng of tourists there.

Romania 2017

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