Stranger than fiction

Transylvania was made famous by Bram Stoker but the region's real history and medieval villages are much more interesting than Dracula

Patrick Barkham
The Guardian,  Saturday November 3 2007

Machine House Romania

Blood red ... Machine House, Transylvania.

The full moon draws lines of silver around the gloomy power stations on the plains outside Bucharest. Over the Carpathian mountains, the road twists alarmingly and fog descends on Transylvania. Gothic farms flash past as Nic, the taxi driver, expertly juggles three mobile phones, cranks up Van Halen on the radio, and somehow avoids the sepulchral shapes of women clutching babies crossing the treacherously misty road ahead. It is not quite the sort of fright I was expecting on a Halloween trip to Dracula country but it is quite scary enough.

"Transylvania had been a familiar name as long as I could remember. It was the very essence and symbol of remote, leafy, half-mythical strangeness; and, on the spot, it seemed remoter still, and more fraught with charms." So wrote Patrick Leigh Fermor of his romantic walk across this strange and beautiful land in 1934. Like many of his observations about Romania, it is still strikingly appropriate today, although to the Dracula myth we can add the enduring weirdness of those Transylvanian songbirds the Cheeky Girls.

Bram Stoker, the Irish novelist who never visited this land, is responsible for its image of towering castles, dark forests and Count Dracula rising above them, but the real Transylvania is more interesting and complex than the strangest of fiction.

The day after my dark drive dawned bright, with the relief and surprise that follows a night arrival. The tree-lined avenue leading into the Count Mikes Estate that had looked forbidding in the dark was russet and gold; the beechwoods on the hills beyond a mix of grey trunks and ochre autumnal leaves. Cooking smells wafted around the cosy, wooden-floored Machine House and, after breakfast, the Countess wandered in to say hello.

Katalin Roy Chowdhury, or Countess Mikes (pronounced Mickesh), was a small child when she was taken from her ancestral home in the middle of the night in 1949 and she spent her teenage years in exile in Austria, returning just once, in disguise, to see her old home. When Nicolae Ceausescu was deposed in the revolution of 1989, land was slowly returned to its original owners but it still took years of legal battles before the countess could return to her near-derelict home in 2005.

Helped by her two sons, she has set to work sensitively restoring the estate which her family has held since the 15th century. "I thought we must do something to make it better," she says firmly. Two fine old buildings remain and, last December, a third - the Machine House, which held generators for the primitive hospital the communists established on the estate - was opened as a guesthouse.

A lovely mix of privacy and country house informality, the Machine House has open fires and huge rooms, including the "red room" with a free-standing bath. Antlers on exposed stone walls create a warm, hunting lodge feel, without the gothic horror or the hunting (although the Mikes Estate can set up bear-watching trips - the Carpathians have more bears than anywhere in Europe, as well as wolves). Best of all, in a land unfairly maligned for its cooking, the guesthouse is managed by a chef who conjures up beautifully presented local dishes - venison, wild mushrooms and delicious home-made dips and jams - for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

In the soft light of late autumn, the grounds of the estate are almost silent but for the tap-tap-tap of a woodpecker on a hollow branch. Red admirals and fritillaries bask in the last sunshine of the year. Beyond its walls unfold thickly wooded foothills where you can take guided treks, and dozens of fascinating settlements, including the local village, Zabola, well worth a tour in the estate's horse and trap. You won't stand out. Horses and carts shaped like troughs are still a common means of transport.

Despite its accession to the EU earlier this year, Romania still gets a bad press: the land of medieval mud that impersonated Kazakhstan in the Borat movie; the post-communist montage of grimy factories and stray dogs; and a people often accused of being implacably prejudiced against minorities like the Gypsies.

It is impossible to leave Romania without scenes of both pre-industrial and post-industrial ruin seared on your retina, but even if it is poorer than its fellow EU members, it cannot simply be branded as backward. Satellite dishes protrude from the grapevines meticulously threaded around homes; surf stickers decorate tractor windscreens. For every horse pulling a plough, there are families in SUVs; for every stream inexplicably flecked with plastic rubbish, there are immaculate Transylvanian villages such as Zabola: attractive and, without any "western" input, already completely sustainable.

There are many extraordinary places to visit on day trips from the Mikes Estate, including the mountain-framed city of Brasov and the stunning medieval settlement of Sighisoara, a Unesco world heritage site and the birthplace of Wallachian prince, Vlad Draculea, the infamous "Vlad the Impaler" who had a predilection for skewering enemies on wooden poles and, very loosely, inspired Stoker's entirely fictional Count Dracula.

But the most startling of all Transylvania's other worlds are the Saxon villages built by the 12th-century immigrants. Thriving in their beautifully ordered agricultural settlements, the Saxons retained their German language for the next 800 years and by the 1930s numbered 800,000. Thousands were killed during the second world war or fled during Ceausescu's regime. While ethnic Hungarians such as Countess Mikes returned to their land after the dictator was deposed, many Saxons have relocated to Germany in recent years, leaving behind their stunning villages of fortified churches, walled courtyards and broad, green streets.

One, Viscri, has been beautifully conserved, helped by a local charity which now boasts Prince Charles for a patron. Many, such as Apold and Bradeni, remain ordinary, working villages, with scarcely a car or shop in sight. Others, on rutted dirt roads, are near deserted, sad shells of the past. Here, Leigh Fermor's account of Transylvania in 1934 still holds true: "The rhythm of life had remained many decades behind the west - a hundred years, perhaps." Membership of the EU will soon change this. Much will be good - signs already show the cottage industries and admirable conservation efforts being funded - but much could be lost, particularly when the planned motorways traverse Transylvania, changing its still, silent valleys for ever.

· Black Tomato (020-7610 9008, blacktomato.co.uk) offers four nights' B&B the Machine House on the Count Mikes Estate, Transylvania (zabola.com) from £499pp including BA flights and private transfers.

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Grin and bear it

The Spectator, Neil Barnett, Thursday, 1st February 2007

As my little car laboured around a bend in the snowy Carpathian logging road, a brown furry figure jumped out of the forest on all fours and made off in front of the car. It was, perhaps, a sign that I had been too long in the city that I identified it as a man in a bear outfit. But as we pursued the lolloping creature, I realised my mistake: this was the real thing, a bear!

Bears make regular raids on the towns and villages of Transylvania in search of food. Occasionally they are shot; more often they get away, and their lot is infinitely better than the pigs’. One amazingly cold morning, not long after the start of my Transylvanian holiday, I was invited to a pig-killing, the highlight of the social calendar in this part of central Transylvania.

My hosts were Székely (pron. Se-kay) farmers, members of a Hungarian-speaking people claiming separate origins from the Magyars. They are tough, independent and mordantly humorous people who defended the borders of Transylvania and later the Habsburg empire from the Turks. In return they enjoyed the privilege of self-government like Russia’s Cossacks, free from serfdom and foreign military service.

This tradition of cussedness remains gloriously intact. Behind the ornately carved wooden arches that stand in front of Székely houses, what happens is more or less what always happened. Seeing that we were freezing, our host offered us a shot glass filled with a treacly black liquid which looked like Fernet Branca or the Hungarian Unicum. But it tasted like meths and was, we were told, industrial alcohol flavoured with cumin, just the thing to fortify you before witnessing the last moments of a pig.

The noise made by a stuck pig is just as you would imagine, with a fair amount of thrashing about and gore, but it left the assembled farmers, children, grandmothers and gypsies undisturbed, and terrified only the dog. The puli is an ancient Hungarian sheepdog that looks like a cocker spaniel in a Rastafarian wig, and despite his small size he’s usually fearless and ultra-territorial. But as the pig’s demise went on (usually it takes a good half hour), there was no mistaking the terror gripping the little black puli. After some whimpering, the dog retreated to the farthest part of his kennel, where he became invisible. Perhaps he thought he was for the chop too.

My next outing was to revisit the bears. At last light we walked into the foothills of the Carpathians to a clearing. The ghillie then festooned the trees and ground with apples, chocolate bars and meat before joining us in an enclosed tree-house equipped with a narrow viewing slit. Ten minutes later a Goldilocks-style family of bears sauntered up, two parents and two cubs, looking around as if it was all too good to be true. Twenty years ago, they would have been right. Nicholas Ceausescu, the communist leader of Romania, used to have the finest bear lured to just such a spot in exactly this way — then he’d fly in from Bucharest in a helicopter and shoot them.

I was there to watch, not to kill, but I’m sure I had just as much fun as Ceausescu. The bears made small whooping sounds and one of the cubs, made lightheaded by the windfall, threw an apple at his father’s back. For one moment it seemed as if a food fight would break out, before the daddy bear returned placidly to his haunch of mutton.

For the moment, there are no budget flights straight to Transylvania — which, when you consider the plight of Prague or Zagreb, is no bad thing. In a few years, I imagine, word of its natural beauty and wildness will spread, and visitors will descend in great numbers. For the moment, though, the flipside of having the place to yourself is that there isn’t a great choice of places to stay outside towns like Târgu Mures or Cluj. A good base is the guesthouse on the Count Mikes Estate in Zabola, nestling at the foot of the Carpathians (www.zabola.com). Gregor and Alexander Roy-Chowdhury, its owners, are scions of the ancient Hungarian Mikes family and of a Bengali prince. Romania’s communist regime seized the family’s property and used the buildings in Zabola to house a camp for communist youth and a hospital for tuberculosis, but Gregor abandoned his career in investment banking to reclaim the family property through restitution, and now has six guest rooms in a converted outbuilding, though the estate’s two castles remain uninhabitable.

It’s not too difficult to get to the estate — I was picked up from Brasov station by Árpi, one of the estate retainers, a chap recognisable from the Cotswolds to the Urals: gumboots, canvas trousers, moustache and roll-up cigarettes. And the food is good and traditional. Transylvanian food is, like the land itself, a mixture of Hungarian, Romanian and Saxon and, as I witnessed, the farming methods are entirely traditional. ‘We cook partly according to 18th- and 19th-century aristocratic Transylvanian cookbooks,’ said Zsolna, Gregor’s wife. ‘We have lots of trout from the river and game like wild boar.’ That night I dined off Hungarian pörkölt (often called goulash elsewhere) with Romanian mamaliga (polenta), a perfect Transylvanian concoction. Homemade plum pálinka proved a welcome improvement on industrial alcohol, cumin or no cumin.

After supper I ventured across the ‘volcanoes’ to a boozer in the singular village of Kommando. As the name suggests, Kommando was a military frontier post of the Austro-Hungarian empire, perched in a lonely spot high above Zabola. I must have seemed quite exotic to these stout mountaineers, whose favourite food in the depths of winter seems to be ice cream, and whose tolerance of the Bontempi organ is superhuman. But they proved, like everyone that we encountered, astoundingly friendly.

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Simple pleasures

CNN Traveller, April 2005
Forget the fictional Count Dracula, Transylvania today provides a glimpse of a long-lost Europe. Words: Tom Owen. Photos: Bela Szandelszky

In a Europe that is becoming increasingly homogeneous, the mountains, forests and villages of Transylvania in Romania remain the last outpost of a more ancient era. Romanians, Saxons and Hungarians live in a patchwork of simple farming villages, drawing water from wells, living by near-subsistence agriculture and artisanal work. Dracula might be Transylvania's most obvious poster boy, but there is real romance and mystery to be found in this beautiful and ancient region.

'This is Europe as it was 100 years ago,' says Count Tibor Kálnoky, who runs a guesthouse in the village of Miklosvar in central Transylvania. 'We want to show our guests the original culture and wildlife of the region.' Kálnoky ought to know: his family arrived in Transylvania in 1252.

Covered by thickly forested hills and mountains inhabited by bears and wolves, where shepherds live outside with their flocks, Transylvania is a truly Arcadian place. But this unspoiled condition means it can be difficult to visit: roads are in poor condition and there is virtually no tourist infrastructure. Count Kálnoky, however, has been introducing small numbers of guests to Transylvania since 2000, offering a completely tailored holiday. The business is on an intimate scale and has a low impact on its surroundings in the sleepy village of Miklosvar, yet it plays a crucial role in the village's economic regeneration. 'We employ 20 people, so 20 families depend on us, and we buy local produce where we can. The profits go into further restoration of our buildings and into wildlife preservation,' says Kálnoky.

Seldom-seen species of birds such as the rare black stork, the lesser-spotted eagle, the corncrake and the white-backed woodpecker are all to be found in the local area, and Kálnoky is working on surveys of birdlife and lobbying for environmentally protected status for the region.

Kálnoky's guests are about 80 per cent British so far, but, other than that, they are united only in their diversity. 'There is no typical guest socially or age-wise,' he says. 'We have everyone from hairdressers to princes. They all meet and mostly have a nice time together and make friends. It's rather like an Agatha Christie house party.'

In the cosy surroundings of Kálnoky's cellar-cum-dining room, the guests certainly manage to raise a spirit of conviviality, helped no doubt by palinka (plum brandy), lashings of robust Romanian Pinot Noir and generous servings of hearty food. Taner Dedezade, a young London barrister, and his wife Katharine are typical of the eclectic mix of visitors to Miklosvar. Dedezade says: 'We were attracted by the unspoilt beauty of Transylvania. We like the idea of wolf tracking and the way you can step back in time, see horses and carts in the village. What struck me most were the different pockets of culture. We'd definitely come back to see the place in other seasons.'

Cultural and wildlife programmes can keep guests occupied for up to a fortnight. 'They might stay one night in the village and take a cart ride through the woods, then visit Saxon [German] and Székely [Hungarian] villages and natural attractions such as St Ann's lake, the only volcano crater lake in the region. They can also go bird watching and bear tracking. In winter we have a shuttle bus to the skiing resort of Poiana Brasov, just an hour away,' says Kálnoky.

To the east of Miklosvar lies the Zabola estate of the Mikes family, owned by Kálnoky's cousin, Gregor Roy Chowdhury, whose mother was a scion of the ancient Mikes family and whose father was a Bengali aristocrat. Roy Chowdhury, who is still in his twenties, gave up a career as an investment banker in London to reclaim and revive his family's estates, which he is in the process of restoring and offering as a tourist destination. Like Kálnoky, he recovered a portion of his family property through restitution, which reversed the expropriation carried out by Romania's previous communist regime.

Kálnoky and Roy Chowdhury's return to Romania, reclamation of family property and investment in restoration and tourism is remarkable given the turbulent and at times brutal history of Transylvania. Looking across the snow-covered acres of the Zabola park, Roy Chowdhury says: 'In the 1920s there was land reform after Transylvania passed from Hungary to Romania, and this reduced the estate. Then in 1949 the entire estate was expropriated by the communists. But my mother never stopped believing that we would reclaim our property.'

Although thousands of hectares of Mikes forest and agricultural land remain subject to court action under the restitution law, Roy Chowdhury has recovered the Zabola park, including its old castle, for now the preserve of bats, and a newer castle currently used as a sanatorium, but soon to be vacated. But perhaps the most intriguing building is the surprisingly mobile Swiss house, which is now being run as a guest house while the castles are being restored.

He says: 'The Swiss house was moved from Berne to Paris in 1889 for the great exhibition, and thence to Vienna. My great-grandmother bought it in the 1890s and took it to Zabola.' When the house was reclaimed from the state it was in bad condition. 'There were chickens in the dining room,' he adds.

Today the Swiss house has been beautifully restored, with simple, solid furniture and local carpets offset by warm colours and roaring log fires - a perfect retreat from the rigours of the Transylvanian winter after a ride in a horse-drawn sled. With only four guestrooms, and surrounded by 40 hectares of park, you are unlikely to feel crowded out.

Whereas Kálnoky's property is in the middle of a village, the Zabola park is more secluded, and guests are free to roam through its tree-lined avenues and lawns. But, like Kálnoky, Roy Chowdhury is offering cultural and wildlife activities. One fascinating excursion is the nearby village of Comandau (or Komandó), up at 1,100m. As its name suggests, Comandau grew up around its garrison, who were charged with defending this part of the Austro-Hungarian empire's frontier from attack. Even today, it retains an extraordinary air of robust martial pride, despite switching to logging from its more soldierly activities.

Roy Chowdhury, too, intends to restore the estate's role as the economic centre of its local village. Transylvania is culturally rich, but decades of communism and the disruption wrought by the change of system have resulted in depressed living standards and an exodus of the young. Providing employment for guides, drivers, cooks and maids will help to regenerate village economies. 'When the hospital moves, some of the 50 employees will not move with it, so there will be a need for jobs,' he says.

Both men are resolute in their belief that sensitive, low-volume tourism in Transylvania can help to revive local economies and provide a new living for estates and country houses. For those who are willing to come and investigate an almost forgotten corner of the continent, these guest houses offer nothing less than a chance to travel back in time to an European idyll.