Mid-August in Transylvania

“Transylvania runs through my veins.” In saying this, Charles of England evokes a distant kinship with Vlad III of Wallachia, also known as Vlad Drăculea (son of Dracul), or Vlad Țepeș – that is, Vlad the Impaler – due to the treatment meted out to his enemies. The fearsome Vlad, a contemporary of the more poetic Lorenzo de’ Medici, inspired Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula but also various property choices made by Carlo, who has purchased and restored three cottages and a stable in Transylvania itself. In this region of Romania, people still travel by horse-drawn cart, and on the roads one often finds oneself stuck in a queue behind endless flocks of sheep. Seeking moments of anonymity amidst pastures, larch and oak forests, bears and wolves, fields ploughed with a plough and grass mown by hand, Carlo experienced his travels in Transylvania as if they were stays in a timeless nature retreat. One of his homes, the Blue House in the village of Viscri, can be rented for short stays. Recently, the New York Times recommended holidays in Transylvania to its readers as a respite from the heat and invasive tourism: the medieval villages with their colourful wooden houses and pointed red-tiled roofs have not yet been overrun by bars and restaurants, or by souvenir shops selling Dracula figurines and plastic fangs. The landscapes resemble those of the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales, and ‘rural chic’ accommodation has gradually sprung up, such as the Matca Hotel in Bran, which the NYT also recommends for its restaurant serving venison chops, sheep’s cheese wrapped in fir bark and plum brandy. Then there are the holiday homes run by Giovanna and Paolo Bassetti, an Italian couple who have spent years restoring old houses in the hamlet of Copșa Mare, a Saxon-style village on the edge of a forest on the Tarnava Plateau. Stone walls and red brick, rustic furnishings, wood-burning stoves and wooden floors. If you decide to go for a walk in the hills, it is advisable to take a local guide with you, as the sheepdogs – trained to ward off wolves – are known to be quite fierce.

Transylvania was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of the First World War. Its current population, numbering over 6 million, comprises Romanians, Saxons and Hungarians, who speak a mixture of different languages. Amidst Ottoman influences, rugged woodland, Orthodox churches crammed with icons and austere Lutheran churches, gloomy castles and fortifications, the landscapes and customs of Transylvania are described in William Blacker’s unmissable memoir "Along the Enchanted Way" (Adelphi). Blacker, who is apparently a friend of Carlo’s and now divides his time between his native England, Tuscany and Transylvania, recounts his decision to settle in a dilapidated Saxon village abandoned by its original inhabitants, whose houses are now occupied by Romanians and Roma, who are, of course, in perpetual conflict. His romantic escapades with Roma women are highly amusing, veritable anthropological treatises. To describe them, he quotes Franz Liszt: ‘They have no interest in giving orders, but neither do they wish to obey.’ There is no shortage of bizarre descriptions of atrocities, peppered with the Easter slaughter of lambs: ‘a biblical massacre, a veritable massacre of the innocents’.