Catalin stared at us. Born and raised in Romania, he had never heard of such a place. That could only mean one thing: Cund was exactly the place we were looking for. Catalin had assured us that Brasov was the best city in all of Romania, and indeed its 16th-century fortified walls, cobblestone streets and ciorba de burta, a sour tripe soup, did not disappoint.
But we had our hearts set on experiencing a bygone way of Romanian life. Scattered throughout the Transylvanian countryside in central Romania are dozens of Saxon villages that date back years. Some of these sleepy hamlets are fairly well known Prince Charles owns property in Viscri, for example , while others exist in relative obscurity.
Cund falls clearly in the latter category. German-speaking Saxons began settling Transylvania in the 12th century after agreeing to an offer of land in exchange for protecting the region from Ottoman forces.
The Saxons remained there for millennia. At the height of their growth after World War II, the number of Transylvanian Saxons reached over half a million people. Eager to escape a neighborhood where double or triple parking is the norm just leave your phone number on the windshield , my wife and I hopped in our car and set out to discover what the Saxons left behind.
After three hours of white-knuckled driving on slick mountain roads, often with a horse-drawn cart on one side and a speeding Dacia passing us on the other, we found ourselves deep within the Romanian countryside. As we turned onto what we hoped was the last stretch of muddy road before Cund — our GPS had recently surrendered — it was not hard to see why imaginative travelers continue to associate Transylvania with vampires. The last glimmer of daylight had begun to fade, and the sky turned a dreary shade of gray that only late November can produce.
