Romania

In Brasov, Romania's second-largest city, the medieval ramparts that protected the old town of Teutonic homes are still standing. As we wander around the large downtown pedestrian area, crowded with shops and cafes, I feel as if I am in an old German city.

The heart of Brasov is the Piata Sfatului (Council Square), and it was here, according to legend, that the Pied Piper resurfaced with the children he had mesmerized in Hamelin, Germany. A 15th-century Council House in the middle of the square is now a museum that tells the story of the Saxon guilds that controlled the city and kept the Romanians in a neighborhood just to the southwest. To enter the central citadel, Romanians had to pay a toll.

The city's premier structure is the Black Church, just off the Piata Sfatului, and it is reputedly the largest gothic church between Istanbul and Vienna. Stained by fire, hence its name, the Lutheran church is unusually decorated with Islamic prayer rugs from Turkey. It also boasts an organ with 4,000 pipes that was built in Berlin in the 19th century.

We push on to Bran Castle, about 18 miles southwest of Brasov. Perched on a wooded bluff, the restored 14th-century castle has been re-branded as "Dracula's Castle," although it has only a very tentative connection with Vlad Tepes, the historical figure who inspired Bram Stoker's 1897 novel.

With its soaring turrets and secret passageways, Bran Castle is a visual feast, and if the local tourist industry needs the myth of Dracula to attract visitors, well, who cares? Dracula, in fact, has become a major selling tool for the Romanian tourist industry as it attempts to capitalize on its best-known, fictional citizen. Much of the Dracula industry in Romania is pure kitsch, but, for me at least, it is a minor distraction in a beautiful, neglected country that needs every dollar it can get.

After Bran, our next destination is the city of Sighisoara. The "jewel of Transylvania," it is an almost perfectly preserved 13th-century medieval citadel of narrow cobbled streets surrounded by thick defensive walls and towers. A covered wooden staircase, the Scholars' Stairs, rises to the fortress-like Church on the Hill with its rich frescoes.

From the top of the clock tower in the old town, one can look down on the red-tiled roofs above the sloping streets and imagine that nothing has changed in the 500 years since Saxon craftsmen and merchants wandered its lanes and witch trials and public executions were held on the Piata Cetati.

One of the real pleasures of traveling in Translyvania are the Saxon villages that lie along or just off the main roads. About 200 of these villages have old fortified churches originally designed to ward off invaders. And the most famous of these churches is in Biertan, just a short distance off the main road, west of Sighisoara.

Built in the late 13th century, the church sits on a hill surrounded by walls that are more than 35 feet high. Inside the church is an altar with 28 panels and a sacristy door with 19 locks. A local man tells us that one of the rooms in the church was for couples who wished to divorce and were locked up together for two weeks. (Whether that would encourage or discourage separation is left unclear.) Turn to anyone in Transylvania and they are happy to talk about their country's history, the telling leavened with an invitation to have a drink and spiced with some nationalist fervor.

Time is running out, and my friend and I must head back to Bucharest -- but this time we drive through the Fagaras Mountains, first by way of Sibiu, yet another impressive Saxon town. Fagaras is a typically crude piece of communist town planning dominated by a chemical factory. But the surrounding mountains with dozens of glacial lakes are spectacular and a favorite for toughened hikers.

On the Trans-Fagarasan Highway, we repeatedly stop to take in the view. My Romanian companion tells me that some of these slopes were once the exclusive preserve of former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who came to nearby Balea Lac to hunt black goat.

Times have changed. Ceausescu is dead, executed in the 1989 revolution. And now, if you come to Romania, you can stay in his old hunting lodge.