Romania is a land of a thousand faces.
The crossing point between the Occident and the Orient,
and a melting pot of different cultures.
It is also a country unlike any other in Europe.
With over 60 percent of the Carpathian Mountains weaving through it,
Romania is the custodian of Europe's last great wilderness area,
its largest remaining forest,
and two thirds of its surviving alpha predators.
As well as native Romanians,
it is home to a Saxon and Hungarian culture,
Roma, Aroman, Lipovan, and many more disparate peoples,
who have been united by the borders of a nation,
that stretches from the edge of Serbia, Hungary and the Ukraine,
to the very mouth of the Danube.
Here Europe's largest wetland fans out into the Black Sea,
and provides the country with yet another vast, priceless and fragile ecosystem,
a haven for wild birds, interwoven with countless waterways,
reed beds and lakes that meander for over 3,000 square kilometres.
Inland, Romania is rich with ancient villages,
majestic national parks, ruined castles, historic cities,
and a legacy that dates back thousands of years.
But increasingly this unique country's natural and cultural heritage
is under threat from reckless development
and a race to modernise,
which is often destroying the very things that could ensure prosperity
and a sustainable livelihood for generations to come.
Over the next eight episodes
I will be embarking on a road trip through Romania's eight historic regions,
discovering fabulous treasures...
natural wonders...
medieval marvels...
mouthwatering dishes
and the people that make this
one of the warmest and most hospitable countries in the world.
En route I will be picking up some sensational recipes,
hearing songs and tunes that have almost been forgotten,
and meeting a handful of people that still remember and preserve them.
We will also be finding out how this hugely misunderstood country
is emerging from post Communist chaos,
and identifying some of the challenges it faces,
and how tourism could provide one of its best hopes for the future.
Welcome back to the second half
of our mammoth meander across Transylvania.
In the last episode,
we travelled from a hidden eco-village, deep in the Apuseni hills,
via Alba Iulia and the Transalpina, to the Saxon heartlands.
This time around,
we pick up our journey in the fields just outside the scenic village of Crit.
I am here to visit friend and entrepreneur Krishan George,
who is attempting to combine agro-tourism with the fine art of buffalo farming.
-Krishan! -Charlie!
-You heard me coming. -Yeah.
-How are you? -Good.
-Let's go up. -It's all looking very nice.
-You've been busy. -Yeah, a little bit.
-Have a seat. -It's coming on, isn't it?
Yeah, it is. It's nice in the summer, winters get a bit cold.
Your fruit forest is growing nicely.
It is. It's the first year I've put a little electric fence around it,
so the bufallo couldn't get in and wreck all the trees.
What's the idea of the fruit forest?
Basically, we are trying to change the orchard into a edible forest.
It's something that I wanted to try, but it's quite a big spot,
and it's only me trying to dig it up,
so that's why volunteers are quite helpful with this.
The house over there looks like it's come on a bit.
Yes, it's a house from the local village that they were selling as firewood,
so I've rescued it, moved it onto the farm,
and hopefully in about a month and a half I'll finish it.
Seems like an awful lot is happening actually.
Yeah, well it's been ten years, I bought it in 2006 I think at auction.
-When did the bufallo arrive? -About 2010.
How are they doing?
They are not bad,
they're sort of big beasts and some of them are quite friendly.
-Can we go and have a look at them? -Sure, yeah.
And are you are using them for meat or milk?
Milk and meat, but there's no prices,
so that's why I think I'm moving towards tourism to suplement the income,
'cause I can't survive on farming itself.
Charlie, this is one of the groups.
And this is south facing, the main tree, the bushes around it.
Lovely!
And then in the middle here we can start then once the grass has gone,
start growing other things.
Look, red currant, few more days, I think next week.
And we've got mint, wild strawberries, just the berries, blackcurrants.
The bears will be ready, so...
Well, this is interesting because the bears are coming so much closer now.
Actually, last night the dog started barking,
and I've shone the torch towards the back of the house,
and you can see the eyes of something large, a mammal moving around there,
and it scared the dogs quite a lot.
It must've been a bear taking up residence in the little house there.
Let me introduce my little guys here.
-Not so little. -No.
Look, look they are ruining one of my trees, scratching, see?
That is what they do.
That's what they do, I know, but that's why I had to fence it off.
This whole model of the one or two buffalos per family
has sort of dissapeared because the older people no longer have the ability
to look after these wonderful beasts.
Now there is about four or five larger farms in Romania,
where they have more than 40 animals.
So what's happened is that they've just been disappearing.
Now buffalo milk is a thing of the past, people talk about it,
but nobody can find it.
Come and have a look at this guy.
-That's your bull. -This is my bull.
Hello, mate!
I got him when he was young, and he was so friendly,
he used to come as sort of do this kind of stuff when he was younger,
but now he is this size and it hurts.
People are a little bit worried about him, but he is not...
He's just got a very very nice character.
And this is what they do, they can't control the body heat,
so what they do is they go into the mud, they like the water,
so they are all sitting in the stream.
This is the milking herd so there are now about 30 here,
and the rest of them are up at the top of the hill, about another 130.
And those are primarily for meat?
No, they all sort of get into this milking cycle,
so when they calf they bring them down and put them with the milking herd.
So you'll see some young calves here also and they're all kept together.
I'm trying to keep them around the farm area
so they don't have to walk to much.
What's the difference in terms of the milk between buffalo and normal cattle.
A lot more fat content and its Omega 3, so it is very good fat,
and it's about 10%-8% fat, whereas the cow milk would be about 4.5.
That young girl will milk for 20 years,
whereas a cow might just do one milking cycle.
That's why tourism and my little house here, hopefully,
will assist me in keeping these lovely animals content for a few more years.
Charlie, this is the reclaimed house,
looks like a lot of work, but there's not really that much going.
You've got the main structure, haven't you?
What I've done is I've insulated it with clay straw,
but I just mix it like a salad dressing and I put it in here,
and than we plaster onto that.
I've done this with volunteers and all I'm doing now
is I'm putting the floor down, the kitchen, bathroom,
and then we are good to go.
Most of this stuff, the know-how comes from Youtube,
and than we test it out.
I love it, so you've been learning online how to build a semi cob house?
Yes, but than you know, experimenting with it as insulation.
I'd rather not buy what's in the shops at the moment,
and I would like it to be breathing with the natural ingredients.
Which is how it would have been.
And it's cheap and I'd just like to see if it is workable, and it is.
Yeah, so now we plasture on with lime plaster.
Put the floor down, decking and that's it.
Yeah.
And people come here to rent it out for a night or...?
I'd like longer term tourists, that's what I want.
People who say OK, I want to hang out in Romania for a bit,
to get the feel of the culture and that's the only way to do it.
They are surounded by nature.
You've got bears as you said coming round the house.
Yeah, I mean we've seen the bear from here last night.
So you haven't had a lot of help to set up the farm,
you've done it pretty much on your own.
Yeah, it's still very difficult to get things moving,
because most of the local people are leaving,
and they are working in Europe.
I mean the people that I've known here that helped me
have been really indispensable.
But finding people to work on a daily basis,
milking or feeding the animals,
or things like that it's gone.
They're all in London or Paris or somewhere in Germany cutting asparagus,
you know.
Which is why you've got volunteers coming from Western Europe,
to come and work here instead.
Exactly.
So if you have a yurt village up here, with this view,
people will wake up and maybe even see bears in the morning?
I'm sure, there are a lot of bears, every day we see bears here,
and some a bit too close, especially when the buffalo are up here,
and they are calving in this area, we really have to be quite careful.
I have bee hives a bit further down,
and last year we've lost four or five hives
because of the bears keep coming in.
-Just by the house. -Just by the house yeah, very fearless.
Is there much shooting, hunting?
Hunting. There's a guy over the hill over there and there's a bear hide,
but they shoot the bears.
Tourists pay money to go and shoot a bear
and it's called sport when you shoot the bear 20 meters away from a hide.
They shoot my dogs because my dogs got after the smell of the meat,
the dogs scare the bears off obviously
cause they are eating the meat that they put down for the bears,
and they shoot the dogs, so they don't come back.
And I've lost six dogs, I think.
I mean I haven't been up there for about a year,
and also after the last dog, I was quite sad.
-But now apparently... -It's illegal.
Apparently it's illegal, yes.
There's something there, look, just by the trees there.
I don't know what it is.
-It's a deer. -Yes, it's a deer is just crossing over.
Two valleys over from Crit is Racos, one of Transylvania's secret treasures.
Surrounded by breathtaking volcanic landscapes,
this Hungarian and Romanian speaking community
is custodian to Sukosd Bethlen, a crumbling Renaissance castle,
that is definitely worth a stop.
Be advised however,
the townsfolk have never had the funds to finish the restoration,
so you need to tread with a certain amount of care.
This is a health and safety disaster waiting to happen.
The problem is the local people were given money to do the repairs,
and then funds ran out.
Quite spectacularly!
You can see where there are no more beams here, just these struts.
Unfortunately,
they're unlikely to get more funds
which means this place is going to sit here and fall down again.
It's really sad that no one seems to care.
Why can't we make money available to rescue places like this,
so they can be preserved, restore them in the correct way,
so they can live again and be a fantastic addition to tourism in this area.
Think of all the people who would come and see this if it was done well.
Just outside Racos is an old slate quarry,
which provides an unlikely wild swimming destination,
complete with basalt pillars.
The perfect place to cool off after a few hours sightseeing.
Heading south east from Racos you pass vibrant villages,
with brightly painted houses and a traditional rural existence,
that still survives relatively unbothered by the pressures of modern living.
Except that twice a day, if you don't time it well,
there is still the very real danger of being caught up in the rush hour.
Each morning the local shepherds take charge of the collective herd,
and drive them out to graze the rich pastures outside the village.
And every evening they bring them back, sloshing up the highstreet,
udders fit to bursting.
Here in the village of Dacia, as with hundreds of other communities,
this daily ritual has endured unchanged for centuries.
This is one of the things I love the most about Transylvanian villages,
Saxon villages like this one.
It's not just Viscri, it happens all over the place.
The cows come home every evening
and they file off in their individual homes,
they know exactly where they're going.
Every animal has a sense of purpose,
dogs walk up and down the street to go and visit their mates,
even the horses find their way back to their own stables.
Who says that animals are dumb? Look at that.
Welcome to Cincsor,
a typical Saxon village, a short drive from the Brasov-Sibiu highway.
Like other Saxon communities,
many houses were left abandoned,
when its native population was invited to return to the motherland,
following the fall of Communism.
But lately it has become host to a steady stream of international visitors,
who stop in Cincsor for the night or even base themselves here for few days,
to explore the surrounding countryside.
And this is the reason why:
A collection of beautifully restored guesthouses,
that are helping to reinforce Transylvania's burgeoning reputation
as the new chic destination for cultural tourists.
I caught up with owner Michael Lisske.
Nice vegetable garden.
A lot of your vegetables are presumebly grown here?
Yes, we use the vegetables for the kitchen so we are not quite self suficient, but...
-Getting there. -Getting there, right.
So now we are in the parish house, the oldest building in the village.
-The rectory in fact, really. -Yes.
My wife and I live here permanently now.
Before we both had our normal occupations,
my wife a banker in Bucharest, I a teacher in Berlin,
and since last year we came here to stay.
I never regretted coming to Cincsor from Berlin.
The place itself, before, was rather boring,
then we've discovered first the wooden ceiling with old beams,
and then these frescoes on the wall.
It was all covered over before?
Yes, it was all covered, white washed, so we had no idea what to find here.
And when we renovated the place we discovered some of these frescoes,
and then we had experts from Bucharest University,
who uncovered these and fixated it.
They also assessed these as to be Transylvanian Renaissance,
from roughly 1560.
So pretty rare actually nowadays.
Yes. They told us that this was the only case that they so far knew,
that things like this can be found in the village,
and that also indicates that the priests who inhabited these buildings
always were models of good taste and all that.
And they clearly spoke Latin.
Yes. Although written in Gothic letters,
it is a Latin phrase and it says:
Novit Dominus viam justorum et iter impiorum peribit.
In English that would be:
"The Lord knows the way of the just, but the way of the unjust will perish."
Well, this place is now once again breathing and living.
I imagine it's been rather a bigger success than you first anticipated.
Yes, sometimes I like to compare it to having a child.
They cost much more than expected,
but in the end everything turns out well, and the parents are proud of their kids.
And this is the same with our guest houses here.
Have you noticed cultural tourism here booming or is it just me?
I'm seeing more and more people coming here every year from abroad,
and appreciating the culture and the traditions in villages like this.
Yes, this is a developing business.
We want to see more guests from Western Europe, from Germany,
Britain, France and so on.
So far the majority of our guests are Romanians from the Bucharest area,
but they come here because they find something about the history,
the past of their country that they don't know yet,
and this is something authentic that they really appreciate.
But also as well as a historical experience staying in a place like this,
you've also got to combine it with modern comfort, haven't you?
Yes. Perhaps we see that better in the other building, in our school,
so let's go there.
Come in.
The old school house.
Yes, we still have the old inscriptions in German and Hungarian.
Şcoala populară evanghelică.
What a magnificent library!
Yes, that's another of our showpieces here, in this building.
What inspired you to buy this place in the first instance?
It's a longer story.
It begins with my wife who was born and raised here,
but she emigrated to Germany in the 80's,
only to come back much later, business-related in the 2000's.
Then we discovered that this building,
the old school and the parish house were about to collapse.
So we thought we should do something about it.
There was a man who also intended to buy this building,
because he thought these big rooms
were ideal for a repair shop for tractors and agricultural machines.
And we didn't want that to happen, so we bought it to save it,
to maintain these buildings and in a way to secure them a future.
Then we had to think what to do with it and our idea was this guest house.
What was your inspiration with regards to the design?
We tried to combine traditional furniture,
the authentic Saxon spirit and atmosphere with modern living,
so you shouldn't have the feeling to live in a museum,
but still to live in a special place that has its own atmosphere.
-And I hope we've achieved that. -And plenty of reading material.
The reading material,
well, that's mostly a priest's library which we inherited.
But it also adds to the atmosphere of the room and our guests love this room.
I'm very envious,
I think having a library is one of the greatest luxuries of life.
I agree.
Leaving Cincsor behind, I drove northeast into the hills.
This is the Hartibaciu Highlands.
43,000 people live here in rural or semi urban areas,
many of which are encountering social, cultural and economic decline.
However, there is a foundation based in the village of Hosman,
which is working tirelessly to help reinvigorate the local economy,
by creating a group or brand of certified suppliers,
specialising in traditional crafts and home made produce.
I went to meet founder, Joachim Cotaru,
at his beautifully restored Saxon millhouse.
-Hi! -Hi!
Lovely to meet you.
Nice to meet you. Welcome to my humble abode.
-Thank you so much. -Come in.
So tell me, this is your base of operations here?
-Yeah. -What have you got going on?
This is the old mill complex and was always about local economy,
we have the bakery and we have the mill here.
You have the mill. So this is a working mill.
It's working, yeah.
-Very old equipment here. -It is, it is about 100-120 years.
Why did you reconstruct the mill?
Because we were asked in the beginning to do something about tourism.
And we said no, we don't want this, because, first of all,
we have to contribute in a way, if we can, to a stable local economy,
so a mill belongs to the village.
Tourism can contribute in a serious way to a local economy,
but we've have had in the beginning here
a region that suffered the exodus, and it was called,
the German speaking third of the population,
and a very depressive athmosphere.
So people here are coming because of this story of the last medieval landscape,
about peasantry.
So when you come to a village where everybody tells you I want to leave...
Yeah, and it's deserted. You have to have a thriving community first.
Yeah, and this is important.
We don't see it as an association, as an NGO and stuff,
we are a village, a local initiative of the village,
we want to live here, we want to make it nice for us,
and we have to create incomes,
and what can I do, this is pretty concrete.
What a piece of engineering! Does it work?
Technically, yes.
Unfortunately, I'm not able to look after it, but...
I imagine a lot of maintenance is required?
It's a lot of work to be done,
we have a small film always for events to show people actually that it works,
so if we find somebody, volunteering..
-Who's interested..... -They are prettty much welcome.
So you've noticed a lot of changes since you've moved here,
would you say this is now on the tourist map?
It is, but not only Hosman.
The Hartibaciu Valley is developing in that way, small steps, continuously.
Presumably, this is also why you started the brand "Hartibaciu with love"?
Yes, of course.
Actually we saw people
that were not connected to any of these programmes,
because they were illiterate, they had no cars, no driving license.
We gathered them here, we saw what kind of products they had,
we saw how they could sell, then we said how can we boost this?
How is that working at the moment?
At the moment we have almost 30 people that applied successfully for the brand,
because we have strict criterias.
But the people then should develop it, because people can and they know,
they are the specialists, not we.
So the idea is to bring everyone together under one umbrella?
Literally spoken, under one roof, so that is the new center.
-Right here? -Yeah. You want to see it?
-Love to. -Come.
-So, please. -It's a lovely space.
It is, and we try to keep as much as possible of the old design,
so legally it's an extension.
-Well that helps. -It helps.
It's kind of like a club house in a way.
That would be actually a good goal.
How do you decide who is eligible to be in the brand, on which criteria?
The criteria is small scale and local.
They are from the Hartibaciu Highlands,
and they don't have more than, I think, 200 employees.
Do you think that this smallscale production in rural areas
is the way that you are going to affect the regeneration of these villages?
I think small scale is the only way we can go,
because otherwise we will destroy the rural character.
The thing is to find ways to preserve small scale production like local...
Ceramics.
Drinks. The ceramic no, but the drink is from here.
Yeah. For me it is very important, in a vibrant area,
like Hartibaciu highlands,
that we have also a very active civil society
compared with ten years ago,
and this is a good chance for our region.
I think is amazing what you guys are doing, bringing people together,
and also establishing an economic model for rural areas,
which I think could be rolled out to other parts of Romania successfully.
Would you like to see this happening with different regions and more associations,
and more brands like this springing up?
Of course, and not only in Romania,
I mean, we are not unique in that way,
because rural areas all over Europe are facing the problem,
but one thing is that it was not me doing this.
I'm just a link in the chain.
Actually, the Hartibaciu people from the region,
they made things possible.
Well, all I can say is I think what you are doing here is fantastic,
it's surely got to present a viable option for the future.
I hope it is, yeah, thank you.
-Cheers! -Cheers! Nice to have you here.
When I started this journey,
I wanted to try to see whether eco-tourism could provide a solution
for regenerating rural areas.
Having had that conversation,
I realise that it is also about stimulating the local economy,
helping people start up small businesses,
and these two things need to go hand in hand.
Unfortunately, people are taxed from the first Lei that they earn,
so perhaps an answer could be to provide tax incentives,
as with other European countries, just to give them a start.
It's a thought.
One of the successful new Hartibaciu entrepreneurs
is wedding photographer Adina Postatny,
who moved from Sibiu to the neighbouring village of Chirpar,
and now spends the majority of her days
recreating traditional Saxon painted furniture.
Adina, how did you first discover your passion for painted furniture?
I've discovered this kind of painting in my grandma's house.
There were pieces of furniture painted like this,
and after that I went on a course.
In the old days the Saxons didn't let anybody else to do this painting,
did they?
No, only Saxons could learn this kind of paintings, now...
-It's opened up. -Yes, it's opened up.
-And everyone can try. -Yes.
There is a lot of symbolism involved in these designs.
Yes. Roses are a symbol for love,
daisies are purity and tulips are pride.
-Does it vary from place to place? -Yes.
Because in every region of Transylvania there are different kinds of painting.
-From... -From Brasov, for example, yes.
-You've created your stencil already? -Yes.
From some designs like this?
From some designs from a museum in Sibiu.
Very nice. And then you have to meticulously having traced it,
score these points out with a needle.
-Yes. -OK.
Look at that, oh, that's beautiful.
How clever and then you literally go round it.
Yes.
-With the painting there so you can check. -Yes.
So you and your husband were wedding photographers by trade.
Yes.
So this is a big departure.
Yes. I wanted to do something with my freetime.
I started first for my friends and for our house.
And they obviously loved it, so you got a big demand for it.
Yes.
It's lovely that there is a demand now for this kind of art.
Yes, of course because it's a great tradition and it's a pity to be lost.
I'm worried about asking you too many questions
because you have to focus, I know.
I know.
And this is an incredibly difficult thing to do it seems,
having a very steady hand, I wouldn't like to try doing this myself.
I think if you try it's not very hard.
Yeah, but it's taken you 15 years to do this.
Not so much.
So you were up and running quite quickly with it.
-Yes. -OK. What is this specific design?
This is a symbol of a tree of life.
It goes from a pot and after that we have some stylized roses and...
-...carnations and more flowers. -Carnations and teardrops.
So it's a sort of floral display representing stages of life?
Yes.
So this is a design that obviously in its own way
is reproduced all over the world in different forms?
You know Peru, in India, everyone has their tree of life.
Yes.
But this is the first tree of life that I've seen in a pot.
I've got to be honest, I've never seen a potted tree of life before,
but obviously for the Saxons the pot was an important symbol.
Maybe it was something like security because a lot of saxons moved,
after a period of time.
Maybe that's the reason why, you know.
-Maybe. -Yeah.
I may have to comission you at some point. Thank you so much.
-You are welcome. -Good luck.
Most people would agree
that ancient monuments should be restored the correct way,
using traditional skills and materials.
But it's quite another thing to use these techniques to create something new.
At the foot of the Fagaras mountains, in the village of Porumbacu de Sus,
is a buidling that's rapidly becoming
one of the most iconic curiosities in Transylvania.
And a great backdrop should Peter Jackson
decide to make any more films about elves and hobbits.
My inner nerd demanded to know more, so I arranged to meet the owner,
to find out what on earth he was thinking.
Well, I think this redefines the expression fairytale house.
-Hello, Charlie. -Hi.
-Glad to meet you. -Me too.
-Welcome! -Congratulations.
Thank you very much.
So what made you build this fantastic house.
What's the inspiration?
The inspiration came from this place.
I looked for architects to design some fairy-tale stuff.
I changed five of them.
Eventually I found a lady architect who understood precisely what we wanted,
Ileana Mavrodin.
Who we are going to meet later in the programme.
Yes, super!
Architecturally speaking,
we have a combination of the dwarfs' house in Snow White
and mountain picks.
So you have the river and the mountains and it's a magical setting.
Yes.
This is a bit of a departure for you,
because your background is Bucharest and advertising,
so this is a complete change of life.
Yes.
I really wanted to change my life.
I worked with two of the best advertising companies as a production manager.
Afterwards I quit and establish my own advertising company.
The stress of city life,
running around every day, made me want a life change,
both to me and my family, my kid.
I have a nine year old son,
and I thought it was much better to live our life in nature.
Coming from a city,
we know what a person living between concrete walls wants,
and from the very beginning we planned to have a hotel here,
and on the other side we'll have a restaurant.
Me and Ileana decided to work with natural materials,
and finally we wanted to show that clay houses
can be more comfortable than modern houses.
So was it difficult to do?
It's much more difficult to build with traditional materials,
than with conventional ones.
The shingle, the roof you see, is made up of 80,000 handmade pieces.
Walls are made of rammed earth,
they are 60 centimeters thick outside, and 45 centimeters thick indoors.
There's a wooden structure inside,
thick pillars as you see at the restaurant.
Everything is covered with clay mixed with straws.
A big advantage is that the air inside is very good, fresh.
Another advantage is that such houses hold constant humidity indoors.
When you wake up in the morning you don't feel a dry nose or a dry throat.
Are you surprised by how many people are coming here?
As we built something different,
people are very interested in something new.
Actually this new is an old new.
People have been very curious to see, to take pictures here, selfies.
Yeah, everyone takes selfies everywhere.
Yes.
The local community, the people living here,
what was their reaction to what you are doing?
We would have liked that peoples' reaction in the village, in the area,
to be, let's say, more positive.
By coming of many tourists here,
they could have earned money with our help,
sold a bag of potatoes, onions, eggs...
Yes, it's an opportunity.
Indeed, its an opportunity for them.
However, many complain that too many cars pass by,
raise dust, block the road.
That's why there've been some tensions.
I feel for the them, maybe some of them are absolutely right.
They want to go home, but they can't,
as some visitors are not so civilised and park all over the place,
and thus they block the road.
Hopefully, we'll find a sollution.
So I know you haven't finished yet, but I'd love to go and have a look around.
-May I go and explore? -OK.
-Thank you very much. -Nice to meet you, Razvan.
So as Razvan said, it's definitely not finished,
but this is the traditional method of building houses,
that goes back thousands of years,
and we are going to be looking at that in a bit more detail,
later on in the series.
But for now this is a working progress
and I can't wait to see it, when it's finished.
I know Razvan thinks it's Snow White,
but for me this is definitely Lord of the Rings.
Rivendell, the last homely house.
For my last stop on our Transylvania odyssey,
I needed to drive three hours east to an ex hunting lodge,
a few miles from Bixad,
converted by the Mikes Estate into a picturesque eco-retreat.
Guests can enjoy a night in rustic comfort,
deep in the forest with roaring fires, candelight, and thanks to solar power,
Wifi for those who can't survive without it.
The surrounding deck affords views out across an alpine meadow,
where with a little patience you can spot all manner of Carpathian fauna.
My mission however is more specific.
I am here to meet guide and wildlife expert Balazs,
who is going to help me fulfil the dream of a lifetime.
to track down the European Brown bear in the wild.
This is not an easy thing to do,
unless you go to one of Romania's growing number of bearhides.
To catch bears, unawares on foot, and out in the open,
requires patience, skill and a lot of local knowledge.
Until recently,
these majestic creatures were under threat from hunting and poaching,
with trophy kills fetching as much as 15,000 euros for an adult male.
Now the bear population seems to be making a comeback.
And as long as they remain protected,
this noble predator will continue to attract wildlife enthusiasts,
keen to experience one of the last places left in Europe,
where they can still be seen wandering the countryside.
This is what I love the most about the wilderness in Romania,
you just find the wildlife, sneak up on it,
and you shoot it with a camera.
This is one of the last places in Europe that has bears and wolves and lynx,
so why kill them?
Why not protect them, celebrate them and bring people in to view them.
People pay 50 euros per head just to see a bear in the wild,
or even in a bear hide.
We are here, look no hide.
Open countryside and there it is.
And it's a beautiful feeling sharing the planet with these majestic creatures.
We should be allowing them to live and enjoy this fantastic landscape,
just as we do and also we can profit from it too.
By protecting them and preserving them,
we can help people living in these villages to earn a sustenable income.
If we kill them all, that's it.
Join us again next week when we head to the far west of Romania,
to explore the less well known backroads of Banat and Crisana,
home to historic cities like Timisoara,
ancient cave systems, mysterious tunnels,
cob houses and geothermal spas.
I will be perusing Romania's oldest brewery,
walking in the footsteps of kings and queens,
and trying to play the violin and the trumpet, at the same time.
All this and far more in Flavours Of Romania.