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.
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.
Welcome back to our eight part road trip of Romania's historic regions,
in which we discover fabulous treasures, natural wonders, medieval marvels,
mouth watering dishes,
and meet the people that make this
one of the warmest and most hospitable nations in the world.
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.
In this our penultimate episode,
we reach the remote and beautiful Maramures,
a region that has stoically resisted the influence of everyone,
from Emperor Trajan, right up to Ceausescu.
Until 1920 eighty percent of its surface was covered in forest.
Even today the Maramamures is a largely sylvan landscape,
punctuated by meadows and mountains, ancient villages,
and carved wooden churches,
a place that until now has always had its own indelible identity.
But this is beginning to change. I've come here to see how,
and to find out if a balance can be achieved
between capitalism and conservation.
A good place from which to start your tour of the Maramures is Baia Mare,
often described as the 'gateway' to this region.
The foundations of the city were built on 2,000 years of mining precious metals.
Like Timisoara, it is now busy reinventing itself,
shrugging off the cobwebs of its industrial past,
or failing that, making a feature out of them,
as with plans to rehabilitate its remaining derelict areas
as public spaces.
Much of the old town has already been restored,
like Citadel Square,
from which Stephen's Tower rises skywards
and ensured that, before the invention of the wristwatch,
the good people of Baia Mare need only look up to be able to tell the time.
This was originally the bell tower for St Stephen's Church built in 1347.
However, repeated lightning attacks
eventually resulted in the destruction of the nave,
and the tower losing its Baroque dome and getting a neo-Gothic redesign.
Now that is a bell.
Because we are running a bit late,
and I don't know how long Baia Mare stays open and there's so much to see,
I think we are going to have to reset everybody's watch.
It's just rung two o'clock,
so if I ring one o'clock it buys us an extra hour.
And confuses the hell out of people. Never mind.
It's now open to the public,
so I thought I'd get a bird's eye view of my surroundings.
Oh, my God, what a view!
You know you don't need an helicopter to see this city from the air,
you just need to come up here.
And the old town is looking really stunning.
What a great job they've done!
The problem with keys is that they are quite easy to lose.
Sometimes they can be in your pocket and you don't even feel them.
Ah, there we go.
The focal point of the city is the central square,
which provides a meeting point and social confluence for café society,
as well as a fun place to come and people watch.
At the weekends there are usually live events,
like this Hungarian music festival
and craft market.
With the steady increase in visitors,
more bars, cafes and restaurants are opening across the city,
lending many areas a progressive, cosmopolitan feel.
This also means more wine is consumed, giving rise to events like this one,
where buyers come to taste Romania's growing selection of fine cuvees.
Driving out of Baia Mare,
you get an idea of what an industrial hub this city must have been.
And how many thousands of people lost their jobs,
as the factories started to close down with the fall of Communism,
and subsequent stricter EU regulations.
It has left an eerie post-apocalyptic landscape,
that serves as a reminder of the impartiality of time.
To get my first taste of the Maramures,
I'm heading south to meet a friend in the small town of Targu Lapus,
but there are a couple of things worth seeing along the way,
the first of which is the Florean Museum, an open air contemporary sculpture park,
hidden in a forest, the other side of Cernesti.
Getting there requires a stunning arboreal drive down a long dirt road.
The main activity of the museum centres on promoting new talent,
both here and online.
But you don't need to be an aficionado of modern art
to appreciate the splendour of this leafy setting.
It's also a perfect place to come and take a stroll,
or sit and ponder the inexplicable.
To paraphrase Forest Gump:
"The Maramures is like a box of chocolates."
"You never know what you are going to find."
I certainly didn't expect to find this.
There can't be many museums or sculpture parks in Europe,
where you can admire a bit of modern art and also potentially see a bear.
Back on the road again I had one more stop to make.
It's bad manners to arrive at someone's house without bringing a gift,
particularly in a region where everyone is so hospitable.
Luckily, there is one of the most panoramic cheese shops in Romania,
located on a bend overlooking Targu Lapus.
Wow, what a wonderful spread of cheese.
So this is a sheep and goat cheese mix.
It's young, it's more like a mozzarella in taste, it's very gentle, very nice.
A lot more salt in that,
this would go very nicely with chopped tomatoes,
a drizzle of olive oil, maybe some garlic on a bruschetta.
Half a kilo of each.
-Of all of them. -Yes.
At least I've got something to bring my friend Demi and his mum.
I come bearing gifts.
-Thank you. -Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Armed and dangerous.
Thank you.
Armed with dairy produce,
I proceeded to the birthplace of friend and restauranteur Marian Demian,
whose mother was preparing a unique flavour of the Maramures,
an unusual take on the classic recipe for sarmales.
Demi, what was it like growing up here?
Ah, quite difficult.
It was tough at times because there was no electricity,
the light was going at seven o'clock,
and maybe if you were lucky, it was back at 10:00 p.m.
The bread was only black at the time, white was for Christams.
It was everything rationed.
I remember one kg of sugar each had, 800 gr of rice.
And when did you decide to leave and how did you come to the think
"right I'm going to go to London, I'm going to do all these other things."
I was 18 when I finished high school and then I went into the military,
and then I made it to university.
And it was like 1986 when I left first, Ceausescu was in full power then.
So you basically had to sneak out of the country?
Yeah, when I left from Romania,
I hid myself under the luggage of the English people.
-You hid under the luggage? -Yeah, yeah.
So you lived in Italy for a while, moved to London,
and now you've come back and you are living in Bucharest,
you are building a house in Baia Mare.
How has it changed for you?
For this place it's like an involution.
I don't say that it was better in Ceausescu's time,
but now people are not living anymore in this community.
From 17,000 or 18,000, now I think we are 8,000.
So there's been an exodus?
Yeah. They've left not only this city, they've left Romania. And this is bad.
Do you think you'll end up here again?
Yes, because in my opinion,
now the future it's back to the past, yeah.
My mother she's living alone, my father passed away.
Everybody is on Airbnb, but just to sleep,
so my mother will be more than happy having two or three people at a time,
coming from all over the world, paying a small amount of money
to have the style of life that we are living here.
And in this town are maybe two pensions.
-That's all? -That's all, yeah.
So there are incredible things to see,
but there's no infrastructure for people to get here and appreciate it?
Yes, nobody is thinking about a big project for Maramures.
One week here and you recharge your batteries because it's quiet here,
it's a quiet city.
And you can stay with the local people, and you walk and you hike.
-Yes, nobody thinks of this. -So you think tourism can save Romania?
Yeah.
Does your mum need any help do you think?
I don't think so because she is strong enough.
Well in that case...
Good health!
Cheers and thank you for the publicity you do for Romania.
This is beautiful.
-She's my mother! -Okay.
Cheers!
Good sound.
Wow, look at that!
So, the camera cannot, you cannot feel the smell.
-We don't have smellevision! -No.
Well, let me just tell you that this smells fantastic.
How do I tell your mum that this smells fantastic in Romanian?
-Smells good! -Smells good!
Everything that's inside here comes from...
Has come from about 100 square yards. Thank you so much.
-Do you like it? -Very much! Thank you.
This recipe was supposed to be lost, because it's from my grandma,
she's not doing it anymore, only by request.
And I've asked her not to lose it.
I think we'll keep it.
We have it on camera, you've seen it here
so everyone in Romania has the chance to be able to do this themselves.
Like I said before, back to the tradition,
people have to come back to the traditions,
this is the future of the tourism.
And for me it's the most fantastic country in the world,
because it has these traditions and these recipes and this culture,
and this food and music and everything.
We still are this. Not everything is lost.
Should be OK.
Thank you so much!
One of the exciting and inspiring things about rural life in the Maramures,
for an outsider like me, is that people here are so welcoming.
Whether it's thousands of years of relative independence
that makes them fearless of strangers,
or whether there is just an inherent kindness that's instilled from birth,
one immediately feels at home.
But it's also the palpable sense of pride
people have in their heritage, and way of life.
You can experience this in the towns and villages,
but maybe most of all
among those who choose to spend their days and nights out in the wilds,
committed to a pastoral existence,
that stubbornly and heroically resists the compromises of modern life.
Demi took me to meet some friends of his, who incapsulate these values.
We got there as they were bringing in the sheep for the night.
So, Demi how long do these guys spend out here in the wild?
How long do you stay with the sheep?
Six and a half months.
Six and a half months, starting from April. End of April.
Till November 15.
We gather the herds from all over the village.
So, basically it functions like this,
all the village, some have five, some have twenty,
and everybody puts together the sheep and they come into the mountain.
And they look after the sheep for everybody.
Presumably they all get time to go down to the village,
and spend the odd night with their wives.
-No, it doesn't function like this. -No?
The wives are coming up here from time to time.
The wives are coming up to see them.
So the wives do shifts, rather than the shepherds
Yes.
-We are living modern times. -Indeed.
It must be quite a change of lifestyle for them.
In the winter they are down in the villages,
and in the summer are up on the mountain sides.
It must be a very tiring way of living.
Do they get wolves and bears coming and taking sheep here?
Have you got any trouble with wolves lately?
Yes, we have.
At the beginning of spring wolves started attacking,
they are more and more numerous.
But the danger is higher in the autumn,
when they can't hunt deer any longer,
so they attack our sheepfold.
They are coming very often.
Because they are trying to get fat for the winter?
Yeah.
But we've got very good protection. We have excellent shepherd dogs,
trained to fight wild animals and to protect the sheepfold.
As we use to say, there's no sheepfold without dogs,
they are the rulers of the sheepfold, our dogs.
Tell me does he feel that this lifestyle,
the role of the shepherd in modern Romania is it dying out?
It is an endangered trade, but, hopefully, it will be better.
We are used to work hard and we continue to have trust in ourselves,
in what we do as peasants, we don't lose hope, we work.
I give you his example because I know him personally.
He used to have a big restaurant near here, near Baia Mare,
a very big restaurant.
He quit everything and he moved here. He changed his life.
To live this life. So this is almost retiring from the city,
and coming to live the pastoral existence?
This will be his life until he will pass away.
At the beginning of my life,
I attended the most important catering school in Constanta.
After being a shepherd,
I made it to the Constanta casino, I worked there as a waiter.
That was my beginning,
but I created my future by means of my accomplishments.
Well, it's really lovely to be able to see people who are educated,
and self-made and successful,
who've actually chosen to live a simple, beautiful life,
albeit with its hardship somewhere like this.
And in my opinion they are happier than many people out there, in the world.
I think Romania will not lose these kind of things,
because more people like him are coming back to nature.
Looking at them I am absolutely convinced of it.
Because if you come tomorrow morning, at six o'clock,
when they are milking the sheep, will be full happiness.
-They are not stressed. -No.
The only thing is maybe if it's raining, it's a bit annoying.
-Or you run out of palinca. -They never run out of palinca.
-On which note... -Never.
-It's time to have some palinca. -That's right!
-Horinca. -Palinca.
Green horinca I did drink.
What's the difference, palinca, horinca?
In Maramures we call it horinca,
in Bihor and further down to the West, it is called palinca.
-There's no difference, it's the same. -It's the same thing.
We call it horinca, others call it palinca.
Charlie, that's how we drink it.
You should do the same.
If you don't drink like this,
we won't allow you to sleep under our roof,
under the stars, you know.
-Cheers! -Cheers!
I could definitely get used to this way of life.
Your visit made us happy.
In three years' time I'll be 70.
Before I grow older,
I'm looking forward to seeing you again here.
I would love to come back for a week here next year, that would be so much fun.
-Cheers! -Cheers!
Bravo!
Before leaving the Targu Lapus region,
I had one more stop to make the following morning,
in the village of Suciu,
to track down the much sought after recipe for Maramures corn bread.
This is the house of Nechita Ludovica, who keeps this tradition alive,
by regularly supplying friends and family with this most moorish of delicacies.
The bread is prepared by blending
one kilogramme of corn flour with 300 grams of flour,
300 grams of boiled and mashed potatoes along with the water they were boiled in,
a handful of salt, a tablespoon of sugar and 50 grams of yeast.
This is sifted together and left to rise for half an hour,
before being poured into oiled tins and glazed with a mixture of plain flower,
corn flower and water.
The tins are then put in a preheated oven or prelit fire at around 200 degrees,
for between one and a half to two hours, checking regularly.
Corn bread was the basic food of our ancestors, our grandparents,
but now corn bread is a luxury food.
We hope this ancient recipe won't be lost.
It's much healthier eating bread made in this traditional way, isn't it?
Indeed, corn bread is much healthier than the bread you buy in stores.
You can see
that as our elders lived to 90, 100 years old.
However, we are not so healthy, with high cholesterol and other diseases.
Our youth would like to eat corn bread, but they leave for schools,
even my children are studying abroad, and they don't know how to make it.
You need to know the recipe, and also it's time consuming.
But it's worth taking the time,
because the bread lasts much longer than commercial bread.
Indeed. Corn bread lasts as long as one week, it's still good.
Except of course, it doesn't last as long because it's more delicious,
and you eat it quicker.
Yeah, look at the colours on that! That's almost like a sunset.
OK, the moment of truth.
You can taste the corn, it's very sweet because it's been cooked.
I think because it's just out of the oven it's quite crumbly, it's quite soft,
but apparently when it cools down you can slice it,
and have it just like you would with normal bread on just about anything.
It's got many applications.
The recipe is there, you've seen how to do it,
you know how to get the ingredients, it's easy to do, it just takes time.
But it's worth doing. Brilliant!
Back on the road again it was time to drive north, deeper into the Maramures,
and further into the past.
My next stop is Breb,
described as one of the region's most beautiful wooden villages
in William Blacker's acclaimed book Along The Enchanted Way.
I wanted to see how it had changed in the years since William's first visit,
in 1990.
For which of course, I required the assistance of the author.
Things have changed a lot here, I must say.
I mean like this house here,
this enormous house was a garden with this beautiful little wooden house,
in the middle of it.
Then the old lady died and the house came down straight away,
and they started building this.
And then all way up this road it's the same story.
So it was like a street here.
Yes, basically the whole of this road was wooden houses,
and now they've all gone.
So this is where they make the...
-The wooden tiles. -Shingles, yeah.
Is that what you call them, shingles?
Shingles in English, dranite here in Maramures,
sindrile or site in the rest of Romania.
-Right. Now you are just showing off... -Lots of different names.
-Look at that! -It's a pile.
Are they expensive? How much is one of those?
-Six bani. -Is not very much.
But you do need a lot of them, don't you?
Yeah, and this is Mihai making them.
-Hi. -Good evening.
-How are you doing? -Working.
Very good!
So he is smoothing them out,
making different shapes for different parts of the roof,
and then smoothing them out so the water runs off them.
It is not difficult, but you have to love this work.
Yes?
So it doesn't take him long to make one?
We prefer to work.
Yes, but this is the second part of it, first you have to split them.
Yeah, from one of these.
And then this process goes on with razor sharp tools.
Yeah, absolutely. You wouldn't want to mess around with that.
-And they'll last for 30 years? -20 to 25 years, something like that.
So, same lifespan as thatch?
Yeah, and it also depends where you cut the pine tree,
if it's from the Northern slope or the Southern slope.
-So there's a real science to it. -Yeah.
-Good health! -Thank you!
-Come and visit us again! -All right.
A priceless and irreplaceable landmark is the church of the Holy Archangels,
and has one of the oldest wooden towers in the country.
The construction of a larger modern replacement
has meant it sees less and less use,
and fewer funds are available for its maintenance and restoration.
Sadly, this is having catastrophic results.
So as you can see it needs a few repairs here at the front.
A bit of TLC. And this is the priest house here, yes?
That is the priest's house. It was built in 1903, in fact.
And then the church in 1620 and the roof of the church looks...
Looks terrible. I mean obviously along of the ridge,
that's where's where the problem is, isn't it?
When the water starts getting in.
Yes, as you can see the shingles are quite shredded now.
It must be raining inside in quite a few places.
It's quite a big job, isn't it? What's the plan?
I mean with my foundation I'm sure we can donate money.
Prince Charles has offered to help, as well.
It's all part of this idea of protecting and helping protect
the Orthodox wooden churches in Romania, which we started last year.
And hopefully,
we can convince people in the community to give some money as well.
Undoubtedly, they will.
I mean I've already talked to quite a few people,
and they are very happy to help, of course, because it's their church,
and it would be terrible after 400 years, suddenly for it to disappear
under their watch.
And if we succeed here with the community,
it's a good example to all the other places around Romania,
which have churches which are in a lot worse condition even than this.
Judging by the number of people that want to come and see churches of this age,
it's really an investment in people's future here,
because it brings tourists and that brings money into the community.
Yeah, this is the centre of the old village,
and when people come to Breb nowadays,
this is the sort of thing that they came to see,
the old wooden buildings, the old wooden church
and, of course, the people and the traditional way of life.
-Can we have a look inside? -Yes, I'll lead on.
So you must have been to lots of services here?
Yes, I did, I've been to lots.
It was always absolutely crammed with people,
wearing in the winter their big heavy hairy coats.
And when one knelt down to pray
they would tickle one's nose.
It is sad to see a lot of these beautiful icons
are falling prey to what presumes is rot.
Yes, it's clear there is rain getting in
and, obviously, with time, it's going to get worse.
Let's go and have a look at the priest's house.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean it's one of the most impressive wooden priests houses,
left here in the Maramures.
It would be nice to see it occupied by somebody,
because buildings that are lived in obviously survive a lot longer,
don't they?
Absolutely, I don't know who would live in it now, but it's possible,
it's a beautiful house.
I mean the priest lives up next to the new church now.
In a modern house.
But they need to be looked after
for all the same reasons that we were discussing earlier,
how they bring people to these villages,
and bring therefore a new form of prosperity.
But of course, as we can see and hear,
there are buildings like this popping up all over the place as well.
I think that's another guest house,
it doesn't look like a private residence, does it?
I have no idea. I mean previously there was a beautiful wooden house here,
lived in by two lovely old ladies,
and the photograph is in my book, actually,
of them standing up against the house which is now no longer there.
So I guess the message is to people
come here and see what remains of these beautiful wooden villages,
because in a few years time they may be gone altogether.
Yes, absolutely.
But also the people are so wonderfully welcoming,
and the old way of life still continues,
so it's still a fascinating place,
even though some of these monstrous buildings
don't really seem to quite fit in with that.
Well, in the meantime,
let's get on with trying to save the church.
-Absolutely. Step by step. -Step by step.
-Thank you so much, William. -Not at all.
I really appreciate your taking time.
Thankfully, some businesses are waking up
to the opportunities offered by preserving old buildings.
This the Village Hotel eco-lodge, also in Breb,
which offers visitors a chance to spend a night in a traditional wooden house.
Thanks to the efforts of the British owners, Duncan and Penelope Ridgely,
these houses have been rescued from becoming firewood
or even exported to become floorboards,
instead serving as a permanent fixture for the tourist circuit,
safe for the time being from destruction.
Just down the road from Breb is Budesti,
another community that has changed noticeably since I first came here,
in 2013.
But while many wooden houses have been substituted with concrete and bricks,
several surviving structures are attracting busloads of sightseers.
For example its wooden church and traditional water mill,
make Budesti a popular stop on tours of this region.
This working mill serves several purposes.
Depending on which lever you pull and how you direct the flow of water,
it is either used for grinding corn, wheat or barley by pushing a millstone,
or by switching mode it powers giant pistons to pulverise sheeps wool,
resulting in a coarse felt that's used in clothing and general fabric production.
Thanks to Budesti's growing popularity as a destination,
several working museums have now opened up,
where you can also buy hand-crafted traditional goods,
and even watch them being made.
Not far from Budesti, Breb and Calinesti,
is the neighbouring town of Ocna Sugatag.
Market day is Saturday, and people flock here
from the surrounding countryside to buy and sell cloths, livestock,
leather goods and assorted paraphernalia.
This is a chance to catch up on all the gossip, find a bargain,
and fill your shopping bag with everything,
from ornamental wine cosies to live pigs.
She is meek.
She won't do you any harm. Does the gentleman speak Romanian?
Forest colours, nice.
Yes, this one. That's nice.
I think I'll have that one as well. Yeah. Perfect.
Not ideal for a motorbike, but who cares.
The thing with these markets is finding the bargain,
because there's something here for everybody,
and you have to just look
until you can focus in on that special thing that's got your name on it.
I think I found it.
Thank you very much.
We've got a bargain.
Perhaps the main reason
why the Maramures attracts so many foreign visitors
is because of its extraordinary wooden churches.
Eight of which are now Unesco World Heritage sites.
For me, the most beautiful of these is the church of Surdesti,
which until very recently was the tallest in Europe.
One of the things that always gets me about churchyards is tombstones.
They are there for the living and their descendants,
not for the dead because, eventually,
they wind up like this.
Faded of any inscription,
covered in moss, leaning over, just stone.
And anyone who'd remember who's buried underneath is long since gone themselves.
It's sad but it's a very good example of the relentlessness of time.
It is an arresting thought that until a few decades ago,
the majority of the houses and churches in the Maramures were made of wood.
Today most of the forests that supplied the raw materials
for this historic landscape have been destroyed.
And with the worldwide demand for timber and flat pack furniture only increasing,
what is left may soon be just a memory.
You can see from a satellite map a huge brown splotch,
south of the Ukraine border,
that marks the hundreds of square miles of illegal clear fell.
To get a closer look, I drove to a small airfield outside Bistrita,
to meet friend and pilot Adrian Moisa,
who very kindly offered to fly me over part of the dead zone.
Adrian, thank you for coming all way from Bucharest.
Well, thank you for what you are doing. We have to leave pretty quickly.
Yes.
Current forestry law states
that mixed forest should be selectively felled,
and that it's completely illegal to clearfell spruce,
to any greater area than one square kilometre.
After that you need to leave an equal area of surrounding forest,
to ensure proper regrowth and maintain stability of the topsoil.
But flying over this devastation,
you can see entire mountains and valleys that have just been stripped bare.
It now makes sense,
the satellite pictures where you see the Ukraine as green,
and this side of the border just brown.
Yeah, you see a clear limit where the Ukraine is,
they still have the forests and here, on our side,
you just have miles and miles of devastation.
Well, listen, thank you so much for doing that!
Yeah, you're welcome and thank you for documenting all this.
-Not at all. -And helping us!
You show these things to people, and people can have a reaction.
Seeing this ravaged landscape from the relative safety of an aircraft,
is one thing,
but to really appreciate the magnitude of the problem,
we had to try to get in there by land.
This is not an easy or safe thing to do,
especially with a camera crew, as many people advised us.
However with the help of fellow conservationist Andrei Ciurcanu,
we followed the logging tracks deep into the mountains above Borsa,
in search of the area I had just flown over.
So we should be a bit careful around this area.
I'm pretty sure that they know by now that there's a foreign car.
-That we are here. -Yeah.
It really doesn't matter if you are a policeman,
if you are a prosecutor,
if you're an official from the prefecture or from the city council.
They are not interested. If you are a menace to them,
if you put in danger their business, they are going to, you know...
-Threaten you. -Threaten you and try...
-To push you away. -Yeah.
There are ten to 12 thousand hectares of forest that was illegally cut.
And if you make the calculations, from this 12 thousand hectares of wood
they harvested almost 3.5 million cubic meters.
That's 250 million euros and we are talking about rough logs,
we are not talking about timber because when you add value...
It's even more than that.
Yeah, it's over 700 million euros.
That means that 87 thousand trucks left this area.
87,000!
-And no one got prosecuted. -No one got prosecuted.
Everyone knows what happened here,
from locals, from town officials, politicians.
And until now,
I don't have one single case of a guy that illegally cut the forest
that was prosecuted and punished for it.
Nobody paid.
If you calculate the length of these 87 thousand trucks,
you get the distance between Bucharest and Las Vegas.
This is, you know, mind blowing.
Well, it's everywhere you look, isn't it?
Unfortunately.
You can see on the mountains, the leftovers.
They were not interested in the small ones,
they were interested in the big healthy ones.
Because those are the ones that bring the money.
They've basically raped this entire landscape,
I mean everywhere you look.
It's one of the most affected areas in Maramures.
It's dangerous being here now.
Two or three months ago they attacked a policeman.
They beat up a policeman?
Yeah, he was following the truck with illegal logs,
and he got beaten up pretty bad.
Have you had problems yourself?
Yeah, I almost got my head cracked open in Apuseni,
and I was asking what is happening in the forest,
why did the forest disappeared?
The bizarre thing is that Ukraine,
with all its political problems and everything else,
that side is just green.
You know why? Because they didn't accept the big companies
to come into their own country,
and to enforce their own policy of doing business.
The locals, they really understand the value of the forest,
that they have to protect it,
and they have to harvest it obeying the law.
This is what I've said in previous documentaries that we've made,
that Romania is what the Scotish highlands used to be,
but it's fast turning into the same thing.
Unfortunately. And we are talking about old money,
we are talking about money, we are talking about interest,
we're talking about low level corruption, high level corruption.
We are talking about, basically, the money.
You know there is a saying in investigative journalism:
follow the money.
If you follow the money,
you find the right guys, as in the bad guys.
But unfortunately, there are so few people...
Who are prepared to do that.
Who will risk their necks doing that, basically.
Yeah. Believe me, we are here and we are risking.
-I know. -We are risking now.
It's really sad to watch this transition,
is so obvious here, it's so clear what's going on.
And it seems like it's unstoppable. I mean the scale of this.
And I don't know what people are going to be able to do about it.
Unfortunately.
The thing is that this is a legacy for Romania's future, this landscape,
and there's not going to be anything for the people living in these area,
you know their kids and their grandchildren,
what are they going to do?
Because there's not going to be any wood to cut down.
It's not just about the wood,
it's about wildlife that should live inside these forests.
No ecosystem and, of course, then no tourists.
Yeah, of course.
Why would tourists come here to see these clear fells?
You see the chainsaw? You heard it?
This is now the sound, the natural sound in these mountains.
The sound of the chainsaw.
No bird is singing, you see?
Nothing.
There goes another tree.
One of millions of trees that once grew around these mountains,
and are now somebody's flat pack furniture.
Most of those people that go and buy furniture,
they really don't know what kind of products they are buying.
They don't know that they are buying, you know,
furniture made out of illegal wood
or from very old virgin forests in national parks
or something like that.
They started logging here ten years ago and the forest disappeared.
You have no vegetation here, look.
So, Andrei, what can be done?
The first thing is to enforce the law, to apply it.
If you are going to apply it then one should see villains behind bars.
But also, they have to acknowledge that they have to stop,
because they won't have a forest to show to their children,
to their grandchildren.
This has to be done.
This really has to be done.
Well, on that note,
I think we've probably pushed our luck as far as it will go.
We might want to make a tactical retreat.
It would be wiser, believe me.
OK, thank you for taking me here.
This brings it into very sharp relief,
it's a journey that we needed to take,
and really I am glad and desperately depressed to be here.
Join us next week,
as we complete our odyssey across this wild and wonderful country.
We will be exploring Bucovina,
and seeing how tourism is flourishing, thanks to new ideas,
and the preservation of ancient or more recent traditions.
Only in Flavours of Romania.
Since the making of this program,
we are pleased to announce that money has now been raised,
to repair the roof of the wooden church in Breb,
thanks in large part to donations from his Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales.