Rosie and The Operator are off to visit a blip on the map 30 mins drive from Sighisoara in the Transylvanian countryside of Romania, called Viscri.
Viscri is a medieval village with a handful of houses that has been frozen in time within a country that holds on tight to its traditions and history. The fortified church above the village is testament to this and one of the finest in Romania.
Driving the back roads to get to Viscri was half the fun of this trip, they are not fast going with patches upon patches of kidney rattling asphalt and pot holes. Crazy drivers passing at breakneck speed in the most unbelievable places and yep, we got held up of course behind a couple of horse and carts. Piled high with either cut roadside grass that will feed the livestock back at home or loaded with various building materials or furniture.
Hold on Rosie, don’t speak to soon about crazy drivers. The Operator has just been waved to the side of the road by a policeman who was hiding around the corner with a speed gun. Oh, Shit. Were you speeding? Rosie asked. I don’t know how fast I was supposed to be going, said The Operator, but everybody else was going faster than me, I was just keeping up.
Well, it turns out The Operator was driving at 79kmph in a 50kmph zone. A ticket was written and a $220 NZD fine was issued.
The Operator leaned out of the window and asked with a wink…How about if I pay the fine to you right now? Rosie was mortified. Did The Operator just seriously try to bribe a Romanian Police Officer?
I do not accept payments, said The Police Officer, dryly, in perfect English. Pay within 15 days and your ticket will be reduced to only $105NZD. You can pay the fine at any Town Hall in Romania, thank you and enjoy your holiday.
By the time he had finished issuing the paperwork, his police buddy standing on the roadside with a radar was racking up the speeders and waving them in all ready for our Police Officer to ticket them. These guys were certainly going to meet their quota for the day well before lunchtime!
The Operator was gutted. He has never had a speeding ticket overseas before and his last one at home was well over ten years ago. We carried on our journey but it was tough going as everywhere we turned there were cops either following us or us following them.
Paranoia set in and at one point The Operator even pulled over to let the cop pass, in true guilty style, as he wasn’t sure how fast he was supposed to be going again, due to the lack of signage, and didn’t want to be busted twice in the same day!
The Operator paying his speeding ticket at The Town Hall – Sighisoara
The rolling pastureland flashed by the window and shepherds were watching their flocks grazing on the roadside. Rosie cannot get her head around the fact that ‘shepherd’ is still a valid job description in this part of the world. We have come across so many tending to their small flock in great open unfenced fields.
The fields here are full of crops or hay paddocks rippling in the breeze all ready to be cut. Red roofed villages and spires of churches occasionally pop up in the distance. On the edge of the fields are grottoes, mainly dedicated to Jesus, not so much Mary as is the norm in other countries.
Nothing looks new here, the villages we drive through have all seen many harsh winters and better days. There is no sign of urban growth here or new developments happening in the countryside. These are the villages where the horse and carts seem to outnumber the cars and Rosie has not seen too many folk under the age of 65.
We turn off the single lane road towards the village of Viscri and to our surprise they are adding curb and channeling and re surfacing this tiny access road over the whole 5 km towards the village. This means tourism is on the way, or maybe it has already hit. Rosie has read that Prince Charles owns a B&B in this small village. Serious!
The beautiful new access road stops at the turn in to the village and WOW, it surely is like taking a step back in time.
Viscri is an original 12 century Saxon village were time has literally stood still. A lumpy bumpy cobblestone road runs through the middle of the town and colourful houses line either side of it pretty much in one continuous row. The changing house colours alone showing you were one stops and another starts.
The walls of the houses are thick and each has a large arched door that leads to a huge inner courtyard, where inside, the courtyard is ringed with outbuildings. Peeping through the arches, Rosie can see most of these are derelict and falling down, the homeowners sure have a lot of work to do here.
In front of the houses are wide grassy verges with a drainage ditch running down the middle of the grass. The spreading branches of a line of trees offer some shade to the house fronts. Chickens and roaming dogs roam the verges and children are also playing on the dusty road and the grass.
There are a few pre school children bumping along at break neck speed on small bikes down the cobbles or out walking with their young mothers. Young men seem to be doing the renovation work to their houses, and there is a lot of hustle and bustle of work going on here….great to see.
The sides of the road are ripe with sheep shit nuggets, horse crap and the large splats of a couple of cows, although there isn’t an animal to be seen. Large water troughs line the roadsides and apparently, at dusk, the flocks and herds walk themselves home after free grazing in the countryside all day, water themselves and return to the courtyards of their owners houses to overnight, pretty much on their own. As they have for centuries. What a sight to behold that would be.
This village is incredible! It is nearly completely silent except for the sounds of occasional hammering and laughing, squealing children. The lifestyle seems so laidback and simple yet it would have been a hard graft from dawn till dusk back in the day…as it probably still is today with the level of renovations going on here at the moment.
The village of Viscri is famous though for its white, 12th Century fortified church. This wee gem sits on a small hillock above and behind the town. Saxon settlers came to this area encouraged by the King of Hungary and had a special status in the province due to their work ethic and the village flourished, survived and thrived forming a strong community of farmers, artisans and merchants.
Because this area of Transylvania was constantly under threat from Ottoman and Tartar invasions, the villagers here and about built fortifications of varying degrees to defend their towns. The most important towns like Sighisoara and Brasov, where we have already visited on our journey, were fully fortified with walls surrounding the whole town.
Small villages like Viscri however, centered their fortifications around the church. Around which they built a stout, 7 meter high, defense wall. The wall had watch towers along with built in storehouses which not only housed the villagers, but also the towns harvests, livestock and valuables during times of siege…of which there were many during the ages.
Standing there looking at the white fortifications built so long ago is pretty spine tingling. The wooden ramparts that link the watchtowers with their steeply pitched orange roofs are incredible. The silence is immense, the squawk of crows and the wind in the surrounding trees are all we can hear…we are the only people visiting and it is amazing.
Having seen the amount of houses in the village and knowing back in the day the families would have been huge, its hard to imagine the whole village crowed inside here for safety as an invasion raged on outside.
The inside of the church itself is beautiful in its simplicity. The basic benches and clean lines are quite refreshing. Walking up the isle the boards are springy, creaky and very soft. The whole interior smells like ancient, dry, old wood.
A stone door at the back of the church tells us to climb the tower at our own risk. It was a risky operation alright. The tight stone, spiral staircase with the steps totally worn away in the middle from thousands of preceding footsteps was slow going. The higher we went the more poorly lit it was and we had to resort to mobile phone torchlight to guide our way up to the first landing.
From there on, the ascent was via wooden ladder, aged, wobbly and totally freaky to Rosie. Up on the wooden watchtower and with a sigh of relief for making it in one piece Rosie looked out over the beautiful landscape and the rooftop of the fortifications and church.
What a beautiful place! What an incredible view! Then, The Operator makes a bold statement.
If I lived in medieval times I would be a roofer, The Operator proclaims. Serious? Rosie countered! Look at the pitch on that roof! No chance!
Rosie is just in awe of how perfect these fortifications are and how real it is to imagine what it would have been like looking over the countryside and seeing an invading army advancing.
Today the view over the countryside was just perfect, rolling land, squat houses which look like they are all roof, and look, an ancient cemetery out the back. Too perfect.
Viscri, was recommended by our fabulous Hotel Taschler hosts in Sighisoara, was a picture perfect half day out in the Romanian countryside that Rosie and The Operator thoroughly enjoyed.
By the way Rosie was serious about Prince Charles owning a place here…turns out he owns a lot of the village and funds apprenticeships in ancient trades to keep them alive. This in turn creates work opportunities and enables an authentic level of renovation to this UNESCO village and others around it. Keeping the past, and these villages, alive and thriving.
Rosie and The Operators Eastern Europe 28 Day Roadtrip comes to an end tomorrow when we drive back to the hustle and bustle of Bucharest before we catch our flight home back to New Zealand, and WOW, what memories we will take back with us. We have loved our time travelling in Slovakia and Romania, and visiting the super cities in-between of Vienna and Budapest but always look forward to coming home.
Thanks so much for joining us on Rosie belated travel postings from 2019. Rosie and The Operator hope to be off again soon to discover some of our own country of New Zealand as it reopens after the 2020 COVID 19 Pandemic. See you out and about in Aotearoa!
Romania is Fantastic! Check out Bucharest Old Town where we started our journey.
Sibiu was our next stop and was unforgettable.
Corvin Castle was a fairytale treat.
Bran Castle and The Romanian Countryside was also a sight to behold!
Brasov – Heart of the Transylvanian Countryside
Sighisoara – The Pearl of Transylvania
