Saxon Churches and Wild Dogs

SIGHISOARA: Still in Romania, actually will be for most of the week. We've spent the last two nights, with two to go, in the town of Sighisoara in north western Transylvania. There's not actually a great deal to do here - we sat up and watched a crap Kim Basinger movie last night - but it's a great base to explore the surrounding area.

On the first day we explored Sighisoara's citadel which is the oldest continually inhabited citadel in Europe. The citadel is kind of like a citizen's castle and includes fortified walls and a number of chuchs. Perched atop a hill it gives you fantastic views and a real sense of what life must have been like inside the fortified city. After wandering up and down the dusty lanes checking out the ancient houses we stopped in for some palinka and wine at a local distiller, before knocking back a couple at Dracula's (Vlad Tepes) birthplace, then rolling down the hill for the biggest pork knuckle I've ever seen. We were, or at least I was, celebrating the election win.

Yesterday we rented a car off some local chancer who has connections to our hostel and toured the surrounding countryside checking out the fortified Saxon churches. Now if you haven't read the relevant Lonely Planet pages, these churches were turned into mini-castles during the Middle Ages to protect themselves, and their villagers, from marauding Ottoman's and Tartars. Basically inaccessible by public transport they are found at the end of dirt tracks in the midst of ramshackle villages. At different times we were forced to dodge horse and carts, turkeys, cows, horses, goats, sheep and dogs. At several stops we also had to bribe little gypsy urchins with chewing gum and fake M&M's to leave us alone. We also had the chance to drive through a gypsy village though that was a little disappointing.

If I get a chance to post some pictures I will. They paint the scene a lot better. Basically what you've got is a little valley, nestled between some rolling hills, surrounded by flocks of sheep, harvested corn and fallow fields, smoking rising from the chimney's of the shacks that make up the villages, various old women in shawls and languid men walking or lounging around and in the midst of this is a church with several bastions and some impressive walls. Most of them were closed but one or two we could walk around inside.

Today we visited another UNESCO listed one at the end of ten k's worth of dirt road but unfortunately the tracks seemed to muddy so we couldn't get closer but we still had fun. Tomorrow we're off to see Sibiu and then to the Bucovina Monasteries before heading into the Ukraine on Friday.