Sighisoara... Birthplace of Count Vlad Tepes (Dracula)

Our last visit to Sighisoara was in sunny July of 2006. It was a few weeks shy of the annual art festival, yet the interior courtyard of this medieval walled city with its secret passageways and lookout towers was bursting at its decaying seams with tourists. We hadn't made any reservations as my hubby, in charge of making lodging arrangements, had assured me that we'd have no difficulty getting a room at one of the city's many inns (he had been there just weeks before and hadn't encountered any problem). As we drove through the hilltop citadel's gates, a growing sense of apprehension gripped me as I observed the narrow alley streets packed with parked cars.

We had been driving all day, our baby daughter fussing as the hot wind whipped through the open windows of the non air-conditioned car, possibly disturbing her sensitive ears. Our son wanted to get out and run, as evidenced through his relentless kicking of my seat, and I just wanted assurance that we wouldn't spend the night in the automobile. We tried one inn and then another, and nothing. We made our way down the list, but there wasn't even the smallest room available. Although I can't remember now, I'm sure I let my husband know my of my displeasure with the situation.

We had parked and walked along hoping to find a local willing to let a room out to a family of four that included a cranky baby and a six year old boy full of energy. Not an easy task. It is nerve wracking for both the homeowner and the paying occupants as the best rooms are usually presented, rooms filled to capacity with sentimental ornamentation of the fragile variety. Luckily, we didn't venture too long. An elderly lady figured out right away what we were in need of and offered to take us to a someone who was in need of making some quick cash.

Just a block away from the main square, she said, and beckoned us to follow her as she hurried along the cobblestone street and turned left unto another. The house was out of a storybook, a pretty pastel blue, with red geraniums spilling from the window boxes and a red arched door leading into a courtyard filled with fragrant rose bushes in every shade of crimson. Although the owners didn't know we were coming, they didn't seem surprised to see us, and once we had paid, ushered us in, exclaiming over how beautiful our children were. They were an elder couple and much to the delight of our boy, they had two kittens.

After letting our son play with the kittens for a while, and making small talk with the gentleman (his wife was in the next room making the bed up in her best, embroidered linen, no doubt), we left for the main square and its restaurants. I was ready for a real dinner. I wanted traditional and comforting, despite the heat, maybe sauerkraut with homemade sausage or schnitzel, and homemade bread. We weren't disappointed. The food was sublime (and very fattening, I'm sure). We sat back and chatted with the people at the table next to us. They were visiting from England and they were on their way to the little village of Viscri, looking to buy a house to restore in that newly abandoned Saxon hamlet.

(Apparently, the Saxon population of Romania is on the decline. Out of thousands, only a handful remain, and their houses stand silent and empty, slowly deteriorating. With the newly opened gates to the West in the early '90's, the Saxons, who had been in the Transylvanian region of Romania since the 1100's, fled for a better life in the country from which their ancestors originated. With time, and due to a difficulty integrating themselves in a culture they were unaccustomed to, some returned and, to make a long story short, set up a trust -The Mihai Eminescu Trust whose primary benefactor is Prince Charles (he has bought a house in Viscri as well and has since restored it)- to restore ancient Saxon houses in the Saxon villages by using traditional methods of restoration in keeping with the timeframe the structures were built in.)

As darkness fell and we made our way through the dimly lit, yet still busy market square and back to our lodging, we discussed how traveling makes strangers so willing to share personal information they wouldn't imagine to otherwise, as though there's a need to create a favorable impression for the recipient's future memories.

Back in our pastel colored shelter we sat awhile and listened to our hosts lamenting their diminishing health and The Mihai Eminescu Trust (MET) for not approving a major entertaining park to be built on the outer outskirts of the town. We nodded our heads and empathized over their health concerns, but, seeing how hospitable they had been, didn't acknowledge that we were on the side of the MET .

As they retreated to their summer kitchen out in the courtyard (where they had two twin beds), insisting that they wanted us to have the freedom and comfort of their entire house for the night, we tucked the kids in and opening the widow set in a wall two feet thick, we listened to the crickets and to the distant sound of merrymakers and we were, as Andre Dubus says in one of his short stories, "seeing something in our mind's eye that was nowhere in the room," the bygone days those same walls we were gazing at, had seen.