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These full and frank independent Romania Cultural tours holidays reviews are from travellers who have booked directly through responsibletravel.com. They are not edited by us or any of the companies we work with. Find the real story, from real travellers below.
There were 3 distinct parts to the holiday - first the Saxon Villages & Churches in Transylvania (staying in Viscri was a highlight), then to beautiful Maramures with the wooden Churches (Popica Farm was another memorable place to stay) & finally to Bucovina with its stunning painted monasteries.
(more)Romania is a very beautiful country and it was exciting to visit it in spring when everything was in bloom and the landscape was turning to green. (more)I enjoyed all of it, I have to say. In particular, visiting Sighisoara and Sibiu brings back nice memories. Sighisoara for the medieval experience and the luck of arriving there in the middle of a festival. (more)Romania is a beautiful country, the people are genuinely welcoming and any holiday where you chill out, have fun... and still learn a lot... has to be good.
(more)It was a magical holiday. The people we met were so generous and helpful. The Romanian countryside is completely unspoiled and takes you back in time; and the culture in Transylvania is stunning. (more)We invite every traveller who books a holiday via us to send in a review. Because we don't run the holidays they're completely independent and unedited... remember to read between the lines though, as two people on the same holiday can have different views!
"It was 1987. Ceausescu and his Securitate still had Romania in their clutches; in fact most Romanians at that time probably could not remember life to ever have been different from what it was then. But some elderly people in the small transylvanian village of Köröspatak (Valea Crisului) could, all of a sudden. A face had brought back memories long buried, the face of my father entering the local catholic church at 6.30 in the morning. Surely it could not be, they must have thought - not the Count, he couldn't even have gotten into the country, could he, and if he did why would he choose to attend the early morning mass at sunrise. Yet word got around in the village and they crowded in front of the church entrance. When we came out, dozens of people first stared, then started weeping, grinning, kissing my fathers hands, and thanking the Lord for having kept them alive to witness this moment. Not that they knew him. They knew my grandfather. My father, his son, left the country at the age of eight. Yet they recognized him for what he was - the son of the last Count Kálnoky to live in Köröspatak, trying to carve out a living amid ever worsening economic conditions, trying to keep the village alive, until he had to flee when Nazi Intelligence realized he was working against the fascist regime. Later, the communists expropriated everything he had owned and my family had to leave Central Europe for good, as it then seemed. But back to the events in the village in 1987: As half of the village had gathered around us and accompanied us to have a look at our former home which then was used as grain storage and local Party headquarters, word came that a column of cars was approaching the village from the district capital, Sf. Gheorghe. This could only mean one thing: The Securitate came to check what was happening. Following an almost imperceptible gesture of my father, the villagers vanished into their houses, we hopped into our 4x4 and left the village by a forest track through the hills to Miklosvar. The Securitate questioned the villagers repeatedly for several months, but nobody seemed to know who these mysterious foreigners had been." Find out more about the Count in this Romania holidays article.
