Beyond Dracula

Viscri comes up often in conversations about sustainable rural tourism in Romania. For good reason.

The village has become one of the clearest examples of what can happen when tourism grows from the existing structure of a place.

The fortified church still anchors the village. The old Saxon houses keep their shape. Guesthouses are set inside restored homes, with façades, courtyards and household structures that still belong to the village around them.

That is what gives Viscri its strength.

It is a place that rewards time: enough to notice the architecture, the restoration work, the local hosts, the small businesses and the way the village continues to function around the people who live there.

Curious what a bespoke journey through rural Transylvania could look like?

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Fresh faces at Beyond Dracula 👩👩

We’ve wanted to do a team series for a while. Since Beyond Dracula started 13 years ago with a team of one, we thought we’d begin with our newest colleagues and work backwards.

Meet Diana and Alexandra. Diana’s favourite place is Săcărâmb, a former gold-mining village in Hunedoara. Alexandra chose the Satchinez Marshes near Timișoara, where almost half of Romania’s bird species have been recorded.

Romania looks different depending on who you ask. That’s one of the reasons we keep asking.

The students have left Bucharest, and their route through Transylvania is already bringing them face to face with the questions they came here to study.

Over the past days, the group has been traveling through places like Brașov, Sighișoara, Râșnov, Sinaia, Alma Vii, Viscri, Făgăraș, and many more other stops along the way.

At Hărman Fortified Church, a preserved Saxon kitchen opened a conversation about German communities in Transylvania, legal privilege, language, and what remains when a once powerful minority becomes very small.

In Brașov, they met members of Asociația 15 Noiembrie, the organization that keeps alive the memory of the anti-communist workers’ revolt of November 15, 1987. Some of the people in the room had joined the protest as teenagers and young workers. They spoke about the march, the Communist Party headquarters, the interrogations, and the price paid for speaking out.

At the Făgăraș Research Institute, an old milk separator opened a discussion about how communism reached into kitchens, tools, production, and family practices.

For a program about politics, identity, and public life, Romania becomes easier to understand when the questions are carried into places where people still live with their consequences.

We hope you’re as curious as we are to see where their journey through Romania takes them next. Stay tuned for more. 🤍