Weather: ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️
Picnic: 🥪🥪🥪 (3 out 5, wraps at the shop in Crit)
Track: 🇷🇴🇹🇩🇹🇩🇹🇩 (4 out of 5, very nice trail over the hills, through forest, fields and a few villages with nice fortified churches. Very well marked and really walkable)
Hotel: 🛏️🛏️🛏️🛏️ (4 out of 5, nice room, friendly host, good food and a sauna!)
Name of followed trail: Via Transilvanica
We start our on a frosty -2 morning, after we got a lovely generous breakfast, and the opportunity to bring lunch as well.
It’s cold in our shorts, but the sun is bright, so it will be warm soon enough. We see a few deer on the hill of the cross before we turn into the forest.
Today we walk through the hills with yellow grassy fields and forest. In the distance we can see the Fagaras mountains with a dusting of snow on them already. Beautiful, yet all the more reason to think we chose wisely to continue on via Transilvanica. We pass the trail that could take us to Brasov and continue in the direction of Crit, where we have lunch. From here we walk through the forest again and through the village of Cloasterf, and then the last 5 kilometers to Saschiz. The forest is slowly turning yellow and red. Today is again a very nice day of hiking! Travel at this pace makes us see the places we walk through more closely than we would by car. We see the villages change as we switch region.
The houses and streets are different than a few villages ago. The wooden gates have disappeared and colorfully painted houses with plastered decorations stand along the wide streets.
We arrive in Saschiz and go for a cup of tea to the tea house with a beautiful garden. After a good cuppa, we go to our hotel, where our friendly host welcomes us. At both places the family speaks Romanian and German to each other.
We’ve left the Székeler lands entered the Saxon region. This area has been a region with a German speaking minority. Saxon is the word they use for this population that came from Germany, Flanders and France many centuries ago. German is still a second language taught in schools in the larger cities around here, and we heard a few people greeting us in German today. Many German Saxons left the region during and straight after the communist regime, but the connection between the region and Germany is still strong, we hear from our host.
We enjoy our stay at the Werk2 pension. We have a very nice room and get a good, home cooked meal with a delicious desert! After that we talk with our hosts about the region and after that, we get to use the sauna before we go to sleep. What a luxury today!
Sounds like a beautiful day! 😀