the globe says
Romania
Fly to Cluj-Napoca or Baia Mare, then drive north into valleys the 20th century mostly skipped.
Village farmstays — hay in the barn, horincă plum brandy at breakfast whether you asked or not.
Europe's last living peasant civilization: wooden churches with shingled spires, hand-scythed hay meadows, the Merry Cemetery's painted grave-poems, and horse carts as traffic.
Ride the Mocănița — the last forestry steam railway in Europe — up the Vaser valley at dawn.
May to September
Mulțumesc — thank you, in Romanian.
Along the Enchanted Way by William Blacker — an Englishman's years living exactly here.
The painted monasteries of Bucovina, over the pass — Byzantine frescoes on exterior walls, five centuries old.
This world is disappearing in real time as the young leave — go respectfully, and go soon.