Brașov
Brașov is a Saxon town in a Romanian mountain bowl: a Gothic square with a council house in the middle of it, a black church — blackened by a fire in 1689 — that is the largest Gothic building between Vienna and Istanbul and keeps a hundred and nineteen Anatolian rugs on its walls, a street thirteen decimetres wide, and, at the end of every eastward view, Tâmpa, a green wall of a mountain nine hundred and sixty metres high with the town's name on it in Hollywood letters and bears in its woods that occasionally come down to look at the bins. Outside the old walls, Șchei was the Romanian quarter when Romanians could not live inside; twelve kilometres up the road, Poiana Brașov is the ski resort; thirty kilometres south-west, Bran castle collects the Dracula trade with a straight face.
The traveller sits first on the Piața Sfatului with a coffee and lets the square explain itself; goes into the Black Church for the organ and the rugs; squeezes through the Strada Sforii because everyone must; walks the walls to the White Tower for the view over the roofs to Tâmpa; takes the cable car up the mountain, or the zigzag path in an hour, and looks down on the whole bowl; crosses to Șchei through Catherine's Gate for the first Romanian school and a quieter Brașov; and, with a day, drives to Bran for the castle and to Râșnov for the peasant fortress on its hill, which is the better fortress and the smaller queue.
The Guide's honesty: Brașov is easy, walkable and inexpensive, and its centre is a stage set with a life of its own — the terraces on the square are for visitors and the courtyards behind are for the town —; the bears are real: the town posts warnings, and a bear on the road to Poiana at dusk is not a photograph but a reason to stay in the car; Bran is a handsome castle that Vlad the Impaler probably visited once, if at all, and the queue in August is longer than the tour — go early or go to Râșnov instead; the trains from Bucharest take two and a half hours; and the pălincă is plum, and stronger than the smile of the man who pours it.