Bucharest, not Budapest

Friend (?) of the blog Vlad the Impaler founded Bucharest in the mid-1400s, so it’s a relatively young city in this region of the world. Its population is over 2 million, and despite still recovering from WWII and decades of crushing communist policies and neglect, it’s now quickly regaining ground. It’s even ranked as one […]

Staking out Transylvania

I was surprised to learn that the main tourist hotspot cities in Romania’s Transylvania are historically German: Brașov, Sighișoara, and Sibiu. The Transylvanian Saxons dominated the region after merchants and craftsmen from today’s Luxembourg, Belgium, and Germany were invited by the Hungarian leadership in the 1100s to establish towns and trade in the region and […]