Romania Travel Press & Testimonials
1.EUROPA NOSTRA - the pan-European Federation for Cultural Heritage http://www.europanostra.org
In 2015, DiscoveRomania in collaboration with Harriet Landseer, organised Europa Nostra tour in Transylvania - Exploring Transylvania 17-23 September:
" Dear Laura,
What a fascinating journey you and Harriet prepared for us! Normally, when returning from a tour, we unwind quite quickly and revert to normal life. But the Transylvania tour has made such a huge impression on us that we are still full of it and continue to ‘re-digest’ the many things we experienced. It was a wonderful tour, not in the least thanks to the efficiency you displayed on the logistics front. That everything run so smoothly is in no small way due to the meticulous preparation and execution you and Harriet made.
That I speak of an experience is possible the best compliment I can give, since the tour was so much more than visiting and sightseeing. We loved the variety of visits and activities throughout our trip. Also, the guides and speakers you found were practically all of an exceptional level – not an easy task to achieve, but of major importance to the success of a tour. If I would go into detail, this message would probably require several pages, but summing up, it was a great tour and it will go down in the records of Europa Nostra as one of the very best of recent years.
Thank you again for all you did to create this superb tour together with Harriet and set such a high standard. It was tops!
Very best regards, also from Gerda,
Tom
Tom Henkemans
Chairman Europa Nostra Heritage Tours
3. National Swedish Television Channel 1, 2012
Lena Haglund is a freelance journalist from Sweden and her documentary trip in Maramures was organised by DiscoveRomania in 2012
Lena with Carl Magnus made a short movie about Maramures and Danube Delta that was shown on the National Swedish Television Channel 1 programme in November,2012.
5. The Guardian, Lost in Transylvania, May 12, 2007, Gavin Bell
Gavin Bell’s trip was arranged by Sunvil Discovery and organised by DiscoveRomania in 2007
Once most of Europe looked like this. Gavin Bells visits deepest Romania where low-key tourism is helping to preserve an increasingly threatened way of life
…The scene is reminiscent of a Thomas Hardy novel, and in truth it lays fair claim to being a fragment of a rural idyll lost in most of modern Europe…This is southern Transylvania, a high plateau of wooded hills and valleys shielded by the Carpathian mountains, where Saxon settlers and their descendents have farmed, traded and fought to preserve their land and traditions for more than 800 years…
2. The Sunday Telegraph: Like walking into a fairy tale or back into medieval Europe, June 2, 2013, Sarah Shuckburgh
Like walking into a fairy tale or back into medieval Europe, June 2, 2013, Sarah Shuckburgh Sarah Shuckburgh’s trip was arranged by The Ultimate Travel Company and organised by DiscoveRomania in 2013.
Sarah Shuckburgh travels through space and time to an ancient Romanian way of life.
…Visiting Maramures is an extraordinary experience, like walking into a fairy tale or stepping back into medieval Europe.
…But despite poverty and physical hardship , this remarkable region has maintained qualities that have been lost forever elsewhere in Europe….I shall never forget my visit – the wild flowers and birdsong, haymaking and horses and carts, festivals and faith, woodcarving and other crafts, evoking a time when life was hard, but also calmer, simpler, slower, richer.
4. Daily Mail, Off the bitten track: A journey into Romania in search of the truth about devilish Dracula, 2007, Wendy Gomersall
Wendy Gomersall’s trip was arranged by Sunvil Discovery and organized by DiscoveRomania in 2007.
…Of the country's six provinces, it is Transylvania that is most familiar to Brits, thanks to Stoker, who reputedly created Count Dracula after a bad lobster supper.
Stoker loosely based his character on real 15th Century warriors. Dracul and his son, Dracul-a were local heroes (actually they were from neighbouring Wallachia, but Stoker had trouble pronouncing that region), riding fearlessly out with their men to slaughter invading Turks whenever necessary.
… Staying in a village home with a family is a lovely way to experience Romania. I stayed in Lazarea in eastern Transylvania, with Maria Bartalis and her family. Dinner in the warm, welcoming kitchen was delicious. There was sour soup - a Romanian speciality - mamaliga (polenta), stuffed cabbage, pork in many ways and tangy zacusca - pickled vegetables. In the countryside, everyone grows veg and herbs, and feasts on local meats and cheese. They also make plum brandy; a generous tipple with lunch makes an afternoon horse-and-cart ride to the sheep-fold to learn about cheese-making a very merry occasion!...
6. The Telegraph, Saxon corner of a Romanian field, July 7, 2007, Nigel Richardson
Nigel Richardson’s trip was arranged by Sunvil Discovery and organized by DiscoveRomania in 2007.
In Transylvania, Nigel Richardson finds rural mores intact and tourism in its carefully mothered infancy
… One of the newest members to be admitted to the EU club, Romania has some of the emptiest, most untouched countryside in Europe, and I am driving through the middle of it. In this desperately poor corner of Transylvania there are few cars, no tractors, definitely no combine harvesters or vast prairies of wheat, just glorious green hills and forests, backed in the south by the 8,000ft-high FagarasMountains.
People rattle through this landscape in horse-drawn wooden carts, shaped like troughs, with pneumatic tyres. Shepherds and goatherds tend small flocks at the side of the road. Things have changed little over centuries, but an exodus of local people and the arrival of EU regulations and subsidies, not to mention an influx of tourists, are poised to distort the picture. Rural Romania has reached what one American anthropologist I met there called its "tipping point".