Bloodless praise of Transylvania

There was much to take in, and we didn't linger. We hiked up to a fog-laden ski resort in the wooded Bucegi Mountains outside Sinaia early our first day; by the next afternoon, we were among musty pews gaping at the scores of 17th- and 18th-century Turkish rugs hanging from the balconies of Brasov's famed Black Church, still in use today by Lutheran worshipers and said to be the largest Gothic church between Vienna and Istanbul. From Harman, we walked about 5 miles to a tiny town called Prejmer, settled by Saxons from Germany in 1240 and home to a 13th-century evangelical church surrounded by a stone wall into which cells -- 272 of them -- were built to shelter the local populace during recurrent sieges. Feeling our way along a walkway deep in the citadel wall, with light only from the foot-wide slits through which Saxon guards shot at advancing invaders, we imagined how bleak and desperate it must have been to face plundering Tartars and Turks over the centuries. We marveled at the Saxons' resolve to repel the waves, by erecting walls so strong and thick -- up to 14 feet at Prejmer -- that many of the citadels and fortified churches are still standing centuries later. Today, all the Saxon churches of Transylvania are listed as UNESCO World Heritage sites.