Bulgarian Cousins to Transylvanian Szeklers
8 June 2019
“We Szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship. Here, in the whirlpool of European races…What devil or what witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins?…Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race; that we were proud; that when the Magyar, the Lombard, the Avar, the Bulgar, or the Turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back? Is it strange that when Arpad and his legions swept through the Hungarian fatherland he found us here when he reached the frontier…And when the Hungarian flood swept eastward, the Szekelys were claimed as kindred by the victorious Magyars, and to us for centuries was trusted the guarding of the frontier of Turkey-land….” – Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula
Rimetea is located amid a dramatic setting of lush meadows, encircling mountains and rocky escarpments. My simple Transylvanian inn overlooks Székelykő, a sacred peak. It is said that here, the sun rises twice as it crawls across the eastern sky at the edge of the mountains. The birds chirp, the sun rises, a lonely dog howls in the distance, the rooster crows and another idyllic day in Romania begins. 