Viscri

It’s hard not to fall in love with Viscri – it’s like stepping into a fairy tale. 646You arrive into the village on an unpaved road, and when the road conditions are bad, you take a horsedrawn cart that was designed for these roads a few hundred years ago. The little houses lining the 2 or 3 roads are the original Saxon houses, many of them lovingly restored, and painted pale blue, typical of Saxon villages. Normal life in Viscri. As you walk down the road, chickens are happily roaming the yards and pecking for food, residents are spotted working on some type of archaic implement that is still used for their farming.Viscri is also home to a cottage industry for knitted goods – socks, hats, sweaters and scarves, whose income is the sole source for many households. The women producing these goods are part of an NGO founded by a German dentist who settled in Viscri after the fall of Communism. Most of the knitted products are exported to Germany, however, visitors are welcome to the sorting room where pieces are sorted by size, and also to the NGO’s quaint café and handicraft shop to enjoy a an extra large piece of home-baked cake before and purchase knitted, felt and ceramics handicrafts.The cafe makes you feel like you’re in Hansel & Gretle’s house, and if it’s not open, just knock on the next door and the owner will welcome you and serve you one of the largest pieces of cake you’ll ever eat. A few minutes’ walk up a hill brings you to a beautiful white fortified church built in 1230. The church holds mass fortnightly and houses a museum of Saxon Heritage. The Saxon character of Viscri has been so well preserved that the entire village has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Through a common effort of residents and the Mihai Eminescu trust, through funding from Britain’s Prince Charles many of the buildings in the village have been refurbished using exclusively traditional construction materials. One house stands out in particular, having been built several decades before the others. A typical one-room Saxon house, it contains only original furnishings, and is the favorite of Prince Charles.