"Why should I abandon my home, settle in Germany and become a burden to them?  I worked 40 years as an engineer right here in Schässburg, earning a pension which I now live off of.  Why should I go to Germany?  I never worked there.  Our parents are buried here.  This is our home."  (Rudolf Valentin, resident of Schässburg to the author, October, 1998 in Schässburg)

        My own personal interest in the "Saxons" of Transylvania began in the mid-1980s when I was stationed in Germany.  Actually I have always had a fascination with German settlement throughout Europe and in North America.  I studied with interest the Volga Germans of Russia, the Baltic Germans who descended from the Teutonic Knights, and naturally the Sudetenland Germans of Bohemia.  However, ever since I first read about the "Saxons" of Transylvania in the waning days of the Cold War and the "Evil Empire," the region has held a special place in my heart.  Ironically, my introduction to the Siebenbürger (German name for the "Saxons" of Transylvania)  occurred at a time when the population was dropping dramatically.  The Ceausescu regime was selling exit visas to the West German government at a cost of 12,000 DM per person.  The exit visas allowed Siebenbürger to immigrate to West Germany.  Rather than stop the exodus, the Ceausescu regime's collapse in 1989 only accelerated the departure of disillusioned Siebenbürger.  The total German population of Transylvania dropped precipitously from over 340,000 in the early 1980s to, at most, 50,000 by 1995.  Many argue the figure is actually far lower today.   Few Siebenbürger saw any future as a minority in Romania when a prosperous Germany was offering a new home. 

          I originally intended to visit Transylvania as early as 1985.  I had hoped to see the region before all the Siebenbürger departed and German culture disappeared from the Carpathians forever.  Sadly, I was never able to make that trip until recently (October, 1998).  We departed from Padua, Italy with high hopes of meeting some Siebenbürger and seeing the decaying, neglected, cultural symbols of German civilization in the Carpathians and the tragic but genuine expectation that I would never meet any Siebenbürger in Transylvania.

          We spent the day on a train from Padua to Zagreb and then on to Budapest, where we purchased a ticket to Alba Iulia (Weissenburg).  We slept on the train in a compartment with no heat.   Although it was only October, the temperature dropped far enough to give us a chilly reception to Romania.  Early in the morning in a dense fog, our train arrived ten minutes early in Weissenburg.  We were not sure if we had actually arrived at the correct stop.  Heavy fog and the fact we were in the last car made it difficult to see the station sign.  I was unable to read the station sign until we were moving again.  By then it was too late to heft our rucksacks and exit the train so we missed our stop.  The next stop was in Blaj (Blasendorf) where our Transylvania experience began.

          I had finally reached my goal after so many years of waiting.  My hopes of finding any ethnic Germans in Blasendorf were quickly dashed.  Once almost every resident of this small farming village was German.  Now there are no longer any traces of German culture in the center of this post-communist relic.  I tried to buy two train tickets with German Marks.  The clerk in the window nodded her head disapprovingly and repeated several times "La Bank."  Clearly Deutsche Marks were not acceptable in Blasendorf.  We wandered off in search of the local bank, armed a sense of excitement in a far off land and over laden rucksacks.  Blasendorf is a terrible looking product of communism.  Crumbling apartment buildings and poorly maintained streets are everywhere to be seen and draw one's attention as you walk through the main street from the train station.  

          I'd overheard others buying tickets in the train station and was able to pick out several words very similar to Italian.   Given that both Italian and Romanian are romance languages I figured I should try to get buy using my limited Italian.  Surprisingly, we were able get around Romania with English, German or our very limited Italian without any major difficulties.   I stopped a gentleman and asked him in Italian "dove la Bank (where is the bank)?   He pointed me in the correct direction and off we headed down the street.   The "bank" was nothing more than a counter and a back office set in a dingy building on the main street.  As we entered a guard approached us.  In a mixture of poor Italian, German, English, and some artful use of my hands, I managed to get the message across.  The guard took us to the manager in the back office.  I tried German and much to my amazement, she understood, at least enough to explain the exchange rate for Deutsch Marks.  We exchanged our money, thanked the manager and headed back to the train station where we bought two tickets for Kronstadt.  The total cost was about $2.95 for a trip that would last nearly six hours.

    We boarded the next train.  An action that, a first, appeared to be a mistake.  Although the ticket was inexpensive, there was a good reason it was a bargain.  We spent the better of a day getting from Blasendorf to Kronstadt.  We did not arrive in Kronstadt until mid-afternoon.  A strange site indeed we must have been to locals on that train.  Vera and I wore our brand new Columbia winter coats and carried our never before used Swiss backpacks.  Our attire was in stark contrast to the threadbare clothing most of the passengers wore.  Despite the clear disparity between our means and theirs, the other passengers paid us little attention.  A few gentlemen gathered to play a card game with a deck so worn, I could almost see through the cards.  We passed, very slowly, through one village after another as we meandered our way across the northern arc of Transylvania and then turned south towards the Carpathians.  As the day wore on, the temperature rose and we began to dehydrate.   

German