Gothic, Baroque and fin-de-siècle buildings cluster together along a winding river. The colors are warm: honey-yellow, pastel pink, robin-egg blue, even sunset orange, revealing the area's showy Latin roots. Spires and onion-domes soar above cobbled courtyards. Literary salons and cafe culture once held sway here, when the city's light illuminated the Balkans.

Cluj is also an outpost for Transylvania-bound travelers. I rent a clapped out Mercedes sedan, quite possibly older than me, and head for the hills - or rather the mist-shrouded Carpathian Mountains.

The countryside seems weirdly deserted...and so it is. After Ceausescu's fall, anyone with German lineage could claim German citizenship. Ninety percent of Transylvanians emigrated.

Exodus and identity crisis is nothing new in this Saxon swathe of land, settled in the 12th century. The Hungarians, Germans, Turks and Hapsburgs all laid claim - and waste - to the area.

The sad remainders eke out medieval lives, complete with stout churches and oxen hitched to hay carts. Kilns burn limestone. Professions are handed from father to son: blacksmith, woodcarver, butcher. Elders trundle down dirt tracks, spines bowed under heavy bundles of kindling. Shepherds sell round cheese, beside Magyars peddling traditional embroidery and stout fleece vests. Their liquor of choice is fierce homemade brandy - called tsuica or horinca - flavored with plum.

Tiled roofs slump, the red clay dragged back towards the earth. Lace curtains flap, revealing solemn furniture - all dark wood and heavy carvings. Oak-shingled church spires preside over villages that have never known pavement.

The land is torn into canyons, peaks and cliffs, barnacled with castles. Broad river valleys rustle with orchards, bears and wild boars. The scenery is show stopping; a small wonder Anthony Minghella shot Cold Mountain among these crags.

Bram Stoker captured the essence of the haunting landscape and distilled it into the Dracula myth. Ironically, he never ventured into the Carpathians. His vivid descriptions were cobbled together from guidebooks in the British Museum Reading Room. (CONTINUED...)