Romania’s rural Transylvania aims to attract Israeli tourists

BUNEȘTI, Romania—Known mainly for the medieval legend of Count Dracula, Romania’s mythical Transylvania region is also home to fortified churches, stunning natural beauty and tiny hamlets where, except for WiFi, daily life hasn’t changed much over the last thousand years.

That’s precisely what makes the region so appealing to tourists. And now, 10 specific villages in Romania’s breadbasket that were once populated by German-speaking Saxons are marketing the region to foreign visitors—particularly Israelis—through an annual summer weekend tourism campaign known as Săptămâna Haferland.

Haferland (German for “oatland”) was jointly established in 2012 by luxury automobile magnate Michael Schmidt and Romanian-born German musician and philanthropist Peter Maffay to promote local Saxon culture. The festival’s 13th edition took place July 31-Aug. 3 in the villages of Archita, Saschiz, Homorod, Rupea, Criț, Roadeș, Meșendorf, Cloașterf, Bunești and Viscri.

Over the course of four days, these 10 picturesque villages located within the triangle formed by Brașov, Sibiu and Sighișoara collectively hosted around 50 events including jazz concerts, handicraft workshops, dances, an organ recital, pottery, haymaking, embroidery, culinary experiences and traditional balls, with guest artists from both Germany and Romania.

Schmidt, interviewed this past Sunday at his Casa Kraus guesthouse in Criț (Deutsch-Kreuz in German), said about 8,000 people attended the 2025 cultural extravaganza. That’s up from only 500 the first year, when only Criț and two other villages—Roadeș and Viscri—took part.

“This festival started by chance,” he said. “I arrived by helicopter and stopped in Viscri. Peter Maffey was there and told me that next year, he was sponsoring an event in Roadeș called ‘Open Doors.’ At that very moment, I proposed to join forces and create something much bigger.”

He added: “That’s how the idea was born. We decided on the name Haferland, because in this area the climate is harsh, so you can’t grow grapes, but you can grow oats.”

Christian evangelical churches dominate the region, and few Jews, if any, ever lived in any of these towns. However, there’s a nicely preserved synagogue in Sighișoara—30 km northwest of Criț—and Schmidt said he wants visitors from the Jewish state to feel especially welcome.

In fact, Israelis already comprise the second-largest source of tourism to Romania after Germans. This is mainly thanks to Israel’s 400,000 or so Jewish citizens with Romanian roots, along with the fact that Romania is a relatively cheap destination, and that Bucharest is only a two-and-a-half-hour flight from Tel Aviv.

Mihaela Ghita and her husband own the four-room Casa cu zorele, one of some 100 guest houses in Criț, a town of only 600 people. She charges €80 a night including breakfast for two. In 2008, they bought the abandoned house on a whim—having seen it during a drive from Brașov to Budapest—intending only to fix it up as an investment. Instead, they ended up running a B&B.

She said her guests are mostly foreigners—mainly British, French, German, Australian and American tourists.

“We also had two Israeli groups over the summer. I don’t know how they find us,” said Ghita, adding that the annual festival has grown considerably since it began.

According to Schmidt, Israel’s ambassador to Romania at the time, David Saranga, attended the first Haferland celebration 13 years ago.

“It then became a tradition that every year, the Israeli ambassador would come to Haferland,” he said. “The idea from the very beginning was to have all denominations here. I didn’t do this just for the Saxons, but more for the Romanian population, because most of the Saxons left behind their villages and their culture. I want people to see these things, so they won’t be forgotten.”

On Saturday in the village of Bunești, Israel’s current envoy, Lior Ben Dor, offered welcome remarks in fluent Romanian—his parents and grandparents were born there—and praised the “cultural openness” that the Saxons offer.

“This festival is about how communities live with each other, and we are here among friends,” he said. “As Israel’s ambassador to Romania, I cannot fail to talk about the Middle East. We also dream of good neighborliness, but now we must first of all ensure our existence and our lives, and we still have to fight to bring home all the hostages still captive in Gaza.”

In a written message read aloud in Bunești, Romanian Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan praised the Haferland festival for creating economic opportunities in these medieval villages at a time of rising global nationalism.

“Romania’s destiny is the European Union, and in Criț, you can breathe the European spirit that demolishes prejudices and encourages all European peoples to coexist around the values of peace, solidarity, freedom of movement, tolerance and Christianity,” Bolojan wrote.

Angela Ganninger, Germany’s new ambassador to Romania, also spoke at the event.

“Among European states, Romania’s protection of minority rights is exemplary. This is part of a mosaic in which all these ethnicities live together harmoniously,” said Ganninger, who from 2002 to 2005 headed the political and protocol division at the German Embassy in Tel Aviv. “This festival is a great initiative to make the region’s unique landscape more known. I find it relaxed, welcoming and beautiful, and I think it deserves to be visited.”

Andrew Noble was Britain’s ambassador to Romania from 2018 to 2023. He’s now on the board of four charities including Fundatia Adept, a nonprofit that seeks to preserve the region’s farming character and agricultural land biodiversity.

At the end of World War II, he said, Romania was home to around 750,000 German speakers. By the time Ceaușescu was overthrown in 1989, that community had dropped to 500,000, and by 1994, it was down to 10,000.

“There was a massive exodus between 1989 and 1994, when they were now free to leave. They had a very difficult life under communism, living in backwards conditions with no indoor toilets,” Noble explained. “Because of German nationality laws at the time, if you could trace your family roots to Germany, you had a right to live there. So people left these villages and now live in Germany. Every village here has an organization in Germany.”

Likewise, Noble said that in the 1980s, when he served as third secretary at the British Embassy in Bucharest, Romania still had a sizeable Jewish minority.

“To some extent, their history of the local Saxon population is similar to the Jews in Romania in one aspect,” he said. “Jews were being bought by the State of Israel during the 1970s and ‘80s, and educated Germans were being bought by the German government for 15,000 deutschemarks per head. If you were very old or very young, it was less.”

In fact, between 1965 and 1989, about 1,500 Jews per year were allowed to leave in exchange for cash payments of between $2,000 and $25,000, plus Israeli military assistance to Romania.

Schmidt noted the similarities between Germans and Jews—despite the horrors of the Holocaust and the war itself, for which Romania’s Germans were collectively blamed. Some were even deported to the Soviet Union.

“We’re both minorities here. And being a minority makes you stronger, but you should never forget where you came from,” he said, noting that as a percentage of their original ethnic communities, “the number of Jews and the number of Germans who left Romania is roughly the same. The Israeli government paid Ceaușescu for Romania’s Jews, and the German government paid him for its Germans. The Jews opened a path for the Germans to leave.”

Schmidt’s warm relations with Romania’s tiny Jewish community extend to his generous support of the Laute-Reut Educational Complex in Bucharest, and evidenced by the presence of the school’s founder, Tova Ben Nun-Cherbis, at Haferland.

Last year’s festival was also attended by Liechtenstein’s Prince Philipp, marking 800 years since the issuance of the Andreanum, a document signed by Hungarian King Andrew II confirming rights to a group of settlers from the Rhine-Moselle region in present-day Germany.

Another country closely involved with Haferland is Luxembourg.

“The dialect of German spoken in Luxembourg today is very close to the Saxon dialect spoken here,” said the retired British diplomat. “In 2007, when Luxembourg City and Sibiu were selected as European Capitals of Culture, the prime minister of Luxembourg visited and discovered people speaking his home dialect. They started coming here in 1224, and when the last ones left in 1994, that was the decimation of an 800-year-old cultural phenomenon.”

Now, thanks to the rural tourism boost fueled by Haferland, the villages are slowly recovering.

“By chance, in 2019 we were here in this area on holiday. Somebody asked if I was going to Haferland, which I had never heard of. We ended up doing the whole festival,” said Noble. “As a British ambassador, there’s a big link given King Charles’s involvement in this area. He’s a major engine for the restoration of Saxon architecture and the preservation of grasslands, which are better preserved here than in Europe as a whole.”

Looking back, Noble said he’s glad communism was ineffective in changing the laid-back character of rural Transylvania.

“Even though Ceaușescu tried to destroy ancient villages and the ancient way of life, he didn’t succeed. Life is still being lived as it was in medieval times,” he said, adding that “Romania doesn’t have a developed tourism market, and only recently have they started promoting themselves internationally.”

Thankfully, he said, “the product is far better than the promotion. If people come, they’ll fall in love.”