Off the beaten Drac

Romania's second city, Cluj Napoca, is only a three and a half hour flight away, but it might as well be another world.

This was reinforced by the fact that a cursory glance at our fellow passengers revealed that, bar maybe two, all of our flight were native Romanians returning home rather than tourists after cheap beers.

Every single person we told where we were going - including a hefty number of Romanians - appeared totally bemused by our choice of holiday location.

But the former communist country, one of the European Union's latest additions, has an astonishing amount to offer.

A complete lack of understanding of the transport system meant we had failed to buy our bus tickets to the centre of Cluj prior to boarding.

So the entire journey was spent fervently discussing at which point we should disembark before our fare-dodging (I think we saved approximately 50p) was spotted.

That hurdle over, it was time to drink in our first glimpse of Transylvania. Cluj Napoca is a throbbing hub, a university city peppered with distinctive, pastel-coloured houses and seedy, subterranean clubs selling the local brew, Ursus, in disturbingly large measures for next to nothing.

While everyone seemed to speak excellent English and went out of their way to help us, the complete lack of English menus at the first restaurant we visited came as something of a surprise.

Our waiter did his best to oblige but we felt we couldn't quite ask him to recite the entire menu - so we plumped for beef and cheese'. It was delicious.

Cluj is basically a springboard for a host of gorgeous Saxon and medieval towns and villages, and, unless you want to follow the locals and dice with death on the roads', trains are the way to get around.

Locals treat the engines with a disarming lack of respect, using the tracks as a crossing point, jumping off at each station for a quick cigarette before hopping back on again and leaving the doors open until they're finished.

The top speed of the trains probably only reaches the dizzy heights of 30mph - but the opportunity to gaze at lush, wooded, rolling hills, tiny villages with distinctive red-tiled roofs poking out of the distance, shepherds watching their flocks and horses and carts traversing the local thoroughfares, is not to be missed.

It is like stepping back in time. And our next stop, Sighisoara, invites you to take an even greater leap - into the realms of fiction. The stunning town, topped by a medieval fortified citadel, is the homeplace of Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler - the real' Dracula.

You can visit the house where one of Romania's most gruesome tyrants reputedly grew up - although we found the Irish music playing as we sampled steak and red wine in the converted restaurant somewhat incongruous. But there's much more to the town than that. The raised citadel affords stunning views of the rest of Sighisoara, and the wooded mountains that surround it, and it is still rural enough to see horses and carts ridden by gypsy families going through the streets.

It is surprisingly quiet after dark - no creatures of the night to be glimpsed, sadly - but it is possible to go nightclubbing in a dark, sweaty club located literally inside the citadel walls.

And if you want to really experience going out Romanian-style, karaoke at Jo's Pub offers a dazzling mixture of Romanian pop hits (every bit as bad as you could imagine) and the very best of Bon Jovi and Bryan Adams. All washed down with gallons of Ursus.

One of the main reasons for our trip was to go horse-riding in the Transylvanian mountains. Our guides, based just a few kilometres out of Sighisoara, met us at the station before a two-hour ride through stunning countryside, past loose horses and flocks of sheep guarded by shepherds who looked exactly how you would imagine a shepherd should look.

Our ride took us to the tiny village of Prod - which does not have running water but boasts around three churches and, seemingly, satellite dishes on virtually every house. An old woman crossed the road in front of us, herding her geese, and children waved at us from their doorsteps.

This is the heart of rural Romania, where life is untouched by little things like changes in currency, the fall of communism, and entry to the European Union. It is humbling to see and entirely alien to a western mindset.

Back to civilisation, Brasov offers more of what Sighisoara does but on a larger scale.

The town is surrounded by forested mountains and is bizarrely looked down on by a Hollywood-style Brasov sign - yes, really. You can reach it by cable car but unfortunately the machine was not working when we visited.

Stunning, icon-heavy Orthodox churches litter the whole of the country, despite Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's best efforts to stamp out religion and a particularly charming example, St Nicholas' Cathedral, can be found in the Schei district of Brasov.

Leaving the gorgeous peace and tranquillity of Transylvania for Bucharest is something of a wrench. Bucharest, more than anywhere else, bears the scars of Communism.

The city is a ghost of what it could have been, with dark grey buildings blotting the landscape and hiding delicate, Parisian architecture. It is home to the second-largest building in the world (after the Pentagon), the gargantuan Palace of Parliament.

While a few attractive landmarks remain, in Bucharest it is all about memorials. In the 1989 revolution against Nicolae Ceausescu, at least 1,000 people died, with journalists witnessing tanks rolling over Romanian freedom fighters and students.

Buildings around Piata Universitatii are still riddled with bullet marks and monuments to the horrific events of that day can be found in Piata Revolutiei.

The sites would be more sobering if it weren't for the traffic clogging up the surrounding roads. The city has a lot to get over, but moments of peace and tranquillity can be found if you know where to look, with the Cismigu Gardens and lake being a perfect place to catch your breath - if you're prepared to see off the astonishing numbers of beggars.

Bucharest is also said to be home to up to 200,000 stray dogs which roam in packs, but in our visit we saw about five. Although one of them did attempt attacking our taxi, which was a little alarming.

Romania is a long way from most people's holiday itineraries, with visions of Dracula, Communism and gipsies colouring expectations of a grim, if not dangerous stay.

But what you will find instead is a fascinating nation on the verge of change, coloured by but emerging from a dark and bloody history and peopled by some of the friendliest strangers you will ever meet.