Forget Bram Stoker, forget Hollywood vampires and dark deeds of the night. Transylvania is one of the loveliest, light-filled, flower-bedecked places on earth. What is truly extraordinary about this corner of Romania, cradled in the horseshoe curve of the Carpathians, is that the steppe-meadow landscape, the layout of the Saxon houses and villages, and the smallholder lifestyle of its people, have remained virtually unchanged for centuries. It is, essentially, an outpost of medieval Europe.