SEVERAL PEASANTS STOPPED working the fields and waved as we pulled into Pauca, a colorful Romanian village in the heart of Transylvania. Mama Ana’s “kids” were back from America, they noticed, eager to spread word across the little village faster than wild fire.
As picturesque as any of the scores of villages I’ve seen across the region, Pauca is a typical Romanian hamlet, inhabited by 300 or so hardy families who live off the land. Time seems to have stood still for more than a century, and the simple yet tough life is not unlike other corners of rural Europe, especially the former Eastern Bloc.