The meadow and the broad sky framed by distant mountains tempted one to doze in the mellow autumn sun.

Our destination was the village of Bran, the site of a Transylvanian castle infamously connected with the Dracula legend.

Making our way along the wide crest of the ridge, we stopped to pass the time with a lone old woman. She wore a black kerchief and her skin had weathered to a rich chestnut hue. Sitting on a rock knitting, minding a quartet of cows, she responded with a happy, gap-toothed grin to our guide's hello in Romanian.

She said she'd spent a week in her family's high pasture. We were the only people she'd seen except for four hikers who had passed that way the day before. They were a big disappointment. They didn't speak a word of Romanian, she said, flourishing her needles.

The peaceful setting and the woman's welcoming friendliness epitomized our visit to the region.

This was not the Transylvania we had been led to expect. When my husband and I told friends we planned a trip to Transylvania, you could almost see visions of vampires dancing in their heads. At the very least, our friends were sure hungry microbes would make us sick, thieves would snatch our coats through train windows, or packs of wild dogs would rip us apart. "I had an acquaintance who disappeared into the mountains of Transylvania and was never heard from again," said a Czech journalist friend, in a tone showing he expected us to share that fate.

Transylvania, in the heart of Romania, is one of the last unspoiled regions in Europe. Sheltered by the Carpathian Mountains and inhabited by a proud and independent people, Transylvania hasn't changed much since the Middle Ages. Families continue to till the fields by hand. Horsepower means what it says. The few cars share the right of way with barnyard animals. Hospitality is part of the culture, allowing visitors to enter a simpler world that almost certainly will disappear as Romania moves toward European Union membership.

Even the poorest village in Transylvania is rich in history and hospitality. Edging along a bumpy road, carefully dodging chickens dusting themselves in the sun, we stopped at a church now serving Protestant parishioners but built on a Roman foundation. It was Sunday afternoon. Finding the doors locked, our guide knocked on the parsonage door. The minister jumped up from a nap to give us a spirited tour of the simple sanctuary, brightened by blue paint and embroideries donated by families to commemorate special events in their lives.

The Romans were among the first of migrants to put their cultural stamp on Transylvania. Hungarian (Magyar) tribes settled there in the 10th century. Germans arrived from Saxony several centuries later, invited by the Hungarian king to shore up his empire's frontiers. The Saxons built seven fortified towns, including Sighisoara, giving the region its German name of Siebenburgen (Seven Citadels). Later the Ottomans and then the Austrian Habsburgs controlled Transylvania, made part of Romania after World War I.

Romania's more-recent history contains a tragic chapter under Nicolae Ceausescu, whose communist regime ended with his execution in 1989. Fortunately, the communists left Transylvania relatively untouched. They considered the region of small landholdings hardly worth exploiting.

The next morning, cowbells substituted nicely for an alarm clock. After breakfasting hugely, we left, our four-wheel-drive vehicle snaking along a khaki-colored river to another village where we would stay overnight. At one point we picked up a hitchhiking nun. "It's expected," said our guide, explaining that the region had no bus or train service. We turned down the nun's offer to pay.

A downside of having been ignored by the communists is a lack of amenities, leaving much of Transylvania off limits to the established travel industry. Roads are primitive, hotels scarce. It's possible to travel for miles without seeing a restaurant or a gas station.

Fortunately, several holiday companies are breaching the gap. These companies tailor vacations to visitors' interests, offering personal service and accommodation in people's homes. We found this the best way to travel.

Like so much of Transylvania, the tiny village of Rimetea, near Turda, remains traditional while looking to tomorrow. We had dinner with a family living in what during communist times had been a workers' dormitory, three floors up over dimly lit stairs. The apartment proved a little haven of comfort and charm, with modern art on the walls and English novels on bookshelves. Our hostess bounced in from the tiny kitchen with a feast — chewy homemade bread, red peppers in a delicate sauce and a heaping platter of fresh venison.

Hospitality suite

Later, the son of the house showed off images of the village on his newly purchased computer. An Internet connection wasn't yet possible. The family had no phone.

Pleasantly full, we crossed the unpaved road to our pension. After unsuccessful attempts to contact the world by shortwave radio, we padded along the creaky floor to bed, soon falling asleep under homespun covers.

Transylvanian villages, with their wooden houses and churches festooned with elaborately planed woodwork and intricately embroidered costumes worn to Sunday services, offer the visitor plenty to look at.

We could have chosen from other possibilities for outdoor activities, including mushroom hunting in the forest and cliff climbing, but the horseback expedition turned into a social occasion. The stable owners, a veterinarian and his wife, greeted us in the yard, amid an assortment of animals the doctor had treated and adopted. A three-legged dog wagged a welcome.

Bolstered by a bit of plum brandy — a staple of hospitality wherever we stopped — we formed a caravan. My husband and I were on horseback, another couple followed by wagon. A half-grown mule tagged along, offering comic moments when he rolled in the dust and bared his teeth in a mischievous smile.

We rode through broad fields, with purple autumn crocuses underfoot. In the distance a medieval fortress, built to ward off Tartars, offered a historical context to an idyllic day.

The Saxon-built fortress town of Sibiu, which resembles Nuremberg, with high-pitched, rust-colored roofs, offered a pleasant urban interlude. After sipping coffee in the main square, we visited the Brukenthal Museum, which has a large Romanian collection of art and also paintings by artists such as Rubens and Van Dyke.

Sighisoara, looking like a miniature Prague, was also a high point. The town, flanked by a city gate with a clock tower with allegorical figures, is on Unesco's World Heritage list. Souvenir stands capitalize on the fact that Vlad the Impaler, the 15th Century Romanian warlord popularly associated with the Dracula legend, was born here. But really it's lively only on market days, when wagons arrive with everything from hand-knitted sweaters to goat cheese.

Some local citizens hope their town stays sleepy. When promoters wanted to put a Dracula theme park on the town's outskirts, they complained that tourist throngs could damage the town's citadel and destroy an oak forest on the designated site. Romanian officials decided not to approve the park.

The village of Bran really banks on the Dracula legend, even though scholars doubt Vlad Tepes actually spent much time there, and there is no evidence that Irish novelist Bram Stoker modeled his blood-sucking monster on the Wallachian ruler. Tour buses regularly disgorge tourists keen on vampire sighting.

In the fog the stone structure, with its small, dark windows and broken battlements, offered promise of danger. But like the rest of Transylvania, the castle at Bran belied its ominous reputation. Decorated by Queen Marie, granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England, the fabled vampire haunt proved as cozy as a British country house.