Bradt Transylvania press release

Press release from www.travel-media.co.uk

Transylvania
FIRST EDITION

PR prose by Nick Redmayne
Too fast the year has turned a corner, aquaplaning on puddles of a British summer’s liquid sunshine – Halloween is almost upon us. In Chalfont St Peter the crepuscular rays of dwindling daylight search deep into the Bradt offices. A nearby murder of crows is disturbed, breaking the evening’s tranquillity in raucous flight. In the furthest recesses of a basement storeroom something ancient is awakened - Transylvania lives...

Transylvania has paid an economically expedient homage to Bram Stoker’s Dracula for many years. Rocky Horror’s Dr Frank N Furter, the ‘sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania’ added a later twist, though not one known to have had local origins. Tourists by the busload, lured by macabre gothic tales, have fallen on the stories of Vlad III Ţepeş ‘The Impaler,’ ensuring the legend’s immortality. However, Bradt’s Transylvania sheds a withering light on vampiric myth – Vlad’s penchant for puncturing was it seems indulged elsewhere. Much more shockingly, the book discovers a far darker secret – the disturbing phenomena of those twin Transylvanian songstresses, The Cheeky Girls…
The reality of Transylvania is a vast area, almost 58,000 square kilometres, occupying the heart of post Ceauşescu Romania. Here, vast swathes of countryside unafflicted by the brutal homogeneity of agribusiness, where horse-drawn carts are very often the only transport, preserve traditional lifestyles and indigenous wildlife lost to more intensively cultivated regions. As author Lucy Mallows reports, ‘Transylvania is the perfect escape from the hectic, stressed-out Western world. It’s impossible to rush. The region is very affordable and getting easier to navigate. Local cuisine is delicious, hearty peasant fare, fruit and vegetables often organic and locally produced.’ Mallows expands to cover eco-tourism, bear, wolf and lynx tracking together with birdwatching, hiking and other outdoor pursuits. Elsewhere, she describes a landscape strewn with medieval cities, hidden Saxon villages, romantic palaces, rocky ruins and imposing fortresses. Transylvania offers a window onto a Europe that’s long been exorcised out of existence further west, and your name doesn’t have to be Professor Van Helsing or Buffy the Vampire Slayer to brave a visit.

Lucy Mallows is an expert on central European culture, architecture, politics and history. Her links with Transylvania date from the late 1980s when she worked as a volunteer with Operation Romanian Villages, a campaign to save settlements from demolition during the Ceauşescu regime. She is also author of Bradt’s Slovakia and Bratislava.

For review copies contact Travel Media – 01830 540 440 or info@travel-media.co.uk
Title: Transylvania Author: Lucy Mallows
Publisher: Bradt Travel Guides Publication: September 2008
Price: £14.99 ISBN: 978 1 84162 230 9

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