Stay with a Count in Transylvania

Not that they knew him. They knew my grandfather. My father, his son, left the country at the age of eight. Yet they recognised him for what he was - the son of the last Count Kálnoky to live in Köröspatak, trying to carve out a living amid ever worsening economic conditions, trying to keep the village alive, until he had to flee when Nazi Intelligence realized he was working against the fascist regime. Later, the communists expropriated everything he had owned and my family had to leave Central Europe for good, as it then seemed.

But back to the events in the village in 1987. As half of the village had gathered around us and accompanied us to have a look at our former home, which was then used as grain storage and local Party headquarters, word came that a column of cars was approaching the village from the district capital, Sf. Gheorghe. This could only mean one thing: The Securitate were on their way to check what was happening. Following an almost imperceptible gesture from my father, the villagers vanished into their houses and we hopped into our 4x4 and left the village by a forest track through the hills to Miklosvar. The Securitate questioned the villagers repeatedly for several months, but nobody seemed to know who these mysterious foreigners had been.

Returning to Romania

I found a job as a manager in a pharmaceutical company, then in 1996 got a position in Bucharest as head of the Romanian branch of a German multinational. I married my wife, Anna, a Transylvanian of a family who had not left the country, with whom I now have three sons.

Ever since 1987 I had pondered the question of how bring back the family to Köröspatak, where my ancestors lived for 750 years (before that, they were more in the west, near the town Sebes).

Dreams may shape destinies, but reality must be mastered. Romanian reality, and that of rural Transylvania, turned out to be quite a challenge. Looking back at the past 15 years, I sometimes wonder how it all came together in the end. It took 10 years of effort to finally get back, buy back or lease back some of the most important parts of the cultural heritage my family had created, such as the family's mansion in Köröspatak, a beautiful renaissance building in the picturesque village of Miklósvár (Miclosoara) and several decrepit remains of village houses.

We started restoring a couple of these houses, as this proved easier than the castles. They now have received their old spirits back again: furnished with old painted furniture and heated by large ceramic stoves or open fireplaces. We just added a little modern comfort like stylish bathrooms with running warm water in a village barely provided with electrical power (forget gas or running water).