Bram Stoker sent Jonathan Harker to Bistritz, and the town of Bistrița, just a few kilometres from here, has never quite escaped the vampire. In the novel, Harker spends a night at the Golden Krone hotel before setting off towards the Borgo Pass and Count Dracula's castle, and today the town has a hotel of that name and the pass a hotel built to look like a castle. The real history is more interesting. Bistrița was one of the seven Saxon cities that gave Transylvania its German name, Siebenbürgen, a rich trading town with a big Gothic church, arcaded merchants' houses and a ring of walls, much of which has been lost.
Long before the Saxons, the Romans were here. On Dealul Cetății, the citadel hill above the village of Budacu de Jos, a fortification marked the north-eastern corner of Roman Dacia, overlooking the Bistrița valley and the routes to the passes into Moldavia. It is now one of the components of the Dacian frontier on the World Heritage list. The site itself is a wooded hill with traces of earthworks; the reward for walking up is a view over the valley, the town and the mountains beyond.
The great riding road here is the DN17 east from Bistrița over the Tihuța pass, Stoker's Borgo Pass, to Vatra Dornei and Bucovina. It climbs gradually through villages and forest to the top, at around twelve hundred metres, with long, flowing bends and wide views of the Bârgău mountains, then descends towards the Dorna depression. The surface is generally good, but trucks are frequent, and in winter snow and ice can make the pass difficult. To the north, smaller roads lead into the Năsăud area and towards the Rodna mountains.
Bistrița is a city of about eighty thousand people with fuel, hotels, restaurants and workshops, and the old town centre is pleasant for a stroll and a coffee. Budacu de Jos is a small village with a shop or two. Try the local dishes in Bistrița, such as balmoș, a rich polenta with cheese and butter from the mountain areas, and look out for the Saxon pastries that are still baked here, a sweet legacy of the German community.