I have chosen the region of Romania known as Transylvania for our destination this summer. Like the other locations we have travelled to this season - Andalusia and Corsica - this is also a new experience for me.

Transylvania is the rural, mountainous heart of Romania. For most people this country represents little more than "the place Dracula comes from", a land which was dominated by a brutal Communist dictatorship under Nikolai Ceausescu in the 1980s. But Romania has a great deal more to offer than spine-chilling legends and a grim past: in fact it is a very beautiful country, with wonderful and very varied topography where traces of an eventful history can be seen everywhere. When I travelled to the country in May of this year in search of locations, a journey planned and implemented with the support of the tour organiser Transilvania Aktiv, I found a large number of very promising locations, and now I intend to visit the most interesting of them with my two models.

Originally Beatrice was planned as a model for this project; she was booked already for the journey to Andalusia in May, but she couldn't take part in the end because she missed a flight. But once again I was out of luck, because just one day before we were due to set off I received a cancellation from her - without any real reason. Fortunately Sabrina was able to step in at the last minute and take her place! The second model is Elena; she is Romanian and lives quite close to the region we'll be visiting, which means that for the first time I shall be working with a more or less local model.

Elena suggested bringing her husband Michael along. Since an additional pair of hands would come in very useful I was glad to agree to the suggestion, especially since he knows the country very well and can be our guide in various matters. The fifth person in the team is the make-up artist Timea, who accompanied me to Andalusia in May of this year. We have planned two days for the journey there and back, and three working days. Since the distances involved aren't really so great, we will make the journey from Budapest by car.

  read more in the PDF file!