THE GREAT FOREST

TWO-THIRDS OF EUROPE'S PRIMEVAL FORESTS ARE LOCATED IN THE ROMANIAN CARPATHIANS. ON A HIKE, THE BEAUTY OF THIS REGION REVEALS ITSELF

- Diana Laarz

TO COME STRAIGHT TO the point: we didn't see any bears in the Carpathians.

Sometimes, though, it seemed as if they were waiting for me just over the next hill. We saw their fresh tracks in the damp ground and found their piles of droppings in the long grass. But the animals themselves remained hidden from view.

Nico Cosdan turned to me with a twinkle in his eye. “We don’t see the animals. But they see us.” Bears, lynxes and wolves perceive humans much earlier than we perceive them. They observe those who actually wanted to observe them. A queasy feeling: somewhere back there in the juniper bushes, the bears lurk and wonder at the colorful bipeds in their wilderness.

Cosdan is one of two guides on this hike through the Carpathians. As a boy, he once hugged a wild young bear—he didn't know what he was doing and would never do it again. Later, he bottle-fed a fawn and a young wild boar.

The second man is called Radu Micu. He worked on a cruise ship for 13 years. Micu has seen the world, at least Hawaii, Cuba, Panama and the ocean around it. Then he decided to return home with his family. Because it's best there.

These two men are reliable guides. They know paths over the Romanian mountains that otherwise only wild animals and shepherds with their sheep know. And they cook the best 'mountain pasta' in the Carpathians, using whatever they carry over the mountains in their backpacks.

The Carpathians stretch across Europe in a large arc, from Austria to eastern Serbia. We are travelling in Romania. At first, the landscape looks like the hilly country of the hobbits from