Travel with Rick Steves · Saturday, August 29, 2026
Jacob Miknowski highlights the region of Maramureș in Romania as a place that has retained its traditional rural heritage, offering a glimpse into lifestyles that have largely vanished in other parts of Eastern Europe. This preservation is partly due to the slower pace of transition into capitalism and the EU.
“There are parts of Eastern Europe, like Romania's got that rural heritage, right? I found that in Romania. There's a place in Romania called Mara. And it is like a living open air folk museum.”
“What you find in Mara is way up on the northern region of Romania, next to Ukraine, right? Yeah, actually, I went down from Poland, Ukraine, and then crossed the border down to a place called Breb.”
“That for me was like traveling back 30 years to Poland, my youth where people were out with scythes, you know, bringing in produce, you know, winter cabbage.”