TRANSYLVANIA

Most people in Hungary view Erdély (their name for Transylvania) as a land "stolen" by the Romanians, where some two million Magyars face continuing harassment and subjugation by a Romanian population that they claim arrived long after the Magyars had settled the area. All Romanians assert the opposite: that Transylvania has always been rightfully theirs and that, for centuries, it was the Magyars who practiced discrimination as colonialist overlords.

Since the Trianon Treaty of 1920, which placed Transylvania firmly within the Romanian state, the balance of power among the ethnic groups has shifted sharply in favor of the Romanian majority. The revolution of 1989 has allowed many Germans in particular to return, after eight centuries, to their ancestral homeland, leaving the Hungarians as the main minority group. Meanwhile, the Gypsies (Tigani) still go their own way, eagerly participating in an economic free-for-all that they never really abandoned under communism, and largely unconcerned by growing prejudice against them.

-- from the travel book "ROMANIA: The Rough Guide"