Villagers home alone as Romania speeds up

By Marius Zaharia

BOZIENI, Romania (Reuters) - In the picturesque hilltop village of Bozieni in southern Romania, once home to 100 families, Ecaterina Serban is the last remaining resident.

Her once vibrant community was killed, she says, by a French wine company which bought up much of the surrounding land from her neighbors to create a large vineyard. For the past 10 years, she has lived alone.

"People sold their land to the French guys and left for the city, to send their kids to school, to get jobs and get rich," said Serban, 75, sneaking a grey hair lock under a flowered scarf tied around her head.

"I did not want to leave my village, because this is the life I've learned ... apartment blocks are too small, the air is dirty and I'm afraid of cars," Serban said.

Such dramas are occurring all over Romania, as one of the European Union's poorest and most backward members tries to modernize its antiquated agricultural sector.

Of almost 13,000 villages in Romania with an average of 800 inhabitants, 100 villages are completely empty and some 1,500 villages have under 100 people, according to the National Statistics Institute.

Some 40 percent of Romania's 22 million people still live in the countryside. It is common to see them working the fields with their hands or with wooden implements and driving horses and carts. Many villages still lack running water.

In areas like Maramures in the north of the country, residents still -- to the delight of tourists -- wear traditional embroidered peasant costumes and preserve a rich historical and cultural heritage.