Occasionally we run across communities that seem entirely settled in their landscapes and yet still have a whiff of the foreign. The Saxon communities of Transylvania are just that, places that are so deeply rooted in Romania and yet everywhere redolent of another world. One gets the same feeling with some of the small towns in the Poprad area of Slovakia. Six hundred years ago and more, miners from further north migrated through the Carpathians, some stopping in modern day Slovakia, others continuing southeast to Romania. The twenty four towns of the so-called Spis confederation remain as delicate reminders of a Saxon past.