Sibiu International Airport, also known as Hermannstadt Airport, has four gates and (as of late summer 2025) nearly three dozen international destinations. Before security, a poster from the tourism board, featuring a beautiful photograph of the seemingly peaceful Transylvanian landscape, encourages those seeking tranquility to find inner peace and return to the outdoors: #soundofsilence.

"Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again…" In the acoustic darkness—if such a thing exists—the poster in question, for it is not a video with a soundtrack, unfolds: Behind the beautifully depicted, idyllic hills of bucolic Transylvania, there is a constant clattering, humming, and roaring, in the service of landscape maintenance; sometimes with a gasoline engine, sometimes electric, but always loud. Cutting, mowing, and trimming are permitted, indeed required, razor-sharp, at any hour, in any place.

Romanians are a hardworking people. They don't leave the wonderful idyll that the Creator bestowed upon them uncultivated, following the Lord's command day in and day out: Subdue the earth. From this fertile soil, however, sprouts all sorts of things that the careful gardener and farmer don't like to see and must eradicate, lest they offend the face of God and the guests invited to the pool party in the garden. These include:

Couch grass (absolutely nasty, very resilient, always comes back, like your tax return, therefore to be rejected); wild carrot (yes, that's really its name, be careful when preparing your next carrot stew, the stuff gets everywhere!); spurge (only necessary in ancient Rome, once for the two legendary city founders); hemp-nettle (dentists take note); dead-nettle (a wonderful insult to adopt: "You dead-nettle, you!"). Not to mention vetch (especially the "foul vetch," Vicia villosa; just the sound of that! You definitely don't want that, after all, there are children playing in the garden), the recurring highwayman called plantain (nomen est omen), or even hemlock: As a person with a humanistic education, you know how quickly that can end up in a cup or goblet that you might not be able to resist.

These weeds – all of them! – must be eradicated immediately, killed, leveled to the ground, completely wiped out, root and branch! They cause much trouble and distress to the faithful gardener who wants to create a paradise on earth. These tormentors oppose his plan of creation with roots that reach into the deepest recesses of hell. They nestle in the cracks of paving stones (the do-gooder calls this a "joint ecosystem"), spoiling the overall impression and even making the garden impassable.

Worse still: stubborn and completely neglected, they thrive better than any desired and carefully nurtured plant. They deprive it of nutrients, water, space, and light. The fact that they then brazenly flower is something the gardener dislikes. He pronounces categorically: "That nasty green stuff, that green hell, has to go – as quickly as possible, before it self-seeds."

This can be interpreted as an order. Every landowner around the world follows it. But not usually around the clock. In Transylvania, however, "time flows differently here." Recently, this gave rise to a noble competition in the moonlight in Kleingroßdorf.

It's 11 p.m., a beautiful summer evening, and the lawn is being mowed. Under a full moon. A perfect opportunity, of course, why miss it – no additional lighting is needed.

Actually, that fits into the overall picture, because mowing is going on all day long anyway – either in our garden or in others. If someone finishes on the left, someone starts on the right, or further back or forward – you can hear it in every direction: everywhere and forever, the song of the brush cutter, the lawnmower, the all-terrain compact tractors with their gigantic cutting units under the driver's seat is ever-present.

Since I've been devoting more time to our Transylvanian garden than I ever thought possible, mainly to mowing, words like "raspelkurz" (rasped short) and "ratzekahl" (completely bald) roll off my tongue very easily and dramatically. I wish I could pronounce the consonant "R" in them with the same thunderous roll as my summer Saxon wife.

She says: “”.

I don't understand her, because after mowing the lawn today, from which I rested exhausted, I forgot to remove my earplugs. My wife repeats herself unsuccessfully, finally shouting directly into one of my useless ears:

"Neighbor Popescu has a new lawnmower."

"That's no reason to yell at me."

"But it smells terribly of diesel."

"Popescu?"

"No. The mower. A monstrosity. It was delivered this evening. It looks like a cross between a combine harvester and an armored cruiser. Apparently, Popescu decided to try it out immediately."

"That's clever of him. Do you remember when we recently ordered that ridiculously expensive espresso machine from Amazon, and when we unpacked it, it turned out to be a pressure cooker?"

„Idiot!“

"Who? Popescu?"

The woman from Saxony turns away from me in annoyance. I pick at my ears and find a lumpy, sticky mass, which I remove with difficulty. I immediately regret it.

An airborne maneuver and a Rammstein concert are apparently taking place simultaneously on the Popescu property. It's not just simple noise, but Armageddon. An apocalyptic machine relentlessly cuts swathes of destruction, announcing its presence with sounds that eyewitnesses in a live ARD news report from the scene of the disaster could only describe with the classic phrase: "It was like a war."

And as in every war, rearmament and a counterattack are necessary. I stretch my weary back and head into the Grim Reaper's engine room. In the tool shed behind our house, I inspect our own infernal machines. Over the years, quite a collection has accumulated there, things that don't require a driver's license, but certainly demand nerves of steel from the neighbors. And a good ear doctor.

Full of anticipation and thirst for revenge, my gaze caresses grim shearing and cutting tools, tumultuous trimmers, murderous brush cutters, and what my summer Saxon wife calls her "Lady-Shave," a device she can easily handle, small but mighty, blessed with a decent amount of noise.

I opt for my favorite device, which I've secretly and affectionately nicknamed the "Giant Hogweed Tamer." It's an ingenious piece of electrical engineering, resembling a bulky, long-handled metal detector. You can strap it to your shoulder to sweep the Green Hell in semicircles. Beneath the semi-circular cover, depending on the attachment, lies either an eight-bladed rotating knife or a spool of 20 meters of treacherous nylon line, protruding from two sides and flattening anything within a 30-centimeter radius that isn't nailed down.

As I indulge my nylon fetish, my fingers sweating and aroused, as usual, I briefly think of an acquaintance who recently surprised us by confessing to having renounced such technological blessings because of their massive microplastic pollution in the soil. He now uses a classic scythe. Using one is a true art, not to mention the regular sharpening required. Ha! What would he do now, this do-gooder with his plastic-free, completely silent scythe, when it's time to bellow loudly at a rival?

There's always something to mow in our garden. Once you've finished one end, you can just start again at the next. I choose a patch of lawn as close as possible to Popescu's fence; the moon is shining just right there, too. And off we go!

I'm a little sorry that, because of my toy's electric motor, I can't get my revenge on the diesel fumes. But in terms of volume, I'm on par with Popescu. At least, that's what I think. I can't really judge for sure, because I left my earplugs on the garden table and since firing up my revenge razor, I can barely hear anything at all.

But I do notice one thing: The friendly competition between Popescu and me draws our second neighbor into the fray around 11:45 p.m. He doesn't hold back and fires up his own collection of lawnmowers. I know what he's capable of unleashing on us.

He recently suggested I try out a contraption he sometimes straps on, a kind of motorized backpack with a fuel tank. A frame winds around the wearer's waist to hold the doomsday scythe it powers. Are you familiar with the film epic "Alien"? In one of the installments, the heroine Ripley climbs into an exoskeleton robot to fight the ever-recurring monster from outer space, whose last name is probably "couch grass." You get the picture, I guess.

Heia Safari! Not only is the jointly conjured cacophony now indescribable, its fateful roar perhaps only surpassed by Wagner overtures – the desecrated land is now vibrating across properties, possibly already a case for seismologists in their earthquake early warning stations, even in Bucharest, almost 300 kilometers away.

Then the Lord takes pity on us. The full moon eclipses. Dark clouds quickly gather and open the floodgates. We get soaked and move our precious equipment to dry safety. I'd say it was a draw. Tomorrow is another day.

Unfortunately, summer and the growing season are far too short. But in autumn, you can bring out some new heavy equipment to chop up firewood for the fireplace. I already have something in mind, and quite possibly in mind, from "Manfred's Chainsaw Collection" online: a two-stroke powerhouse of Soviet manufacture: the "Druzhba" chainsaw, once widespread throughout the Eastern Bloc. I'm pretty sure both my neighbors still have one in their basement. I'll get one for myself too; they're still available at reasonable prices (albeit "for hobbyists").

Si vis pacem, para bellum. "If you want peace, prepare for war." Latin proverb, primarily attributed to the author Publius (or Flavius) Vegetius Renatus.