I’m sitting in a bar in a small town in Romania with a handful of journalists who have come to report on an emerging tourist destination.

It’s a shabby chic sort of place, set on a plain not far from the Carpathian mountains where Dracula and his carnivorous mates were rumoured to hang out.

It’s got the look of distressed gentility, with plenty of signs of previous grandeur and the benefit of recent European City of Culture status and investment to bring it into the realms of a must-do weekend destination any time now, but for the moment it stills bears some of the hallmarks of the old communist regime, and a history punctuated by Saxons, Hungarian and Turks.

The bar is probably everything you could wish for in a soporific watering hole. It’s similar to a Dutch brown bar, but while it offers local beer and coffee your gaze can’t help wandering to the counter where there are trays of handmade chocolates and menus with classic cocktails. Through the window the sun can be seen setting over the terracotta roofs.

Inside, though, we’re choosing our drinks and rum truffles and generally congratulating ourselves on having ended up on such an unexpectedly interesting trip. The bar staff smile at us and nod, and eventually one comes over to take our orders, and then retires to continue drying glasses.

The tour guide, who is tall and blonde and slim and beautiful and charming, looks up as several young men come in and beckons them over. This is her partner and his friends, she explains. She told us earlier today that they wanted to meet us, and we thought she was just being polite. But two minutes into the opening conversation, I realise she was dead right. They didn’t just want to meet us. They want to learn everything about life in Europe – and in what they term its capital, London – as they possibly can. Sometime soon – it could even be later this year – Romania may join the Schengen Zone, allowing its citizens to move freely between EU countries.

That, explains our tour guide’s partner, is when the golden age of Romania will begin. Just too young to remember the Ceaucescu years, these young men know little fear. Their parents may be timid or reticent, quite content to work quietly on the land or wait at tables from morning till midnight, but this generation is different.

“I want to work in London,” he tells us. “In our country, you don’t know whether you’ll have a job in three months’ time. Many people who work for the government have been made redundant. Others haven’t had a pay rise in more than a year. I can only afford to build my own house because my family have some extra land. I am tired of not knowing whether I will be financially secure in a few years’ time.”

He has friends in London. There are ten of them living in one house – so it must be a very large house, but then he understands that London houses are large – and they all work. Though he’s not sure how they got round the permit problem.

The men at the bar are talking quietly. There is no sign of the Singapore Slings or the chocolates. Our tour guide calls over to remind them of our order. They look mildly surprised that she’s mentioned it, but one of them leans over for a tray and puts it on the counter.

Her partner is warming to his theme. He clearly has a strong work ethic. He started his own bike-hire firm while at school and is the largest provider in the town now. He may go on to build another house when this one is finished. But, as soon as he can, he will leave for London.

“I want to know that if I, say, go on a skiing holiday, I’ll still be able to have enough to change my car that year,” he explains.

The British journalists eye each other around the table. Nobody wants to burst the balloon. So nobody actually says, yes, well, sorry mate, so do we all.