The "facts" are that Vlad Țepeș Dracula was born to Vlad Dracul and he rose to prominence as somewhat of a hero in the region for his role in freeing the Romanian people from the Ottoman rule. He, maybe erroneously so, has since been regarded as somewhat of a villain under the moniker of 'Vlad the Impaler' due to his predilection of impaling his victims' heads on stakes.
The fiction is provided though Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' where a young lawyer travels to Transylvania to assist Count Dracula in a real estate acquisition and stays with Dracula within his castle. He soon suspects that Dracula is not all as he seems and upon waking up to two females, fangs exposed, ready to go at his neck and having previously noted Dracula's lust for blood, quickly flees.
It's the crossover and mishmash of the fact and fiction that has generated a tourism industry around a bevy of what ifs, maybes and possibilities. So, like everyone here before us, we're in Romania on the hunt for Vampires.
Sighişoara
We'd come to Sighişoara to begin our journey along the Vampire trail as it's alleged that this is the city where Vlad was born. However, with the positives of travelling in the low season come the negatives. Whilst it feels like you're cheating the system when you pay for two beds in a ten bed dorm and no one else is in it, you also run the risk that things may be closed.
In this case, the house where Vlad is supposed to have been born in was closed for renovations. There's now a restaurant in the building and we'd even prepared ourselves to go and indulge some guilty pleasures and drink Dracula's blood and Dracula's blood soup, which are really just red wine and tomato soup.
The best we could do was a picture of Nix out the front of his house, one of the "official" plaque and photographic evidence of a potential attack. Coincidence? I think not.
In saying that, the rest of Sighişoara did not disappoint and confirmed for us again why UNESCO heads around doffing its cap to cities and other various landmarks. I'll let the photos do the talking here.
Brașov
Being the intrepid travellers that we are, paying $45 each (an entire day's full budget) to go on a tour to see a castle that the castle in Bram Stoker's may have been based on didn't really appeal to us. So instead we payed $9 to go there and back on local transport.
You arrive in Bran surrounded by more tat than you've ever seen in your life. You then pay the equivalent of $8 to enter Bran Castle.
To use Nix's words, "I'm not sure what I expected but I expected more". That statement hits the nail on head.
You wander through what is a pretty plain castle with plaques pointing out rooms that the Queen used as a toilet, a candlestick that was used in a movie about Dracula and a "secret passageway" that had a very obvious door leading to it. Finally, after what seemed like a thousand steps, you reach two rooms with some token information regarding Vlad and Dracula and... that's it!
You then exit through aforementioned tat, are half heartedly convinced into entering a "haunted house" by some strange werewolf/vampire guy and then leave Bran wondering, is that it? Is that Transylvania? Is that Romania? Maybe it is...
The most exciting part of the trip for me was trying to throw rocks through the frozen lakes next to the castle.
Other highlights of Brașov were servings of brains in preparation for our next destination and finally trying the "boobies" (delicious doughnut things made with some sort of curd in them) that I shouldn't have left until our last day in Romania!
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