A good night’s sleep. We are in Transylvania, Dracula country.
First stop this morning was Bran castle. It is commonly seen as Dracula’s castle, but that wrong.
Side note: Who is Dracula I hear you ask. Well there is Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but Stoker never set foot in Transylvania. However a 15th century prince, Vlad Tepes, is seen as the ‘real’ Dracula. Vlad wasn’t a nice man, but that could stem from being incarcerated in a Polish prison camp at the age of five and alleged repeatedly raped. Vlad’s father Vlad III, was called Vlad Dracul (with ‘draco’ apparently meaning dragon, son of ‘draco’ is ‘draculea’). So Vlad Tepes became Vlad Draculea. Now, Vlad Tepes used to do nasty things to his enemies, such as decapitation and boiling alive. However he earned his nickname, Vlad the Impaler, buy impaling his enemies from navel to shoulder with a very big stick, making sure that it misses all the vital organs. Charming bloke!
Bran Castle was built in 1382 by the Saxons, to defend the Bran pass from the Turks. It was owned by the royal family, except for a brief period of 60 years where it was nicked off them by communist government, but returned afterwards, in 2006.
After having visited Peles Castle, I was expecting some quite grand. Bran Castle is quite an impressive building, perched on top of a rock but the rooms are all quite small and sparsely furnished. It is quite a labyrinth of rooms. I suppose much of the contents disappeared. Bran Castle is a popular spot, so it was full of school children running rampant with teachers not controlling them. As it is all stone, voices echo so it was difficult to escape them.
They have a couple of rooms dedicated to vampires. One information board was telling you how a new born child can get possessed by Saturn (wearing a red bonnet and then eating it) and then how it will grow a tail. Hmmm.
Back in the car and a lovely drive through the countryside to Sighisoara a very pretty fortified medieval 14th century city perched on top of the hill. We had a lovely stroll around it, looking at all but also looking at all the tat you can buy that has Dracula or Vlad on it. We wandered up the hill to a nice old gothic Church on the Hill built in 1345 which has shady German cemetery attached to it.
We had to stop a have a look at the statue of Vlad, great moustache!
This area is littered with old fortified churches in various states. We were told that Bierstan is the best to go to, so we headed there. Bierstan is a 15th century church, built on top of a hill and is strongly fortified (two walls and four towers). I has a room off to the side which has a really cool lock, 19 locks in one, it apparently won first prize at the 1900 Paris World Expo!
It was getting quite late in the afternoon by now, so we headed off to Sibiu where we are staying tonight. We took some back road, so avoided lots of cars and trucks. But there are still the horse and carts on the road, they drive these on the main highways too!
We got into Sibiu quite late so went for a quick wander around the old city and then dinner.
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