Dracula – Greg and Mandy's Travels

Dracula (or Vlad as he was known to his mum) wasn’t really a bad kid. Just misunderstood. I mean, he always brushed his teeth, and never turned his homework in late. Really, it wasn’t his fault that his father was Prince of Transylvania and known around the traps as Vlad Dracul (Vlad the dragon), and there was nothing he could do about being called Vlad Dracula (Vlad son of the dragon). They were given that moniker as they were members of the Order of the Dragon, a militant fraternity founded by Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, dedicated to halting the Ottoman advance into Europe.

The Carpathian Mountains are the second biggest range in Europe, reaching 2,600 meters high, and running from the north west to the south east (that’s 10 o’clock to 4 o’clock, Mum) through Hungary and Romania. They are high and formidable, and formed the natural boundary for armies such as the Ottomans.

The Crusaders had built a number of fortresses from which they attacked the Ottoman Muslim invaders. From about 1430 the fortress known as Bran Castle, situated on a ridge in the Carpathian Mountains, on the border of Transylvania and Wallachia, became a stronghold and key position for the Vlads and their Order to fight the Ottomans, and they were very successful.

In February 1462, Vlad led a force to attack the Ottomans, massacring tens of thousands of Turks and Bulgarians, and effectively stopping the spread of the Muslim invaders westwards towards Europe. In Romania and nearby Christian countries he is considered a hero, statues erected, the whole nine yards, and certainly Europe today would be very different if he hadn’t succeeded.

Having secured Transylvania, they joined with the other Christian principalities of Moldova and Wallachia to form the new country of Romania, and hired King Carol I.

Trouble was, Vlad’s methods weren’t quite conventional. His favourite method of dispatching his enemies was to plant 10 metre high sharpened poles into the ground, and impale his enemies on top of them, careful to avoid damaging any vital organs, so they took days to die. And not just one or two of them. The Turkish sultan was overwhelmed to find around 20,000 of his subjects impaled in this way in one forest, and wisely decided not to pursue him any further, which was probably the point(!) that Vlad was trying to make. As his reputation spread, not surprisingly Vlad became known as Vlad the Impaler.

Bram Stoker subsequently wrote Dracula in 1897, which has nothing in common with Vlad except the name Dracula, the setting of Transylvania, and a castle somewhere. But it gripped the imagination of Hollywood, which is never one to let facts get in the way of a good story. Thing is that Vlad wasn’t a vampire, and while he may have seen Bran Castle, never possessed it.

Anyway, today was Dracula day. Picked up early in a tour bus and taken a couple of hours up the road to Sinaia, a Romanian ski resort, and home to Pelis Castle, the summer palace of the Romanian King. King Carol I started construction soon after arriving from Germany to take up the kingship, and construction was still happening when he died in 1914, when the architect heaved a huge sigh of relief and downed tools.

It’s done in the style of a Bavarian Castle so he felt right at home, and just to keep the builders occupied, had a smaller Castle – Pelisor – constructed next door for his heir Prince Ferdinand and his woman de-jour. Pelis is very impressive, and for the day it was very modern – inside toilet, telephone, electric light and even an elevator.

Then it was back on to the bus and off another hour and a half to Bran Castle and the Dracula legend. Incredibly busy, as we have arrived in the middle of a 5 day public holiday, and everybody in Romania, it seems, wants to take junior to see the castle. It wasn’t till about 3 that we got in, and basically did our own tour as it was impossible for a group to stay together in the winding corridors.

Free time for the market and dinner. We didn’t leave Bran Castle till 6pm, and didn’t arrive back till almost 10pm thanks to the holiday traffic.