Holy moly, crosses and garlic. Loving trippy Transylvania. Dracula, creepy castles and foggy forests as far as the eye could see. Horrible tales of evil deeds and gruesome medieval torture. Now spending the day with the Count himself. Well it would be rude not to stop by.
We took an early bus from Brasov to Bran. A lovely ride through country lanes, past fields of wildflowers, whitewashed farms and wandering Roma who collect flowers and berries to sell in the town.
Hard to believe this is the land of blood sucking vampires and the undead. How can it be? – but I have seen enough Hollywood movies to know that that is the way it all ways starts – a false sense of security. On guard. As we turned a corner, there in the distance, high above the trees, we saw the red turrets and steep sides of Bran Castle… THE home of Count Dracula. Goose bumps.
Luckily we had eaten tonnes of garlic the night before so felt pretty secure that he wouldn’t approach us – (funnily enough we hadn’t been very popular on the bus ride. Our chatty conversations being met with a head turn, a watering eye and a wave of the hand under the nose. Maybe we had overdone the garlic? one can never be too careful)
Bran castle doesn’t disappoint. There were lots of locked off rooms, spiral stone steps, and musty passageways leading into dark rooms – we weren’t allowed in lots of places of course. For our own safety, we presumed.
And the man himself? well we never got to see him. Mind you it was sunny and around noon. So he was probably tucked up in his coffin having a nap somewhere in the castle. Those crosses we saw in the woods in Brasov are here too, in the grounds of Bran Castle – what to make of that?
The folklore of the vampire comes from early 18th-century Southeastern Europe, and particularly Transylvania. In Romanian mythology, sytrigoi are the troubled spirits of the dead rising from the grave. Some strigoi can be living people with certain magical properties. Some of the ghastly properties of the strigoi are the ability to change their form, in to other aninimals like wolves! and the hobby of draining the vitality of victims via blood loss. Jeeze. Strigoi are the myth behind the modern Bram Stoker vampire.We all know that story.
During the 18th century, there was a frenzy of vampire sightings in Southeastern Europe and Transylvania, (those darn things were everywhere). That meant frequent grave diggings taking place to identify and stake ( yes that is stake as in through the heart not on the barbie) the potential vampires. Even government officials were ordered to hunt and search out possible vampires and then stake the suckers through the heart – it was big business.
The hysteria, which is commonly referred to as the “18th-Century Vampire Controversy”, raged for a generation, with locals digging up bodies and staking them with total disregard to the families of the deceased. The controversy only stopped when Empress Maria of Austria sent her personal physician, to investigate the claims of vampiric entities. He concluded that vampires did not exist (whew really) and then the Empress passed laws prohibiting the opening of graves and the desecration of bodies, sounding the end of the vampire epidemics. Despite this condemnation, vampires lived on in artistic works and in local superstition.
Loved the Castle with its atmospheric turrets and dark passages – doesn’t take much to get our imaginations going
So combine the strigoli with the story of Vlad Dracul and the creepiness of Bran Castle and you have got yourself a blockbuster good for you Bram Stoker. Wish I had got there first such an amazing story which launched a whole genre the world over. So who was Vlad Dracul? That is him on the right and that is me on the left.
In 1442, Vlad and his brother Radu, who were only children at the time, were taken as hostages by the Ottomans to ensure the loyalty of their father, Vlad Dracul, prince of Wallachia. During this time the young princes were held in Tokat Castle. (In Turkey will go there next time !! Azize did you hear that xx)
During his childhood years in captivity Vlad developed an intense hatred for the Ottomans, leading to his later brutality against them. Rumour has it that as Vlad retreated from a battle against the Ottomans in 1462, he impaled and put on display some 20,000 people outside the city of Targoviste as a deterrent to the pursuing Ottoman forces. oh so nasty he was a mean sob. This psychological attack worked, as it is claimed that the sight was so repulsive that the Ottomans, after seeing the scale of Vlad’s carnage and the thousands of decaying bodies being picked apart by crows, turned back and retreated to Constantinople. Yikes.
This earned our Vlad the nick name “Vlad the Impaler.” There were many other stories of his unmatched cruelty and love for torture and suffering. He was later arrested and held in prison for 12 years. After his brother’s death in 1475, he managed to reclaim the Wallachian throne. The exact date, cause and location of Vlad’s death are unknown. Historians believe he died between October and December 1476, when he disappeared in battle against the Ottomans.
Not sure what this area was for big stone bowl in the middle. No information spooooky- hehe
Super fun day. BTW this is the REAL pic I took of Bran Castle. I had some fun with filters on the first one xxx
