We leave Bucharest on a gloomy October morning, heading north. It seems fitting, given our journey. I might be on a two-day Transylvanian tour but in my head I’m following Jonathan Harker’s fateful trip to Count Dracula’s castle, high in the Carpathian Mountains, a place where, he writes, “every known superstition in the world is gathered”.
Bram Stoker used these superstitions to fuel Dracula. Spending the first 30 years of his life in Dublin before moving to London, he never actually visited Transylvania, though he did spend years researching it, using its folklore to create a character who, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is the most portrayed literary character in the world. He’s believed to have been based on the 15th century Transylvanian ruler Vlad Tepes, also known as Vlad Draculea, notorious for impaling his enemies on stakes. But despite the stake-skewered corpses and prolific blood sucking, the opening pages of Dracula paint a pretty picture of the region.
“All day long we seemed to dawdle through a country which was full of beauty of every kind. Sometimes we saw little towns or castles on top of steep hills ... sometimes we ran by rivers and streams.”
The sun comes out as we cross into Transylvania and discover that Stoker was spot on: the landscape is beautiful. Driving alongside the river Olt, we have a wide-open view across the Southern Carpathians, tree-topped hills in the distance.
RM Block
Four hours from Bucharest, we stop in the medieval city of Sibiu, eyed by every rooftop (it’s known for its dormer windows, shaped like eyes). Founded by Saxons in the 1100s, it’s a former capital of Transylvania and European Capital of Culture, ranked by Forbes as Europe’s eighth-most idyllic place to live, with charming squares of pastel-coloured Gothic and baroque buildings. We pause at Spicul to buy gogoși – traditional Romanian snacks of deep-fried dough filled with cheese and ham – stretching our legs before the next stage of the journey, 90km onwards to Sighișoara.
“Beyond the green swelling hills ... rose mighty slopes of forest up to the lofty steeps of the Carpathians. Right and left of us they towered, with the afternoon sun falling full upon them and bringing out all the glorious colours of this beautiful range,” Harker writes.
Autumn is a good time to visit Transylvania. The leaves start to turn from early October and in a couple of weeks, the area we’re travelling through will be golden hued. Winter brings snow – and though it’s only early October, snow has fallen already on the higher peaks.
We reach Sighișoara late afternoon, parking at the foot of the steep incline leading to the walled citadel, one of the best-preserved medieval towns in Europe. The sun is still shining as we trundle trolley suitcases up cobbled streets, passing under one of nine towers to enter this 12th century fortress. A small group of tourists are lining up to have their photos taken outside Casa Vlad Dracul Restaurant – a plaque on the wall claims this building as the birthplace of Vlad Tepes. Our guide shrugs his shoulders. He was certainly born in one of these buildings, he says, but this one specifically? Who knows.
Take away the tourists and you could be back in the Middle Ages. As the sun sets, we wander around the hilly streets with their old stone buildings, all brightly painted, past towers and turrets and people’s houses, looking down from the walls over the red roofs of the new town, the Carpathians stretching in the distance. It’s a good way work up an appetite for dinner in the Hotel Sighișoara, bean soup served in a hollowed-out loaf of bread, pork-stuffed cabbage leaves and papanași – fried cheese doughnuts served with chocolate and sour cream.
We’re staying in the Casa Wagner, a traditional guesthouse on the main square, where stone-vaulted reception rooms open into a timbered courtyard with hanging baskets; rooms are cosy, with lots of dark wood.
It’s a two-hour drive from here to Bran castle, the 14th century medieval fortress built by the Saxons. Rising magnificently from sheer rock, it perfectly matches Harker’s description in Dracula: “The castle is on the very edge of a terrific precipice. A stone falling from the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything! As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green treetops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm.”
It’s known as Dracula’s castle, even though the connection with Vlad is sketchy (he might have been imprisoned there once but probably wasn’t, although his grandfather, Mircea the Elder, lived there in the 1400s). But that doesn’t stop long lines of visitors snaking down the steep sloped entrance, particularly at Halloween when, according to our guide, the place is mobbed.
It’s still worth paying the €18 admission for its interesting history as fortress turned royal castle; Romania’s beloved Queen Marie, Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, moved in with her family in 1920. To keep Dracula fans happy, the castle tour also contains plenty of information about the Romanian myths that inspired the story, as well as a potted history of the novel and its 700 adaptations. Looking out the window, it’s easy to imagine Dracula scaling the wall, as Harker describes: “My feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over the dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings ... I feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering me. I am in fear, in awful fear, and there is no escape for me.”
Luckily there is an escape for us and that’s to the nearby city of Brașov, a scenic stopping-off point where buildings display their Romanian, Austro-Hungarian and German heritage and the Carpathians are close enough to hike. In winter, it’s a good base for Poiana Brașov, Romania’s top skiing resort, five miles away. Our last stop is Sinaia, an hour’s drive from Brașov, a town so steep it feels like we’re driving up a wall. It’s the home of Peleș Castle, built for King Carol I in 1873 and still owned by the royal family. The rolling tree-planted grounds are free to visit; admission to the castle is €20.
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Back in Bucharest, we’re staying at the swish Marriott Grand Hotel, where the glittering marble lobby, sweeping staircases and lavish luxury are a big contrast to our rustic days in Transylvania. We try to visit the Dracula Museum which, despite being widely touted on tourist sites, appears to have been pulled down. So we pop into the nearby Museum of Communism and journey through a story that is more spine-chilling than anything Bram Stoker dreamed up.
Asking the Romanians about Dracula is like asking the Irish about leprechauns (cue lots of eye rolling). But while the story is made up, the beauty is real. If Dracula continues to entice people to this region, with its medieval towns and hilltop citadels, historic castles, enchanting forests and soaring mountains, Bram Stoker has served Transylvania well.
Getting there
Ryanair and HiSky fly from Dublin to Romania; Get Your Guide 2-day Transylvanian tour from Bucharest for a maximum of five people, including overnight accommodation, from €400; overnight accommodation at JW Marriott Grand Hotel from €165.
Bernadette Fallon was a guest of Marriott and Get Your Guide
