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The citadel at Deva was absolute­ly spec­tac­u­lar. It perched on a rugged peak, over­look­ing the city, and could only be reached by a funic­u­lar rail­way. It was pret­ty hard to imag­ine how it had been built. Every block and beam dragged up by ropes? It was in a pic­turesque­ly ruined state. The view, over Deva (pop. 80,000) and the sur­round­ing coun­try­side, was beau­ti­ful. The lit­tle, cone-shaped moun­tain the citadel perch­es upon is pro­tect­ed for its rare flo­ral species and the pres­ence of the horned adder. We did­n’t stay long, as we had booked a train that left for Braşov in a few hours. This would be anoth­er long, overnight haul, which would land us in that city in the wee hours of the morn­ing. Lone­ly Plan­et had rec­om­mend­ed two hos­tels there, so we planned to just emerge from the rail­way sta­tion and try to find them.

We could­n’t find the first one, near­est the sta­tion, so we pro­ceed­ed on a long walk to the oth­er end of the city, again through streets that were most­ly emp­ty, silent, and poor­ly lit. But we found the sec­ond, which turned out to be extreme­ly nice. It even had a free laun­dry ser­vice, which by this time we were much in need of. We arranged to stay two days, so that we could make a day trip to Bran Cas­tle, our third pre-planned des­ti­na­tion. Braşov was the biggest town we had seen in Roma­nia so far. There was a sprin­kling of tourists, the main square was impres­sive, and there was a large Goth­ic, Luther­an cathe­dral, look­ing com­plete­ly out of place, in the cen­ter. In the mid­dle ages, “Sax­ons” had migrat­ed to Tran­syl­va­nia in great num­bers. The term was an umbrel­la for almost any set­tler from north­ern or cen­tral Europe, but the major­i­ty of them spoke some dialect of Ger­man. Actu­al­ly, few of them would have been from Sax­ony. The word was being used with the same loose­ness by which the Byzan­tines and Arabs called all Euro­peans “Franks”. Braşov had been one of the largest medieval Ger­man set­tle­ments in Tran­syl­va­nia, which is quite evi­dent in the archi­tec­ture, but now Ger­man speech is known to less than one per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion. The town was half Hun­gar­i­an a cen­tu­ry ago, but today it’s most­ly Romanian-speaking.

The rather grim “Black Church”, a Luther­an rel­ic in a now almost entire­ly East­ern Ortho­dox city.

Braşov seen from the near­by moun­tain-top lodge.

For me, it’s main attrac­tion was that it was the birth­place of Bálint Bak­fark, a Renais­sance com­pos­er and lutanist of whom I’m very fond. If you like the music of John Dow­land, you might like Bakfark.

Most tourists come to Braşov because it’s the biggest town near Bran Cas­tle. That’s essen­tial­ly why we were there, and it final­ly brings us to the sub­ject that I’ve avoid­ed dis­cussing until now: Dracula.

Now, I’m sure that most Roma­ni­ans are sick to death of Drac­u­la. Tran­syl­va­nia is an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly beau­ti­ful coun­try of moun­tains, forests, and a farm­land, with charm­ing old towns, cas­tles, and won­der­ful ski resorts. Visu­al­ly, it’s sort of a cross between Switzer­land and Mon­tana, though admit­ted­ly still very eco­nom­i­cal­ly unde­vel­oped. But in the 19th Cen­tu­ry, it was the least-trav­eled part of Europe, it’s curi­ous eth­nic mix­ture, and it’s fron­tier sta­tus between the Haps­burg and Ottoman empires made it seem extreme­ly dis­tant and exot­ic to an Irish author like Bram Stok­er. To the roman­tic mind of the 19th cen­tu­ry, any wild for­est was a dark and men­ac­ing enti­ty. Moun­tains and forests were the abode of the super­nat­ur­al. Stok­er spent eight years research­ing vam­pire folk­lore before writ­ing his nov­el, but he nev­er trav­eled to Tran­syl­va­nia. Vam­pires are a com­mon folk motif every­where in East­ern Europe, play­ing rough­ly the same role as the Witch motif in West­ern Europe. Stok­er drew on these tra­di­tions for his roman­tic tale of vam­pirism. In addi­tion, he fixed on a name from Tran­syl­van­ian His­to­ry, Vlad Ţepeş the Voivode of Wal­lachia, also known as Vlad III the Impaler, Kazık­lı Bey in Turk­ish, or Vlad Drăculea — or to Eng­lish read­ers, Drac­u­la. Vlad the Impaler was wide­ly known for his grue­some habit of impal­ing his ene­mies, but he was by no means the most vio­lent prince in the region or peri­od. But among Haps­burg and Ger­man his­to­ri­ans, he was used as an exem­plar of the bru­tal and ter­ri­fy­ing Balkan ruler. How­ev­er, Vlad Drac­u­la was nev­er asso­ci­at­ed with vam­pirism in any local tra­di­tion or folk­lore. The two ele­ments did not have any­thing to do with each other.

So Bram Stok­er pulled togeth­er var­i­ous ele­ments to make Drac­u­la. The folk tra­di­tions of the undead vam­pires were com­mon to most of East­ern Europe, and can be found in ancient Greek lit­er­a­ture. To these, he added the Faus­t­ian theme of the bar­gain with the dev­il, and of eter­nal life at a hor­rif­ic price. This last theme had many incar­na­tions in Euro­pean lit­er­a­ture, and was already well estab­lished in Roman­tic hor­ror fic­tion. For the cas­tle, Stok­er was actu­al­ly inspired by one he saw in Scot­land, but of course, they abound­ed in hor­ror fic­tion. It was mere­ly a mat­ter of shift­ing Cas­tle Franken­stein (Switzer­land was still exot­ic when Mary Shel­ley wrote her mas­ter­piece) fur­ther East. Since few Eng­lish read­ers had any clear idea of what was in Tran­syl­va­nia, it could be turned by his deft poet­ic hand into a fan­tas­tic land of dark­ness, mys­tery and horror.

Vlad III Țepeș or “Vlad the Impaler” of the House Basarab-Drăculești c.1560

Stok­er’s Drac­u­la played so expert­ly on the sub­con­scious fears of sex­u­al­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty that absorbed the Eng­lish of the Vic­to­ri­an Era, that Drac­u­la became a pow­er­ful sym­bol. Stok­er had con­struct­ed an arche­type. The effect of this image was mul­ti­plied when the Hun­gar­i­an actor Béla Fer­enc Dezső Blaskó (Bela Lugosi) cre­at­ed a per­fect visu­al and vocal man­i­fes­ta­tion of this arche­type. The Drac­u­la myth con­tin­ues to be pro­found­ly evoca­tive, wher­ev­er you have read­ers who see in it a sym­bol­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of their own inner fears, sex­u­al ambi­gu­i­ty, or iso­la­tion and lone­li­ness. The immense suc­cess of Ann Rice nov­els in recent times shows that the arche­type still has tremen­dous power.

Now, it’s not sur­pris­ing that Roma­ni­ans would find this asso­ci­a­tion of one of their his­tor­i­cal fig­ures — to them, bet­ter known as one of lead­ers in con­flicts with the Turks — with all this super­nat­ur­al stuff to be a bit embarrassing.

But, after all, the real Vlad Drac­u­la was a pret­ty scary guy, and vam­pires are part of local folk­lore, and tourists are eager to flock to some­place if they believe it to be “Drac­u­la’s cas­tle“. So a cas­tle that can be attached to his name is a big asset. Vlad Drac­u­la was a Prince of Wal­lachia, not Tran­syl­va­nia, but the flat coun­try of Wal­lachia is not very roman­tic ter­ri­to­ry. He did of course spend some time in the moun­tains of Tran­syl­va­nia. Like most princes in that era, Vlad’s name could be con­nect­ed to sev­er­al cas­tles. The best can­di­date, the one that would be most describ­able as his home, is Poe­nari Cas­tle, in the Cen­tral South­ern Carpathi­ans. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there is noth­ing left of it but a small ruin, and it is locat­ed in a place very dif­fi­cult to reach. Ser­vic­ing it on a large scale for tourists would be expen­sive and imprac­ti­cal. Also, once there, tourists would not see enough to please them.

So the sta­tus of “Drac­u­la’s cas­tle“ has fall­en to Bran Cas­tle, a quite nice lit­tle cas­tle, well pre­served, near a big town with good rail con­nec­tions. Bran Cas­tle can be con­nect­ed to Vlad III only very mar­gin­al­ly. But it is now more or less the offi­cial Cas­tle Drac­u­la, and prob­a­bly the sin­gle biggest tourist attrac­tion in Roma­nia. At its base, there are sev­er­al acres of sou­venir stands and tourist ser­vices. It’s actu­al­ly kind of charm­ing, because they are so ridicu­lous­ly tacky, so idi­ot­ic, that you can’t get angry. It would be like sneer­ing at a chil­dren’s lemon­ade stand for being an inef­fi­cient busi­ness. If you have a des­per­ate desire to have vam­pire pota­to chips or latex fangs made in Tai­wan, then this is the place to be.

How­ev­er, the trash ends at the gate, and once you enter the cas­tle grounds, all men­tion of Drac­u­la stops. I will give cred­it to the oper­a­tors of the cas­tle. It is well restored, and it’s inte­ri­or is a fine muse­um of local his­to­ry, focus­ing on the actu­al impor­tant inhab­i­tant of the cas­tle, Queen Marie of Roma­nia. Fur­ni­ture, house­wares, and objets d’art either from the local region, or from Marie’s per­son­al effects, are dis­played with taste. No Drac­u­la stuff. The trip was quite worth it for the castle’s actu­al his­to­ry, or for that mat­ter for the spec­tac­u­lar scenery you see while get­ting there.

A store-front in Braşov urges Roma­ni­ans to emi­grate to vam­pire-free Canada.

Reli­gious mur­al in Braşov.