Searching for Dracula
Trip Start
May 06, 2007
1
85
166
Trip End
Jul 24, 2008
Brasov,
Romania
Friday, November 23, 2007
On the train to Brasov I met an American guy and an Australian girl who were headed to the same hostel as me. We were greeted by the hostel greeter at the bus station (since they had actually made a reservation) and boarded a bus with a Brazilian guy along with the orders to "Take the boy with you" (imagine it being said by a mid-30s Romanian guy with a thick accent and it's much more funny). The first thing we saw when entering town is the Hollywood-style, white sign saying Brasov on the top of the hill overlooking town. I decided to join the tour group from the hostel the next day visiting Rasov fortress and Bran castle. Basically, the tour was just a driver, but it wasn't much more expensive than doing it on my own and it gave me a group to go there with. Plus I wasn't in an especially adventurous mood and didn't feel like navigating the Romanian buses on my own.
The "tour" group consisted of two Australian guys, one Irish guy, one French girl, one Canadian guy, and me. We were driven by a guy in his early 20s who looked bored out of his mind. Our first stop was Rasov fortress. The fortress was really cool. It was on top of a mountain, as all proper fortresses are, with spectacular views of Rasov, Brasov, and the surrounding mountains. It also included a semi-interesting museum with objects and documents about the fortress. It was really big so we took our time exploring all the different areas, including some lovely illustrations of people impaled in various body parts by Vlad the Impaler. After about 2 hrs at the fortress our driver was very happy that we were finally ready to move on to the Bran castle.
Bran castle was a big disappointment. The driver dropped us off around the corner from the castle and said to be back in an hour. We couldn't believe he was trying to limit us to one hour there and decided that we would spend as much time as we wanted while he waited for us. It ends up we really didn't need much more than an hour. We joined the hoards of people walking up to the castle, looking up to see that it didn't look all that scary or Dracula-like. Maybe it was the bright, sunshiny day with big, puffy, white clouds, but I expected the castle to look at least a little ominous instead of pretty and friendly. Inside the castle was set up as a museum of the family who had lived there, including old furnishings. It was also semi-interesting, but nothing special. My favorite part was a well with a cover over it. People didn't seem to care that it was covered and still used it as a wishing well, throwing coins on top of the cover. Very strange. Even more strange - no one was touching any of the money just sitting there on the cover.
Even though Dracula's castle was a disappointment, I really enjoyed my time in Brasov, even staying a day longer than I had originally planned. The hostel was great with great people there. One afternoon I joined two other people from the hostel to hike up to the Brasov sign, unfortunately we started the hike too late and it got rather dark by the time we were about 2/3 of the way up, so we turned around and vowed to attempt it the next day. Well, the next day it was pouring rain, so I never actually made it to the top. But the hostel had a good movie collection and a Coloradan had a fun card game - Phase 10, so I was entertained plenty.
