Day 155 Romania, Transylvania and the search for Dracula...

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After crossing the busy Romanian border crossing, (busy for lorries - not for us fortunately ) we headed north for a stopover in Romania’s Capital Bucharest. The guide books didn’t say too much to write home about Bucharest but we had to go through it anyway, so seemed sensible to stop. Bucharest is a clash of old and new. Ceauşescu the last communist dictator, raised a lot of Bucharest to the ground, to not only build his Parisian type boulevards, but also the second largest building in the world, the Parliament building with its 6000 rooms.
They don’t make it easy for tourists with no information at bus stops where buses go and the Underground stations that don’t have maps where the trains go, apparently they don’t go anywhere they were only designed to take workers to the factories - Oh and don’t get me on trying to get a bus ticket.
The saving grace of the city is an open air museum where in 1936 a collection of houses from around Romania were re erected as a legacy.

The next stop was Bran, we arrived where it seemed the whole of Bran Village turned out for a festival with stalls selling cheese, meat, and.....cheese and meat, well all the stalls seemed to sell the same thing. Oh I suppose it keeps them busy out of Count Draculas way. That’s why we came here to see the facts behind the myth of Count Dracula, and the countless spin off books movies and TV serials.
Bram Stoker who wrote Dracula based his character on Vlad the Impaler who’s way of executing invading soldiers, was to drive a stake into them, in a long lingering death. Throw in a couple of other Romanian Myths and there you have the inspiration. We camped at the aptly named Vampire Camping and visited the Gothic Castle in the village. It didn’t disappoint it was creepy, and it was just like a Hammer horror film set.

Nearby Brasov was described in a guide as the ground Zero of cities to visit in Romania. The old town square is great, but the rest was ‘orrible. Having successfully negotiated the buses this time we were severely overcharged by a taxi, which didn’t warm us to the city.
Sighisoara is the birthplace of Vlad, we had hoped to see the torture museum but it was shut because-it was too cold??? Still we had a drink at the house he was born and the Sighisoara ‘s Citadel was a great place to walk around with its impressive Saxony architecture.

All that was left now was to make our way through Transylvania to the Hungarian border, through the wide open Romanian countryside with its scattering of hilltop Gothic castles - being careful not to travel by night....

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Photos

Parliament Building
2nd Largest Building in world after pentagon