Drac tracking in Transylvania
ROMANIA: There's nothing like a transfusion of gothic eroticism to spice up your travels, especially with Bram Stoker as a guide.
Fiction authors of all eras often look to figures in history or mythology for inspiration. Bram Stoker (1847–1912), the Irish-born theatre manager was no different. He chanced upon a bloodthirsty figure entrenched in Transylvanian history and transfused it into a bloody yarn of gothic eroticism. He even applied some blood sucking attributes to the main character: the novel that resulted was Dracula.
To newcomers, welcome. I’m Grant and this is my log of days and years spent as a vagabond. To returning readers, good to have you back.
First published in 1897, it has inspired more film and stage adaptations than any novel in the history of English literature. Transylvania (and Dracula) both conjure up all sorts of brooding and sinister overtones, but to paraphrase Dracula, quoting from Deuteronomy 12:33 – “If blood is life,” then Transylvania brims with both.
The “land beyond the forest” (Latin translation for Transylvania), one of the wildest and least known parts of Europe, is actually an enigmatic realm in modern-day Romania. More than 500 years ago Vlad Tepes (1431-1476) was the ruling prince of Wallachia, a Romanian-speaking feudal principality, who lived, as Stoker asserted, “in the midst of the Carpathian mountains (where) every known superstition in the world is gathered … as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool”.
Vlad’s father was Vlad Dracul. In Romanian genealogy, the son adopts his father’s moniker and adds an ‘a’. The result: Dracula. He ruled with an iron fist and sharp skewer, impaling his enemies on stakes, thus earning the nickname, Vlad the Impaler. Stoker’s Gothic yarn based on him has now been in print for more than a century.
There is a saying, usually bandied about by jesting nationals from Hungary – which borders Romania to the west: “When arriving in Romania, turn your clocks forward an hour but step back a century in time.” Though Stoker never visited Transylvania, relying instead on scholars’ accounts, he nonetheless confirms this, noting; “The further east you go the more unpunctual the trains.”
You do indeed get the “impression of leaving the West and entering the East,” as Stoker puts it. His descriptions of Bistrita and path to the Borgo Pass are as accurate in the 21st century as they were when originally penned in the nineteenth:
Beyond the green swelling hills … rose mighty slopes of forest up to the lofty steeps of the Carpathian themselves. Right and left of us they towered … an endless perspective of jagged rock and pointed crags, where snowy peaks rose grandly.
Surprisingly, Transylvania retains a distinctive medieval air. Towns like Brasov and Sibiu, with their wonderfully preserved civic squares, seem to have been transplanted straight out of 19th century Germany. The Saxons are to blame. Their 12th century establishment of Siebenburgen (seven forts) has left an enduring Germanic influence, which separates the region, aesthetically and culturally, from much of Romania.
The jewel in this medieval crown is undoubtedly Sighisoara. Its imposing array of ramparts perched in the foothills of the Tirnava Mare Valley remind you, to quote Stoker again: “of a frontier that’s had a very stormy existence”.
With spires reaching skyward seemingly everywhere, it’s entirely fitting that this should be the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler. Dracula is a hero here. The building where he was born is now a restaurant; house cocktail is the Bloody Mary! Impressive monasteries, museums and glorious views from the 14th century citadel remain refreshingly free from the ravages of marauding warlords and warring capitalists.
But this is Transylvania. And still no sign of a castle. Drac-tracking tourists demand as much. The one with any sort of legitimate claim to Dracula’s occupation, to the north near Bistrita, lies in ruins, ransacked over centuries because, as Stoker notes; “a series of great fires took place, which made terrible havoc on five separate occasion”.
If Dracula had any sort of architectural appreciation, he’d have arguably settled in Bran, a small town commanding the mountain pass of the same name. Perched on a rocky massif, what’s now billed as Dracula’s Castle was in fact a citadel built in 1377 to safeguard the southern gateway of trade and troop movements between Transylvania and Wallachia. It is a foreboding fortress, like something from a Tim Burton movie set with its tiers and needle-like towers.
On closer inspection, rendered walls and modern utilities remind you of the present while queues of coaches spewing souvenir-hungry hordes point to the future. Tourism could no doubt be the fiscal life cord for the region. With proper management, it may even be the country’s EU springboard.
Politically, the country, like others in Eastern Europe, changed sides in 1989. But Romania’s revolution was not the velvet-cloaked affair enjoyed elsewhere. Nicolae Ceausescu, despot, megalomaniac and staunch defender of the State (but not before his own family and wealth), was summarily tried and executed by firing squad. His executioners were instructed not to shoot him in the face so it could be broadcast on television.
However, many of Ceausescu’s bureaucratic cronies swapped Communist hats for capitalist ones at the time and remained in positions of power and relative affluence for some time, thus embedding a tainted and corrupt legacy on the struggling new administration as it attempted to align Romania with EU counterparts. Admission to the European Union came in 2007.
It can be argued a similar ideological transfer happened during the French Revolution and Paris went on to become Europe’s most popular tourist destination; its present romanticism not entirely unrelated to its Bastille-storming past. Although Transylvania will probably never achieve such exalted status as France’s capital, it’s definitely worth escaping the crowds of Budapest and Prague for a ‘transfusion’ of fresh travel encounters in Dracula’s homeland.