Vlad Tepes - War Hero or Prince of Darkness?

The hotel that we stayed at in Sighisoara was built in 1797, so it was right in the centre of town near the citadel.  It was awfully difficult to find and involved us driving up a dark, narrow stone paved alleyway.  It was half past twelve by the time we arrived and fortunately the owner was nice enough to come and meet us.  The check in time was supposed to be ten o'clock so we were running pretty late.  We were pretty happy to get there, especially considering all the issues that we'd had earlier in the day.  The hotel itself was fairly nice, but our room was up a set of very steep wooden stairs which Iago rather hated.

It turns out that we'd arrived in Sighisoara just in time for the town's annual Medieval Festival. So, the next morning after checking out of our hotel, we wandered around the stalls for a while soaking up the ye olde vibe.  It was a bit of fun with some music, performances and lots of stalls to look at.  I went into a local museum which had a bell tower, I got to pose with a sword and shield (no matter how geeky I feel when I grab the odd medieval weapon and pose for the camera, I always seem to go back for more), we did some shopping and we took a couple of photos of the house in which Vlad III Dracul was born.

The history regarding the man we now call Dracula seems to be interesting.  The Romanians didn't really seem to like the connection between Vlad Tepes (read: Vlad the Impaler) and a monster of evil.  The history books tell that Vlad III was a brutally effective ruler of the Wallachian (present day southern Romania) state in the 15th Century.  Sure, his favorite method of torture and excution was impaling but he was a patriot damn it!  He was actually considered to be one of Romania's greatest leaders, and was voted the 12th greatest Romanian just after Nicolae Ceaușescu (a communist Head of State so hated that he and wife were publically executed in 1989) and just before some bloke who owned a football club.  Romanians are weird.  Anyway, although there were a few stalls selling Dracula mugs and whatnot at the Festival, the whole Bram Stoker version of Dracula was mostly kept in the corner.

After an hour or two, we'd had enough of the Festival and drove our way further south to Castle Bran.  This was one of the castles that was credited as being the home of Dracula in Bram Stoker's books, but yet again, the Romanian public didn't seem willing to ham it up.  The castle was elegant, well maintained, orderly and most utterly evil.  Oh, sure, it was all presented to be the former homestead of Queen Marie (1875 - 1943) but behind the tapestries, I imagined the stains from when they used to weep blood; and behind the quaint reading rooms with their fancy Tudor chairs, I saw the shadow of the ghost of evil.

Dracula, as written by Bram Stoker, may only lurk in the visages of cigarette trays and plastic steins, but his mark is all over the God cursed country.  May God have mercy of their souls.

Anyway, it was quite a long drive home.  We stayed a night in the town of Bistrita, which also holds another loose connection to the book (the character Jonathan Harker stayed in a hotel there), then we arrived home at around 4pm this afternoon.  We even managed to avoid some of the potholes on the Romanian roads on the way back. Progress. Good times.

- Daniel.