July Update - 12/7/08 (8,141 km)
Lake Balaton, Hungary 
Arriving at Vampire Camping in Bran we were rather disappointed to discover the staff didn’t have long black cloaks, dodgy greased-back hair and long pointy teeth! They all looked rather healthy and were wandering about in bright sunshine; as it turns out, one of the staff wasn’t even Transylvanian but Dutch! We chilled out for a day or two and caught up on our washing and chores. We finally decided that we’d lazed about enough and headed for a walk into town and a visit to Bran Castle. If I asked you to close your eyes and picture Dracula in his castle, this is the castle you would visualize. Set high on a rocky outcrop with fairytale turrets, the castle seems to float in the air above the tree-line. The ambiance is spoiled somewhat when you finally approach the bottom of the hill and experience the full horror that is Dracula tack! Vlad Ţepeş’ face peers out at you on everything from mugs (his mug on a mug!) to pencils. Tee shirts proclaiming ‘I love Transylvania’ with bleeding hearts or Dracula clutching a fair maiden, teeth ready to embed themselves into her neck emblazoned across them are on every stall.
For those who don’t know the Vlad Ţepeş/Dracula connection I’ll briefly explain. Vlad III (our hero’s father) was Prince of Wallachia (an early Romanian region incorporating Transylvania) in the mid-1400s. He was called Vlad Dracul, from the Latin meaning ‘dragon’ and thus when little Vlad was born his doting father nicknamed him Drăculea – son of Dracul. However, Drăculea was a strong but exceptionally bloodthirsty leader. It is not without good reason that he earned the extra nickname of Ţepeş meaning ‘impaler’ – ‘Vlad the Impaler’ as most of us know the chap. His favourite method of torture was to impale his victim from bottom to shoulder being careful to avoid major organs and thus providing a quicker death. Victims were said to have taken around 2 days to die by this technique and he dispatched thousands of Turks in this fashion. The other Dracula is a product of Bram Stoker’s imagination. Bram’s fictional novel was published in 1897 and he wrote most of it whilst staying at Cruden Bay Castle in Aberdeenshire. Most of the facts Bram uncovered at the British Museum and he never set foot in Romania. The book captured the imagination of Victorian Britain and has never been out of print. The famous and quite brilliant silent film of the book, Nosferatu (1922) spawned countless remakes and versions, including a forgettable version with Tom Cruise! In fact, Stoker’s Dracula is an un-dead corpse that feeds off the blood of living humans to retain his immortality – Ţepeş never went quite that far!!
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Castle Bran - the real Dracula castle?A scary sign we found at the castle, lovely courtyard and floating castle in the trees.Click on each picture to enlarge. |
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Back to Bran – the castle was built by the Saxons in 1382 to defend against the Turks but it is thought that Vlad may have only stayed here for a few nights. The castle became home to Queen Marie from the 1920s until the monarchy’s forced abdication in 1947. She remodelled the interior and it had a fairly modern feel. The central courtyard is almost Spanish in character providing a shaded and cool area during the heat of the day.
We met three lads from Dorset (have we suddenly slipped into Enid Blighton world?) who were backpacking for a couple of months between years at university. They were trying to get to Turkey but realised that they were low on funds so were rethinking their plans. We tried to help out with some beer, maps and mentioned that everyone kept telling us we should have visited the Danube Delta so they decided to head for the Black Sea coast and see what transpires! We gave them a lift back to Braşov – Oz and Guy in the front and I sat in the back with Will and Greg. It was very interesting for me to experience the back of the lorry for a few kilometres to see what rattled and slid about – very little as it happens! We waved them off and headed down the road towards Sighişoara.
The campsite at Sighişoara was right in the centre of the city and quite an adventure to reach. Oz had to crawl up a steep hill, round sharp bends and squeeze through a tiny gateway to reach it. He had left me on the main street and I was to go and find the manager and see if it was suitable for us to get to. Suddenly he was in the courtyard having dodged all the obstacles. We wandered into the walled medieval citadel and were instantly charmed by it. It is a higgledy-piggledy maze of cobbled streets contained within a thick wall and guarded by fourteen towers (nine remain today) all centred round a pretty square. The 13th century clock tower houses a 17th century clock with revolving figurines each depicting a character from Greek-Roman history and represent a day of the week. After climbing the 64 metre tower to the viewing platform we were delighted to spot the Mog tucked away under a tree in the campsite – an unusual sight for us as we normally have to camp far outside the city. We visited the Torture Room – a museum within the base of the clock tower and viewed its brief display of thumb screws, foot crushers and rack. I caught up on some emails at what has to be the slowest internet connection in the world on a computer running Windows ’95 in a cafe run by angst-ridden, sallow-faced teenagers each blasting hell out of ‘baddies’ on the screens! Their computers seemed to be running at a reasonable (for Romania) speed and I think they must reserve the two corner computers for the tourists who invade their dark world and keep the ‘best’ computers for themselves... perks of the job I suppose!
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Delightful Sighişoara citadel square with the clock tower peeking out in the background.Click on the picture to enlarge. |
We left Sighişoara and headed for the unfortunately named Turda Gorge. Oz wanted to hike through it and see if there was any rock climbing to be had. We left the main road and climbed up a narrow road passing tiny villages and finally coming to a sign which we thought said no entry for vehicles. However, spotting a couple of cars and a coach making their way down we went for it! Once at the top of the incline we again saw a sign saying no cars... just as a car shot out of the turning! Off we went and arrived at the bottom by a small stream and lots of tents and cars. Oz disappeared while I set up house for the night. He’d spotted some climbers coming out of the gorge but decided that we would be better to move on so we left the following morning for Ordea on the border.
I think Oradea should win an award for having the most pathetic excuse for a city bypass in the world! The road leads off the main highway into the city and is signposted as a bypass and way to the border, yet, once on it, the road dropped to a two lane, rutted, pockmarked glorified track!Heavy lorries thunder down it then brake sharply and swerve to avoid dropping into a massive hole! We spotted a sign for Băile Felix and decided that we’d had enough for the day so pointed the Mog in that direction. Băile Felix is a small spa resort with thermal pools where the local city dwellers flock to on a hot day. We arrived at about 5pm and instantly shot off to take a dip in the waters. It was a strange arrangement. The pools were in a daisy shape with each ‘petal’ being a tear-drop shaped pool which was only filled to chest height. Bathers could sit on the lip round the edge and submerge themselves whilst watching the kids throwing balls about or splashing their parents! It was very pleasant and we spent a few hours trying out each ‘petal’ to see if there was a difference – there wasn’t. The waters are said to ease rheumatism, head trauma and stomach affiliations ... we found they cured lorry lag very well!
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The award winning Oradea 'bypass'!!Click on the picture to enlarge. |
Once back at the campsite we were approached by some Romanians who had just arrived. Though sign language we realised they wanted us to blow up their air beds from the lorry air brake tanks. We happily obliged and refusing the money they tried to press into our hands, the little granddaughter was sent to speak to grandma. She suddenly appeared back with the biggest apple we have ever seen and popped it into Oz’s hand. Next we were invited to join them for coffee and then homemade yoghurt, biscuits, fruit etc. Really, the hospitality of these people is refreshing – all this just for a bit of air out of the lorry tanks! The next morning we made for the border and Hungary although we were both very sorry to leave this fantastic country, beautiful scenery and lovely, friendly people behind... we’ll be back one day!