Tourist hell

We continue to look for Vlad the Impaler, AKA Dracula, and what we find is most unpleasant.

Last night, after our wonderful ‘Tribute to Top Gear’ we found one of our most rural stops for the night yet. We pulled up on a wide grassy verge, little knowing this was some mega rural highway. As the sun began to set so every man, women and boy in the local area decided to herd their beasts past Dora. She was none too pleased. Having a herd of one hundred cattle surrounding you is quite intimidating.

So where are the photos you may well ask, well so do we. After extensive searching, we can only conclude, our systems have failed. We have lost them, either deleted or randomly secreted within some folder to be discovered at a later date. Most disappointing!

Dora survives her close encounter with the bovine kind. Next morning, another fine day. Our hosts are up earlier than us, well we are on holiday after all. They are toiling away in the fields. They still use a traditional sickle here to cut the hay, and then a pitchfork to toss it into neat rows. They will no doubt be back in a couple of days to turn it, ensuring it is completely dry. The effort is incredible. And should a tractor be bought, less toil, less to do, less employed… but still the effort!

We drive carefully through country lanes eventually getting to our first destination of the day, Raznov. There is a fortress here that sounds like it might be quite good. There is only one problem, we can’t find it. But this is a fortress, it can’t be that well hidden. We go up and down every street in the village to no avail. Eventually we give up, no fortress is worth this much effort, this much diesel. We head towards Bran.

As we approach the main road we see a signpost; to the right, Bran, to the left, Raznov. We weren’t even in the right town, no wonder it eluded us.

We try again and head towards Raznov. What we find is quite a surprise, but then it is the weekend.

Hoards of people on the streets.

There is also carnage with coaches, minibuses and cars trying to park, trying to pass. It is utter mayhem. We eventually find a parking spot twenty minutes away and walk back towards the fortress.

Many are heading for the ‘dino park’ so maybe there will be a bit of space amongst the castellations!

Not really, it is pretty packed up here. Everyone from the surrounding countryside seems to be visiting here today. It is quite the festival atmosphere.

Ah, but a carefully composed photo can cut out all the crowds just to show my princess and an impressive view.

You might say that they take a different approach to conservation that the National Trust and English Heritage. Authentic this isn’t, but natty rubbish bins anyway.

And we have no idea whether this is real, just a sort of sunshade, maybe for the archaeologists, who knows.

Further down and we have some complete buildings, leased out to tat sellers.

Occasionally we do find a few spots of solitude.

What a lovely silhouette.

Outside it is more like euro-Disney, people are dressed in costume, children have plywood swords and shield. Quite crazy.

We retreat back to Dora. The carnage of the road is less now and we extricate  Dora carefully from the long line of cars and head back to town. A quick lunch and then off to our next stop Bran.

Hopefully this will be a little calmer!

Some hope.

This is ten times worse. The level of rubbish for sell has reached new levels of silliness.

Everywhere you look, nothing useful to buy at all.

OK, there are hand stitched traditional Romanian peasant tops for sale, hand stitched in China of course, a traditional one costs €150-200, these are €20 and shit quality.

I suppose I should explain, Bran is the location of Bran Castle. Bran Castle happens to fulfil the image of the sort of building that Dracula might frequent.

Sorry, I get easily distracted mid rant, that is a very interesting ventilation sock, don’t see many of them around. Lots of holes that distributes cold air very evenly.

It never fails to impress Susana my fondness for pipes, ducts, wires, engineering etc.

There it is, send shivers down your spine doesn’t it, sure I just spotted a large bat flitting around one of the windows.

Yep, I think this one might be quite crowded to, and for Romanian standards this is really expensive at €7.00, considering most attractions are less than €2. It also includes the photographic fee though, so we can snap away to our hearts content.

There is no thought given to limiting the amount of people entering the building. No thought given to what might happen in case of fire, just take their money and cram them in.

And inside it is absolute carnage. Log jams of tourists everywhere, all trying to find the real Dracula.

There is scant evidence that Vlad ever visited here.

Did you get that.

The guy that Bram Stoker based Dracula on, Vlad Tepes, never actually bothered to get his scrawny arse up these steps.

So why the hell are we all here then?

Simply because this is the nearest thing to what we want it to be like.

Why don’t they just build a Dracula theme park down the road and have done with it.

These guys would have loved it, obnoxious Brits at their best, aren’t you just ashamed of your nationality at times?

The building is actually quite interesting.

A narrow flight of steps spreads out some of the tourists. I think a fat American got wedged in behind us, so we get a bit of breathing space.

At last a little peace and quiet.

So back to the story.

English Princess gets married off to some foreigner and ends up living here. Along comes communism which cannot understand the hereditary system and kicks her out.

When communism ends, for some unknown reason they give the castle back to her (or her relatives) and now she is once again coining it in, fleecing every tourist that comes this way.

Don’t you just love the injustice of royalty!

Nice rug.

But frankly, who designed this place needs t be struck off, far too many stairs, too narrow, too steep, low headroom, inaccessible to less abled people. I could go on, and on….

Nice turret.

Furniture a bit dark, a bit heavy for my taste.

But even though he never came here, and they never said he did, not anywhere in the text did he have any connection with this place, they still give you every Dracula detail you could possible want. They milk it for everything it is worth.

Is it dishonest? Does it matter?

Do these idiots actually appreciate that Dracula is a story?

Perhaps it doesn’t matter if every pre-pubescent American teen wants vampires to be true.

Not sure about the tap either.

I am sorry, we have so had enough of this madness, this is our worse tourist hell so far.

I know it is our own fault, what did we expect, why did we bother.

We knew it but we came here anyway, maybe for curiosity, maybe of feeling of having been missed out of something. Whatever the reason is, we feel the guides are extremely disingenuous about this castle, which still refer to it as ‘Dracula’s castle’. SM

Quite like the gallery spaces though.

And you know what, it is quite a spooky looking building.

Wouldn’t wanna be around here at night.

We head off back towards the mountains, tomorrow we want to get away from these horrendous crowds, get some altitude.

We pull into Busteni an hour later, a funny noise emanates from the front of Dora. Susana gets out to investigate, a puncture, just our luck. We pull over to change the tire. This only takes five minutes, but it takes half an hour unloading all the stuff from the compartment that holds the spare. By the time we are finished we are exhausted. It has been a long day.

GDR