Dracula found! Alive and well, living in Bran.

Yesterday I commented on how the Transylvania I have seen has been surprisingly Dracula-free. Well today Steve and I found him alive and well in Bran. Oh my.

Our plan was to visit Bran Castle, an impressive-looking medieval mountaintop fortress I had seen in photos. My guidebook, Fodor’s, lists it as an “off the beaten path” attraction. Yeah, right. When we got to the town of Bran, we found Tourist Central. Cars, people, and souvenir vendors, chaos… a real madhouse.

We found a place to park just out of the main area of town and walked in, following a sign that pointed upwards towards the castle entrance. About 14 million other people were on the same path and things weren’t looking very good for a pleasant visit. When we got to the top we found a long line for tickets.   People were tripping over themselves and one another to get into the castle, and neither Steve nor I had any desire to join the fray. Instead, we found a little path leading away from the castle and followed it up, up and away from the crowd. It was quite a steep (read: strenuous) hike, and all the while I hoped for a clear view of the castle in the end. But it was not to be…the trees were too high and blocked the view. It was good exercise nonetheless. We came back down, saw the line was only worse, and decided to skip Bran Castle after all that.

Instead, we visited the town’s less-popular-but-still-busy open-air museum. Here were old dwellings brought in from various villages, restored and preserved…kind of like what we saw in Sibiu, but on a much smaller scale. Fair. Worth the fifteen minutes we spent there, I guess. After this, we explored the town of Bran, a.k.a. Draculaville. Crazy! There was vampire-themed tourist kitsch for sale everywhere… and people were buying it! Vampire t-shirts, Vampire wine, Dracule vodka, mugs, plaques, you name it. After checking things out thoroughly (and escaping without a single purchase), we had some bad pizza for lunch, and then got the hell out of Dodge. Whew. Bran sucks.

On the way home, we flirted with the idea of visiting the medieval mountaintop citadel of Rasnov, but were deterred by a packed parking lot and more hoards of people. So, back to Brasov. It’s nicer there… no vampires.