Transylvania was always on my list as a place that I wanted to explore. I don’t know if it was all the horror movies that I watched as a kid or the idea of going deeper into Eastern Europe. So after, kicking around Croatia, Reva and I decided to spend a week chasing Dracula around Transylvania. Well, truthfully, I wanted to go and Reva was in a good mood after visiting Croatia.

Now many people don’t realize that Transylvanian is the mountainous part of Romania, north of Bucharest. It is much like West Virginia with farms and is heavily wooded. The Romanian “Peasants” are the common people mostly farmers and craftsmen living in the countryside. Bucharest even has a “Peasant” Museum and a craft village set up to show how the peasants live. The Roma…or Gypsies (not considered a nice term in Romania) are also seen throughout the area and along the roadways in particular. How cool is this place….Dracula, Peasants. Gypsy’s …. grab your pitchfork and lets head out to find Frankenstein (maybe that was Germany) well at least we can check out Hotel Transylvania …. or at least stay in a Hotel in Transylvania.

When planning this trip, I wanted to drive throughout Transylvania and visit all of the Dracula Sites we could find. Airfare from Croatia was only a couple of hundred dollars for two with a stop in Athens. So we planned a night enroute to visit Athens, since we had never been to the City. Of course we always have good timing during our travels and we landed at the Athens Airport the morning of a national transportation strike. Luckily, we had booked a hotel (Holiday Inn, $90) with a free airport shuttle. The taxi fare to the Acropolis was about $25 each way and gave us an opportunity to explore this ancient wonder.

Athens is a great City but we knew that we would be back to explore later. So we spent the evening at the hotel and prepared for our morning flight to Bucharest.

Our plan was to fly into Bucharest, spend about 6 days in Transylvania and then spend a few nights in Bucharest at the end of the trip. Romania has a number of Hilton properties throughout the country, many of which were available for very few hotel points. Other hotels were extremely inexpensive which made this a very reasonable tour. The rental car was around $100 for the week and I was surprised to be given a brand new car with an automatic transmission. In regards to driving in Romania, the roads are easy enough to navigate, but they don’t have many major expressways, so you must drive through many small towns. Also, Romanian drivers are significantly more aggressive than I ever imagined. It was common to see drivers driving off the road to pass stopped vehicles, while sometimes being passed themselves. It was a very controlled chaos however. No horn blowing or hand gestures and no wrecks. Along with this, periodically a horse and buggy would join the mix and it would even get crazier.

Driving from Bucharest (once we figured out how to get on the highway, my Romanian is not very good), we headed north toward the hills of Transylvania. Along the way, we passed Peles Castle and swung in for a quick tour. Unfortunately, the tour buses had beat us there and the Chinese were everywhere. Here they charged you to use a camera inside the castle which helped limit the amount of time the Chinese spent inside. It was a nice castle, but not that impressive on European terms. What was impressive, were the old peasant women outside selling small handmade baskets of fresh cherries for $1. Can’t pass that up!

Now Reva didn’t believe me that there was actually peasants in Transylvania, until we were almost to Bran and we pulled up behind a horse drawn cart with two people dressed in black on the drivers bench. The cart had wooded wheels and was being pulled by a team of horses. It had begun to rain and the men in the cart were hurrying home. Reva was speechless. It was like something out of the dark ages. “Peasants…..I love peasants!”, I exclaimed as we quickly passed the cart and headed toward the village..

Our first major stop was a visit to Bran and its famous castle. This is one of the few area’s where you heard and saw the name Dracula. Throughout Transylvania he is refereed to his correct name; Vlad the Impaler. Bran is a small village with the famous castle perched above it on a hill. We had selected a hotel ($60) with a balcony and a direct view of castle in the evening. AWESOME! Add a full moon, some Transylvanian beer, goulash and a visit to the local haunted house exhibit and you have an almost perfect evening. The Castle is lit up at night and dominates the small village.

Now Vlad never lived in this castle but rumor is that he did visit it once. Also, Bram Stoker in his novel Dracula depicted a castle in Romania and this may have been his inspiration…..but he never visited Romania. I think the close spelling of Bran and Bram has confused people over the years and made this castle much more famous that it should have been. That said, it’s a pretty cool castle.

The next morning to avoid the crowds, we walked over to the entrance of the grounds from our hotel and lined up about 45 minutes early. Good move! While we waited tour buses began arriving but we were through the gate and were the first two to enter the castle for the day. We had a good hour to enjoy and explore the castle before the thousand or so Chinese and Japanese had swarmed the building and all of the halls were made impassible. But that was enough time to be through the castle and get back out in it’s courtyard. As we were walking down from the castle, I watched a Chinese tourist walking toward us and the castle taking pictures. “How many pictures can someone take and why?”, I commented to Reva. “Beats me”, she replied. I looked at my watch as we walked toward the man taking pictures. He would snap a picture, step forward a foot or two and take another. “20….he took 20 pictures in one minute” Reva and I looked at each other smiled. “Lets get out of here”, I advised.

It was a beautiful day and along the way to our next stop we passed through Rasnov and Brasov. Rasnov has the ruins of an old fortress above the city and is famous for having one of the “Hollywood” style signs in Romania. The town had an inclinator and trails leading to the fortress and we opted to take the tram up and walk back down. These old Romanian villages and cities are not as impressive as the ones in France or Italy since this area had been decimated during the wars and the old soviet days. But, the people were friendly and welcoming and weren’t surprised that we didn’t speak Romanian. English was spoken virtually everywhere except in the peasant villages. Every City had pedestrian areas with shops and cafes and crime never seemed to be an issue.

As we were driving on main roads in the countryside, I kept noticing young women, dressed nicely sitting or standing along the road. At first, I assumed that they were just waiting for a bus or someone. But as time went on, I became a little more curious. “Could those be prostitutes?”, I asked Reva. “Beats me, I wouldn’t think so.” Later at the hotel I checked on Google……yep. these were gypsy girls and could be found throughout Romania. ” Google says, the going rate for a BJ and a quickie…the normal was 35 Euro. Didn’t expect that …..they looked like really nice young women.”, I told Reva. Reva just rolled her eyes.

Our next stop was Sighisoara, Romania, the birthplace of Dracula…excuse me…Vlad. As you drive through Romania you pass by the remnants of the old communist communities with the square block tenements where the residents were incentivized to live. Once you pass these, monuments to failure and bad taste, you get to the old city, which is one of the most beautiful and preserved walled cities in Central Europe … if not the world.

We opted to spend two nights to explore this small city at the Hilton Doubletree Hotel (10,000 HH points). The hotel was only about 100 yards from the old city walls which were built in the 14^th century. Sighisoara (pronounced say-your-sorry…at least by me) was a real treat, with a population of only 30,000, it had the feel of a small town and less of a tourist mecca. We visited the local grocery and bought some Transylvanian wine for a few dollars a bottle and spent a pleasant evening wondering through the old deserted streets under the full moon. In the back of the walled city we stumbled into the town’s graveyard with its Gothic tombs winding stairs through the rows of graves. “How awesome is this…..we are in the middle of Transylvania wondering through a graveyard under a full moon in the town where Dracula was born”, how could this end badly. Reva laughed and as the last lights fading we found our way back to the hotel and to dinner.

The next day we fully explored the town, which truthfully didn’t take that long but it was enjoyable just relaxing and not driving. After dinner we went back to the hotel which was hosting a wedding that day. As I walked by the front desk, the manager called me over and let me know about the noisy event that would be going on and to ask if everything was good with the room. I started up a conversation since he spoke perfect English. He told me his story, how he and many of the younger people learned English in school and went off to work in England or America. The unemployment rate in Romania was very low, since everyone tended to leave. He had been an assistant manager at a major hotel property in London for many years, but his wife didn’t want to raise their children in England and wanted to come home. Smart wife, I thought. So he was able to get a job back in their home town. He made half of what he did before, but his wife was happy and they could live a good life. Smart man…too…happy wife, happy life. Before I went to find my wife, I asked him about the young ladies I saw along the roadways and if they were indeed working women. he chuckled and kind of blushed. “You may want to stay away from them”, he said as he nodded his head and smiled.

Reva and I found a nice spot to enjoy our happy hour in a quiet area of the hotel where we could hear the music from the wedding but be away from the crowd. I went back to the room to get us more wine and when I returned I was surprised to see Reva surrounded by four Romanian teenagers. They were attending the wedding and had struck up a conversation with Reva…turned out that they got extra credit in school for talking to English speakers. We spent the next four hours talking with the teenagers who were fascinated to learn about America and the world as well as telling us about their lives in Romania. It turned out to be a great evening and we ended up with four new Facebook friends.

The next morning after a nice Romanian breakfast, we headed off to our next stop, Turda. Along the way we stopped at one of the many Fortified Saxon Churches in the region. These were built by the Saxon settlers as a defense to the Ottoman Empire. There were frequent signs along the highway pointing to church locations. We turned off the main road and drove a few miles to a village where one church was located. As we drove, we reached the end of the paved road just before we got to the village. The church was abandoned and fenced off, no one was around and we tried to find an entry point but didn’t see any. We drove around the church to see if there was any information and came into the town square. There were several old buildings and a little store. There was a couple of peasants in a cart who were staring at us…..even their horses were staring at us. We began to walk toward the store when a clasp of lightning hit nearby. “Oh Crap! Let’s get out of here.” I said. We headed back to the car with the peasants and horses looking at us strangely. We laughed all the way back to the main road. “This is a great place for horror movies.” It struck me that there was no color in the town. Everything was a shade of gray. I felt bad later and wished we had ventured into the store, I am sure it would have added to the memory.

When I was looking for places to stay in Romania, I stumbled on the Hunter Prince Castle and Dracula Hotel ($60) which was located in Turda. The hotel was what drew me to the town, with its Dracula themed restaurant and rooms decorated in the Gothic style. This was a great place for a traditional Romanian meal. But what really intrigued me about the town was its old salt mine, Salina Turda. After the mine closed in 1932, someone decided to convert it into an amusement park and museum. In the mine, they erected a Ferris Wheel, installed pool tables, bowling lanes and a number of arcade games. The mine also has a lake underground where you can rent a rowboat. The mined salt 400 feet underground is amazingly beautiful and one of the most unique places we have ever found.

Turda was a small town with a beautiful square and a great stop en-route to our next major Dracula tracking spot, Sibiu Romania. But on the way we noticed a sign for the Cidital Alba Carolina. It was a beautiful day and we thought checking out the Cidital and having lunch in the Transylvania countryside would be well worth a detour. Sometimes we make good decisions and sometimes we don’t. This time we made a great decision! The massive star shaped Cidital was difficult to find our way into and we ended up parking along a dry moat surrounding the area. After wondering around the moat for what seemed like a mile we found a tunnel leading into the central area. We were shocked; we entered into a massive complex with cafes, churches, palaces and museums. There were five gates into the large Cidital each with ornate statues and bridges. We ended up spending several hours exploring the area and watching the changing of the Austrian guard. Yes, Austrians….this was the Austrian side of Transylvanian. It seams Romania was the crossroads of Europe and Asia and everybody was here at some point. Here we learned about the old fairy tale about the pied Piper and how he led the children of Hamelin Germany to Transylvania…interesting twist.

After a nice pizza at a little cafe in the dry moat, we headed off to Sibiu. Sibiu is a major city with a population of about 500,000. We were staying in the Hilton (10,000 HH points/night) at the Transylvania Zoo. Sibiu is a major tourist spot so the crowds were back. But the town with its Medieval squares and church towers reminded us being in Germany. Now legend has it that Dracula …. oops Vlad….used to live here and actually impaled thousands of its residents. We read that he would leave money laying in the street and anyone who picked it up and did not return it was impaled. Likewise he had a dinner where he invited anyone who was hungry or needed help….and you guessed it; he impaled them all. The bodies would be left to rot on the poles which were inserted through their rectums. Crime was not an issue in Romania under the “Son of the Dragon’s” rule…that is actually what Dracula means. Of course back then, Vlad was much less cruel that the ottomans who were invading the country…makes you appreciate modern times.

While we were climbing one of the towers on the large square, which was also housing an Art exposition, we ran into one of the rudest and obnoxious people we had ever encountered on our travels. Americans!!! As were were walking through the tower, two American women were talking with the Romanian curator complaining about how bad our country and president was and how he was ruining everything and how everyone hated him. Now, I don’t care about people expressing their opinion but it does bother me when they are doing it in foreign countries. When we meet people, we represent America and all of its freedoms. Don’t trash talk America outside of America. These women were loud, obnoxious and out of line and going on and on. . Before I could say anything, Reva was already engaged. “Not everyone feels that way!”, Reva said loudly back to the two women. The women were shocked. I suppose that they never guessed that there were Americans just kicking around Transylvania on their own. They immediately hustled toward the exit and nearly ran back to their tour bus. we spent sometime talking to the Curator who was an unemployed school teacher who wanted to come and live in America. To do that he needed a sponsor but didn’t know anyone. I considered offering but hesitated. He didn’t quite seem as legitimate as the Romanian teenagers we had met earlier in the week. Who we would have helped come to the US in a heartbeat.

After a nice afternoon, wondering around the beautiful city we grabbed a taxi and headed back to the hotel. Reva loves zoos and having one across the parking lot was too convenient. we learned that there are still wild wolves in Transylvania …. awesome Werewolves!, I thought. The zoo was old and run down but it was nice place for a walk.

After two nights in Sibiu we were ready to head to Bucharest and finish our Transylvania tour. Just one last stop. Vlad’s real castle, Poenari Castle which sits in ruins high on a mountain that is only accessible by climbing 1,480 stairs. Now Reva wasn’t excited about climbing 1,480 stairs and we debated its value. But in the end, she agreed and off we went. Have i mentioned before that Googlemaps doesn’t appear to like me? This was the case again. Google directed me to turn of the main road in a small Romanian community and we headed into the mountains. Soon the road became full of potholes, and then narrow. Eventually the road became gravel and then dirt as we were going through the steep mountains. “If this doesn’t improve quick, we are turning around”, I told Reva. “Sounds good to me”, she replied. Later on she told me, she was hoping I would turn around. But we kept going past little houses with the peasants all outside looking at us. In addition to the carts and buggies I did see a few cars next to some houses so I knew cars could get through the mountain road. Soon we reached the summit, the road improved, the pavement returned and we made it to the road leading to the fortress. There was only one small sign indicating the entrance to the stairs leading up the mountain and we missed it the first time. But eventually we found a small place to park along the road.

There was only one other car here. No tour buses today. Reva was revived when she saw the stairs were only about six inches high with a railing and weren’t very steep. The trail went about a half mile up the mountain with places to stop and signs telling you how many stairs you had left. It was a very pleasant hike through the woods. Once you reached the top you came to the entrance gate to the fortress where there was a man in a little booth selling tickets. There was only two other people exploring the ruins of the old castle. Most of it had been destroyed by wars and earthquakes. This was the real history of Vlad and the entry was depicted with impaled mannequins and other torture devises you could pose with. “Not much left, but its pretty cool”, I told Reva. “Yeah, I am glad we came.”

So that’s how we ended our week in Transylvania and we drove back to the airport, turned the car in and grabbed a Taxi to take us to the Bucharest Hilton (20,000 HH points/night) for a few nights before heading back home.

Bucharest is a huge city and it was hot. Unfortunately, the Peasant Museum was closed for renovation. We spent a day roaming through the streets, visiting the parks and churches. We were fascinated with the Romanian Orthodox churches which were quite beautiful on the outside but rather plain on the inside with no seats. It was kind of a mixture of a typical Catholic Church and a Mosque. We were always welcome in the churches and we visit as many as we can.

Bucharest was a dirty old, communist city with some nice parks and lots of graffiti. Not much reason to come back through here I thought unless we wanted to come back to visit the resorts along the black sea or go back to Transylvania.. While we were sitting in the Hilton Executive Lounge (HHonors Diamond Status has its perks) I struck up a conversation with a businessman from the US who routinely worked in Romania. “Romania’s not bad but Bulgaria is really great!” “Wineries and castles and its really cheap!” “Interesting”, I replied, and smiled at Reva. She just rolled her eyes and smiled back.