Dracula’s Castle

With my travels taking me back to Romania in the coming weeks, I thought it might be appropriate to share a story from an actual site in that country that people can visit rather than a weird hidden section of a Medical School (see: Institute of Human Osteology).  This is a story about unexpected and rampant tourism.  A disappointing turn of events to say the least, but also a story about how the tourists of a place can sometimes turn into an attraction all on their own. 

First of all a minor digression into history.  There are three or four castles associated with a Dracula of some sort.  By touristy standards that is.  Yes, I know that doesn’t really make sense, and if you ask a lot of people who tell you they went to Dracula’s Castle, “which one did you go to?” they will stare at you blankly.  I would have been in that group for some time myself.  Two of these, Poenari and Hunyad Castles, are associated with the infamous Vald III; known for a variety of evil doings involving blood, torture, and long wooden steaks.  Feel free to enter into that mess of history on your own.  Orava Castle, in Slovakia is the location where some of Nosferatu, a rather famous early Dracula movie, was filmed and is thus known as a Castle of Dracula.  Lastly, Bran Castle, the one that concerns us here, is touted as the home of the character in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  Whether or not Bram Stoker even knew about Bran Castle is debated, and while there are associations with Vlad III, they are shallow at best.  However, with the ever present need for financial stability across the world, and tourism a somewhat easy way of gaining that stability, Bran Castle is one of the most famous and visited of the Dracula’s Castles.

Bran, as many other castles are, is situated up on hill overlooking a rather pleasant green valley.  Architecturally, it screams Romanian/South Eastern European style.  It is covered in strangely geometrical red roofs, and walls that elicit butterflies for fear they may suddenly fall on you, but have been stable and will remain as such for what seems like an eternity.  However, the beauty from a distance and the historical quark that makes it a well-known tourist attraction are not the things that make this place unique.  It is the pop culture attitude that has sprung up around the base of the castle, and the literal swarms of tourists that flock to it that make Bran an oddity.   Getting to Bran with the expectation of a dark, tortuous, thunder, and lightning atmosphere will undoubtedly lead to disappointment.  It is far from that.  But a place is what it is, and if you leave somewhere feeling like it sucked, then I feel you didn’t try hard enough to find something to take away from the situation.  Even if the take away is “not what I expected to see here, what in the hell was that?”

I did not expect that Castle Dracula would be a tourist hot spot, ever.  Yes I know it sounds awesome and I knew there would be an appeal for many people interested in the history or allure thereof, but it is not exactly close to places I expect people to go.  One of my biases for sure.  Romania for vacation?  Not on the top of most Americans’ lists.  Bran Castle isn’t even very close to somewhere that people find themselves interested in making a day trip from.  Butrint in Albania for example gets a ton of tourists from Greece, with no interest in actually seeing Albania, but are willing to spend a few hours to see something cool and tell people back home they went somewhere so “terrifying.”  That isn’t to say Romania and Albania aren’t amazing, and that the towns in the area are not worth a visit, but I did convince myself that it would be a little off the regular itinerary.  I could not have been more wrong.

Approaching from a distance, the castle is beautiful.  I find most castles beautiful, especially those in this region of the world for their colourful and exotic architecture, and this was no exception.  Up close on the other hand, things went south rather rapidly.  The tourist shops that have sprung up around the base of the hill on which Bran sits represent just about everything I hate about tourism.  Cliché souvenirs, ridiculous oddities, and a lot of garbage for sale are literally everywhere.  Why would you want to buy random children’s toys that have nothing to do with anything, or children’s clothes that aren’t even reminiscent of traditional Romanian wear, or a freaking I <3 NY shirt in the middle of Romania?!  It was literally baffling to me.  Then there is the pop culture vampire and haunted extravaganza that has taken a foothold in the area.  Every café or shop has to have some stupid and totally unrelated name associated with it.  The Skeleton Tavern.  Seriously, did I come all the way over here to see a smaller version of Disney Land?  There are haunted houses and people walking around dressed up as vampires or random irrelevant monsters passing out fliers or charging preppy American girls for pictures.  It was nauseating for me.

The shops all stop at the so-called entrance, where visitors must walk up the hill to the actual castle.  Suddenly it becomes beautiful again, and it is easy to enjoy the aesthetics of the place and forget about whatever it was you just dealt with.  For a second.  Inside, at least on the day I was there, it all went south again.  The number of tourists, especially rude American ones was, off the charts.  Their numbers and total lack of respect for other people rivaled other hot spots such as The Sistine Chapel and Coliseums in Rome.  Packed wall to wall, it was difficult to see much of the castle itself, just people.  It is small, as castles tend to be on the inside, and that made the problem so much worse.  They would line up or rather crowd around areas they wanted pictures of, making comments at other people simply trying to get out of the way such as “Damn Europeans,” “Check out this idiot,” and the like.  Being the recipient of a “smelly Frenchmen” and a “typical ignorant jerk of a German” comment, courtesy of my fellow American tourists, I decided to admire the place from its exterior.  There were some nice views from balconies and interesting historical clothing, but the urge to push a few of my fellow Americans from said balconies made it difficult to enjoy the place as it deserved.

Is it somewhere to avoid like the plague?  No, probably not.  Like I said, the castle is beautiful.  There are really beautiful towns to see in the area as well, and part of the fun is rolling your eyes at the nonsense that has sprung up around the place.  The best part is, there really is no strong connection to Dracula, or any sort of blood sucking creature at all.  The Disney Land reference is even more obvious in that light.  There is almost no historical reason this castle should attract people like it does, and even less reason that it has turned into what it is.  Would I go back?  No probably not.  Would I go eat at one of the nice restaurants just a little ways away that has a great view of the castle but not the insanity at its base?  Almost certainly, given the opportunity.

In closing, sometimes it is not the place itself that is interesting, but what people think it is that makes it so.  Bran Castle is not an imposing haunted building with skeletons of massacred victims in its walls or strewn about its base.  It is a typical beautiful Romanian Castle.  It has however been turned into a place where monsters come to take pictures.  It is not places that are haunted, but people.  It would be wrong of me to say it was disappointing because it was not what I wanted it to be.  It is after all just a place, and what it is, is a result of an interesting though rather skewed history.  It you visit a place and it is exactly what you expected it to be then I hope it is because you were there before and therefore know what to expect.  Otherwise, I can almost guarantee something was overlooked because as we people tend to allow, confirmation bias will guide the way through our experiences; and in the end we can be blind to something we might no like, but is indeed some sort of insightful nugget.