Transylvania and Dracula's castle

About two weeks ago, the whole high school traveled up to an area near the town of Bran for their annual retreat. This area is close to a part of Romania known as Transylvania. Yes, Transylvania is a real place, although fact and fiction have been mixed up quite a bit in this area. So, today I decided to give a quick overview and separate fact from fiction, as well as give you a little peek of what you might see if you go to this part of Romania.

The first thing we saw as we entered the village was this:

A funeral procession with an open casket. These are by no means limited to Transylvania. I have seen them in the middle of Bucharest, but I thought it was kind of interesting that this was the first thing we saw upon entering Bran, the home of Dracula's castle. A Romanian funeral procession is lead by a person carrying a cross, everyone wears black, and the casket is always open.

There is a lot of superstition related to death in this part of the world, and some of the vampire legends evolved from these superstitions. 

As I stated before, the village of Bran is home to Dracula's castle. I had the chance to tour the castle, and being a pretty big fan of both the history behind the real Dracula, and the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, I was very excited to be able to see the castle for myself. 

 The facts about the castle are that it was a stronghold built by Teutonic knights in the year 1212. It was used against invading Turks by the mid 1400s, when Vlad Dracul was in charge of the country. Vlad Dracul was a Romanian ruler who did a very good job keeping the Turks out, but he also used some very brutal tactics. He would impale his victims and leave them impaled lining the streets. However, he didn't just impale Turks, he was also very ruthless towards any of his countrymen and had a bloody reputation towards anyone who crossed him the wrong way.

Although there are some old secret stairways and all kinds of interesting corners, the castle at Bran isn't really linked to Dracula through history. It would have been part of his domain during his reign, but I don't believe that there is any proof that he actually lived there. The castle is actually furnished for the time period that Queen Marie lived there  around the late 1800s to early 1900s.

The novelist, Bram Stoker, wrote Dracula as a vampire based on the old Romanian ruler Vlad Dracul. He choose this castle as the inspiration of the castle that Dracula lived in, in his book. It's a very interesting castle, and it was pretty popular among tourists. I counted eight different languages being spoken by people touring the castle, which is quite a bit considering I rarely hear a language other than Romanian being spoken in Bucharest.

There are some Vlad Dracul ruins in Bucharest as well, and he is considered a hero in Romania.