The guy inside looked almost exactly like Matt Damon with a thin beard and mustache. Honestly, the resemblance was uncanny. I also noticed that he spoke great (although accented) English. I introduced myself, and he introduced himself as Louie, from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. “No kidding!?” I exclaimed. Come to find out, Louie had been on vacation in Romania for nearly a month, but was “getting bored of seeing churches”, so decided to come to Budapest for the weekend. He was quite an interesting guy, and works (get this!) for Price-Coopers-Waterhouse in their Montreal office. If you remember, that’s who my new friends Cainna and Linda worked for as well (met them on the train from Auschwitz to Katowice) in the DC office. Louie was a wealth of information about Romania, and explained that he takes all his vacation each year by just picking a place and stumping around there at his leisure. Last year, he did Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. The year before that, he did North Africa and Israel. Apparently, he had a friend with him for a while on this trip, but had to split up when his friend had to get back to work, and so had been on a solo mission for a couple of weeks.
Louie asked what I was doing, and I told him that I was going to visit Bran Castle because of my affection for the Stoker myth. Louie nodded, and then said, “that’s cool…it’s a nice castle. But you know it’s a fake, right?” “Come again?” I said, not sure what he meant. “Yeah, it’s what the Romanian government typically touts as the ‘real Dracula castle’, but the truth is, Vlad Tepes only spent a couple of weeks there on and off during his campaigns. But see, it’s in way better shape than the ‘really real’ castle that Tepes built as a stronghold on the Transylvanian border to the Ottoman Empire, so it’s the one they try to steer tourists toward.” “NO WAY!” I said, impressed, but still not convinced. “Here,” he said, pulling out a book, “read this and look at this map.” Sure enough, it was a phenomenal book on Romanian history and sights, and there was a giant map that showed Bran Castle with a little “bubble” that said, “beautiful castle in southern Romania that also serves as the ‘fake’ castle often sited for Dracula fans.” “Well, crud,” I thought, “where is the ‘really real’ one, then?” I had no idea! And you’d think I would have, wouldn’t you? Apparently, as I read further, the stronghold that Tepes built through forced labor by captured Turks is about 100 km to the southwest of Bran. It is the site where, during one particular siege and fearing that they would not get out alive, Vlad’s wife threw herself from one of the castle turrets to prevent herself from being taken prisoner (or worse) by invading Ottomans. The castle (called Curtea de Arges - “Koort-A-yuh*Dar*Zheesh) sits neatly above both a hydro-electric power plant and a former military maneuvers base, and, like Csjethe, is in really bad shape. Apparently, in 1888, a considerable section of it simply crumbled down the hill on which it was built, and so there are now little more than head-high ruins to walk through. Still, a little caretaker sits ready to charge 2 Leu (about $.75) to those who can get to the ruin, and can also hike its supposed 1,048 steps to get to it.
Well, honestly, in all my reading and surfing and searching, I had never come across such a place! I had heard the stories about his narrow escape from Ottoman invasion, but that was kind of the “morning ride to work” for Vlad. I’d also heard the story of his wife’s suicide (indeed, the recent film Dracula, starring Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves, Cary Elwes, etc. was based on that event being the “turning point” for Vlad in his decision to become a minion of evil rather than a servant of God), but all the stuff I ever read either directly indicated Bran, or merely talked about details that inferred its location.
So then! I decided that if at all possible, I would see what needed to happen to get to Curea as my primary objective, with Bran as a fall-back, and seeing both as “optimal mission parameters” if at all possible.
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