“Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things,” said a certain sharp-fanged count to his English visitor, freshly arrived by train to Transylvania.
In some sense, things haven’t changed much since Bram Stoker published those words in 1897. I arrived by train myself in mid-January and I, too, found strange things: A picture-perfect medieval town square packed not with tourists but primary school students. “Bagel” shops that don’t sell bagels. An Eastern Orthodox priest denouncing guitar lessons and raising bees.
Look, I fully intended to experience and write about Transylvania with no mention of vampires or anything described in novel by an Irishman who had never visited the region. I even requested that Twitter followers tracking my travels abstain from Dracula-related remarks.
That’s because the real place — now a large swath of central and western Romania and almost certainly the place on earth most commonly mistaken for fictional — is mountainous and beautiful, its ancient towns lively and well preserved, its ethnic and political history rich and complex. In other words, a place well worth discovering in its own right, not digressing to mentions of scary monsters.
That worked until I was taking money from an A.T.M. in the scrupulously well-preserved medieval center of Sighisoara. Glancing up, I saw the sign: “Banca Transilvania” — and realized I was down the block from a medieval clock tower with torture chamber beneath; across the street was the house where Vlad the Impaler, a.k.a. Draculae, is said to have been born in 1431. A chill went down my spine. In my head, well trained since “Sesame Street” and “Scooby Doo” days in how vampires operate, organ music played, andlightning crackled.
I had come to Transylvania in the winter knowing that I would be sacrificing the mountain hikes and farm stays popular among summer visitors — but hoping to find cheaper prices, snow-dusted castles and perhaps a day of skiing. And soul-satisfying food: If there was ever a dish made for post-slope replenishment, it’s Romanian ciorba de burta, the cream-based tripe soup that is rich, ubiquitous and cheap.
Alas, there had been no snow for a month, which meant no skiing, no fairy-tale dusting of ancient roofs. Still, having medieval towns and villages of Transylvania to yourself has its advantages. In Brasov, the 250,000-person city where I spent a day, that meant being the lone person gawking at the 16th-century Black Church, framing photographs through old city gates, and wondering at how just about every building in town is marked “Monument Istoric”. Still, some were more obviously Istoric than others. Wandering narrow side streets I fell for a tiny 1837 home with an intricately carved wooden door and faux Corinthian columns bordering the windows; in front of it was a Romanian-made Dacia car propped up half on the sidewalk to allow traffic to pass.
The brisk winter temperatures made me more appreciative of bakeries selling warm-from-the-oven breads. In Brasov, I stopped at a shop called Bagel Magic, which in fact serves warm covrigi, which are like bagels Photoshopped like a celebrity for a cover photo — from pudgy and irregular to slender yet curvaceous (without, thankfully, airbrushing out the poppy seeds). Mine cost 1.5 lei, or 45 cents at 3.25 lei to the dollar. In Sighisoara, young and old lined up in the rain to pay one leu for truly piping-hot covrigi at the sales window of Gigi.
Brasov is the traditional home base for visits to two castles in the region: Bran and Peles. They could not be more different.
Bran Castle is probably the most touristy spot in Transylvania thanks to its completely dubious connections with both the fictional and historic Dracula. But with summer hordes replaced by a handful of Romanian tourists and a school field trip, I quite enjoyed the visit (the 25-lei admission price didn’t hurt). Perched almost precariously on the side of a hill, the castle — which once served as a toll collector’s headquarters and a defense post against Ottoman aggressors — truly seems like the sort of place a vampire might have lived.
In fact, I found out, the home was last used as a residence by the Romanian royal family before it was seized by the Communist government, and it is decorated largely from that period. (Although on the higher levels, things did get a tiny bit creepy — up there, where wind swirled and whistled outside, I came upon some restrained displays about Dracula.)
Peles Castle is a wholly different and entirely more mind-boggling experience. Built by King Carol I as a summer residence beginning in 1873, its lavish halls are filled with endlessly ornate detail, like a Versailles for the late 19th century: Carol seems to have spared no expense in the Arab and Turkish-themed rooms; his astoundingly vast European arms collection — swords, battle axes, guns — is displayed in all its excess in one hall, along with a full-on man and horse armor display that will leave no medieval fantasist unhappy. In an adjoining room is his collection of Ottoman and Persian arms, so flowery and ornate by comparison that they look runway-ready for Constantinople Fashion Week.
Still, Sighisoara, under three hours from Brasov by train (and free for me, as it was the first leg of my already-purchased return trip to Budapest), was the highlight. I’m very picky about medieval walled towns, having skewered places from Dubrovnik, Croatia, toÈze, France, as little more than polished museum pieces. But unlike those places (and true to what guidebooks said), Sighisoara is truly living medieval town, its 16th- through 18th-century homes largely still inhabited. When I stopped into a place called the Medieval Cafe for a 5-lei warm winter drink made of black currants, I could hear children playing in the neighboring schoolyard; I would later see the same kids rushing out of school in the square in front of the clock tower, which in many other places would be strictly tourist territory.
The city walls are guarded over by eclectic watchtowers, each maintained by (and named for) a different guild of historic craftsmen — tailors, tanners, cobblers, furriers, rope makers. But the clock tower is the true fairy-tale attraction. It was first built in the 13th and 14th centuries; a Baroque roof was added in the 17th century, along with its most charming element, seven figurines based on Greek and Roman gods that rotate each day of the week. From the belvedere at the top (which you reach through the creaky-floored museum, 12 lei) you get a remarkable 360-degree view of the city; astonishingly, I could spot barely a single building, even in the more modern lower city, that appeared to have been built in the 20th or 21st century.
Eager to see the much-touted Carpathian villages, I rented a car (I paid in euros, the equivalent of $33 a day) and drove out to the rural villages, many of which feature impressive fortified Saxon churches. That Saxon population, which once dominated many of the villages, has since largely evacuated to Germany, replaced by Romanians, Hungarians and Roma, the three largest ethnic groups in Transylvania today. (For those wondering, the last Romanian census counted zero vampires, though admittedly was largely taken in the daylight.)
After passing through Biertan, whose church was closed and residents not very chatty, I found a warmer reception a mile or so away in Copsa Mare. In the local magazin mixt — the cool Romanian term for convenience store — a woman used hand gestures to explain that I should knock at the house next to the church; there, an adolescent boy fetched the key and led me through its battered arched doorway. The old church wasn’t anything special, although the experience of getting into it had been. So I left a donation in the bowl and took off to wander the town.
It was a village of dirt roads and modest, mostly Saxon-style houses; I noticed nothing out of the ordinary except several young girls carrying around guitars. When a young man pulling buckets of water from a well spoke to me in near perfect English, I asked him about the guitars. “There’s a lady in the town who is teaching the children,” he said.
“Great!” I said. He did not agree. He was the town’s Orthodox priest, and the guitar lessons, he said, were an effort to recruit families to the Pentecostal church in town. He introduced himself as John (his name is actually Ioan Bico) and seemed delighted to entertain me for the next few hours. He may have been a priest, but he wielded a sharp tongue recounting an opinionated chapter of the town’s recent ethnic history. To summarize: the Saxons used to refuse to marry Romanians, yet when they moved to Germany, the men found themselves discriminated against and returned to marry not only Romanians but even the more-maligned Roma. (He called them Gypsies, and they were not spared maligning from him either.)
He eventually invited me over for a beer — nonalcoholic for me, he insisted, since I was driving — and to see the icons he paints and sells to supplement his meager pay. He was also a beekeeper, and I happily bought a jar of honey for 20 lei. Conversation ranged from Hollywood to the Internet to birth control and abortion. (He did not think highly of any of the four.)
I had not eaten since breakfast, so I headed back to Sighisoara in search of a reasonably priced meal. Finding the pub-like Cafe Martini near the town center, I ordered a feast as most customers just drank beer and listened to a soundtrack lost in the ‘80s (Springsteen, Tina Turner, Asia). I had that tripe soup called ciorba de burta, mititei (grilled ground meat patties), cascaval pane (breaded, fried cheese), and the great Romanian dessert of papanasi (hot doughnuts, topped with sour cream and currant jam) — and returned, stuffed, to my guesthouse.
I was staying at Casa Soare, a family-run pension in the lower town, a 10-minute walk down from the citadel, where I had scored a winter discount at 80 lei a night — about 20 percent off the Booking.com price — by calling in advance. It was a nice place and worth the modest expense, but I had two lodging regrets. The first — that I had not stayed in a village or on a farm — was unavoidable: Most rural guesthouses were closed for the winter. But I realized I had missed an opportunity when I picked up my rental car at Casa Baroca, just down the block from the Vlad Dracul house. I got a tour of the place, and it was amazing. Entering through the 300 year-old front door, I found rooms under vaulted ceilings decorated with traditional furniture, antique wood stoves, old wood floors. And winter prices were only slightly more than what I was paying: 100 lei, down from 140 in summer.
Still, perhaps I was better off at my place. Staying at Casa Baroca, I had learned, would be in violation of a town ordinance forbidding foreigners to lodge in the citadel. Admittedly, the law was written around 1515 and is probably not still in effect, but in a city with a torture chamber, you can’t be too careful.
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