Country Article / Postcards

Untouched by modern society—or vampires

Date: 01/01/2007

Simion Alb says visitors to Transylvania won’t find their hosts hurriedly excusing themselves after cock crow, and they needn’t take rosaries when venturing out at night. But Alb, the Romanian National Tourist Office’s director for North America, agrees that Transylvania—the setting for Bram Stoker’s 19th-century horror story Dracula—does lure tourists here.
“Basically, tourists associate Transylvania with vampires before they go,” Alb reports. “But after they come back, they have another image—one of pleasant people living in a part of Europe that in some ways has barely been touched by modern society.”

Tough but patriotic

Transylvania boasts modern cities, many medieval villages, and castles-a-plenty, including Bran Castle, sometimes referred to as Dracula Castle. That castle was named for real-life 15th-century nobleman Vlad Dracula. This character is today seen by Romanians as a tough but patriotic ruler who fought Turkish invaders and dealt harshly with thieves. According to Alb, however, it’s doubtful whether Vlad the Impaler, as the no-nonsense leader is often known, ever stayed in the building. One castle he did live in, Poienari, is largely in ruins, although the castle walls can still be seen.

Stoker himself never visited Transylvania but learned of it, deciding that it sounded mysterious enough as a setting for his book. He found the Dracula name during visits to a London library and then created a permanent link between vampires and Transylvania in the public mind with his novel. Transylvania wasn’t previously associated with vampires, but Stoker has made it into what Alb believes may be one of the most famous regions in the world.

Witch trials

Among Transylvanian structures is the Dracula Castle-Hotel, erected in 1980 in the Borgo Pass area (also mentioned in Stoker’s novel). Employees at the 66-room hotel sport medieval costumes and the premises become particularly lively around Halloween, attracting the likes of Miss Transylvania, declared Countess Dracula in the hotel for the coming year. Guests can also find a masquerade ball in a hotel with an onsite coffin and the same type of food that Dracula hero Jonathan Harker dined on when he was hosted by Stoker’s king vampire. Another Transylvania hotel is The Golden Krone, a name that will also be recognized by those who have read Stoker’s novel. Re-enactments of witch trials of long ago can be seen in medieval Sighisoara, and, while unrelated to Stoker’s book, they are certainly a curiosity for those who enjoy the macabre.

Oddly enough, Stoker’s novel is probably less well known in Romania than elsewhere, only having been translated into Romanian in 1992. But, unlike Stoker’s scheming Dracula, who greeted his English guest Harker with his “enter freely and of your own will,” Alb promises that today’s tourists can expect a genuinely friendly welcome from a people eager to see their visitors return home safe and sound at the end of their vacation.