The last corner of Europe that's sick to death of Halloween

Dracula is asleep in his coffin. I can see him, his eyes closed, as I approach the threshold. The chamber is darkened, all traces of daylight repelled by thick velvet curtains. A candle flickers. Sepulchral organ music leaks from a source invisible in the gloom. I enter.

It is a trap. My foot presses a loose board. The floor creaks. He rises, arms outstretched, sending forth a laugh that seems laced with evil. We pause, man and monster, eyeing each other. Then he utters the chilling words: “Would you like a photo?”

Why I ask myself, am I here? Idle curiosity, I suppose. That, and a killing of time as I wait for my lunch to arrive downstairs at the Casa Vlad Dracul – where I have resisted ordering the Dracula Stew (a tomato-heavy casserole) in favor of a fine meaty goulash. I ponder his question and decide it would be rude to refuse – so the young man in the cape and copious eyeliner repeats his undead pose. I take a snap on my phone, and pay the five lei (£1) fee with a 10-lei note – as his fumbling for change destroys the last of the illusion.

It is difficult to begrudge the restaurant its selling point. Sighisoara was (probably) the birthplace (circa 1428) of Vlad Tepes, the medieval warlord whose cruelty has become the root of the Dracula story. Tourists flock to the town – which sits almost at the core of both Romania and the Transylvania region within it – expecting a monument to Bram Stoker’s fictional Victorian neck-biter. Casa Vlad Dracul has embraced the demand, marketing its top floor as “the room where Dracula was born”. Even so, it seems a shame that its schlockiness distracts visitors from the prettiness of a walled citadel, high above the Tarnava Mare river, whose turrets bear Unesco status. Not that Sighisoara is unaware of the contradiction. Between 2001 and 2003, it successfully fought the construction of a Dracula theme park, on the basis that it would have detracted from its history and beauty.

Dracula’s image will swoop down again this week as Hallowe’en entertains the Western world, but his shadow is curiously faint in a Transylvania that has grown weary of the association. Driving east from Sighisoara, I halt at Pivnita Bunicii, a farmstead in the village of Saschiz. Set up by Scottish expat Jim Turnbull in 2006, it produces fruit juices, marmalades, honey and jams – and a tomato-and-red-onion relish sold as “Dracula’s Delight”. The young woman in the shop pulls a face when I pick up a jar. “Yes, we are rebranding that as ‘Taste Transylvania’,” she remarks. “We’re fed up with the Dracula thing.”

It is what Pivnita Bunicii represents – agricultural bounty, orchards, and cherry trees, a burgeoning wine industry – that defines the region, not some literary ghoul. Transylvania spreads out furrowed and flat, fields ebbing to its horizons – where, to the south and east, the Carpathian Mountains provide hard book-ends. Numerous hamlets are tucked into the folds, among them Sibiel, where the Pensinunea Reghina gives me refuge.


Reghina Popa, the owner of this guesthouse, flits around the dining room as she serves my evening meal, explaining that everything on the table is homemade, including the bread and the zacusca (a mixture of tomato, aubergine, and red pepper) I am spreading upon it. The main course, sarmale – cabbage-leaf parcels stuffed with sausage meat – is also, she says proudly, her own work, adding that she made 200 that morning. I climb upstairs to bed full and happy.

If this is the Transylvania I have been hoping to find – lost in some bucolic dream – then the morning will remind me that urban life also thrives in this rustic segment of Romania.


Twelve miles (19km) east of Sibiel, Sibiu is a success story – a year as a European Capital of Culture in 2007 helping to turn a once-unheralded city into a pocket of renewal. Stroll its impeccably preserved center and you slip into a romantic yesteryear – the vast Holy Trinity Church on Piata Mare; the Lutheran Cathedral on Piata Huet, smaller and older, a 14th-century relic whose tower soars above its surroundings. It takes me 10 minutes to ascend it, up cobwebbed wooden stairs, to a belfry where sunshine floods in through broad windows. The city plays at its feet, orange roof tiles baked warm in the afternoon, gelaterias catering to the crowds on the cobbles. I halt at one of them, Culinarte, once I have regained the ground, gobbling fruity globules of melon and banana, wondering briefly if I have somehow ambled on to a Tuscan piazza.

Sibiu, 2007's European Capital of Culture

Ninety miles (144km) further east, Brasov plays a similar card – so near to the Carpathians that its name is pinned to the hill above in big white letters, aping the Hollywood sign. There is, though, nothing else about the city that looks to America. Piata Sfatului opens its arms as the heart of the matter, the Black Church on its perimeter a Germanic gothic bastion. And Restaurant Sergiana keeps things local, serving its Romanian fare in a cellar where bottles of wine from the adjacent Prahova Valley adorn the walls in columns of ruby red.

 Beautiful Brasov
Sitting here, sipping a glass of feteasca neagra from nearby Azuga, I almost forget the darkness on the edge of town. There are two obvious routes south through the mountains to Bucharest – one passing the Prahova wineries and the pistes of ski resort Predeal; the other winding to the building most closely tied to Dracula mythology. Bran Castle, the 14th-century fortress from which Stoker reputedly drew inspiration for his vampire’s lair, coalesces into focus, brooding magnificently on its crag.

But after scaling the slope to the door, I find a fact, not fantasy. While Vlad Tepes probably visited the castle during his reigns as a prince of neighboring Walachia, evidence that it played any role in his vicious maneuvers is tangential. The fortress acknowledges this, dissecting his legend via a display that also expresses tacit thanks to Christopher Lee’s turn in Dracula AD 1972 for fomenting tourist obsession with the old yarn. But beyond this, Bran Castle clings to the Twenties, full of furniture from its time as a summer residence to Queen Marie of Romania. The view from its terrace, meanwhile, is further pastoral persuasion, the Carpathians arcing gracefully, and neither a fang nor a cloak in sight.


Getting there
Flights to Bucharest include British Airways (0344 493 0787; ba.com) from Heathrow, Ryanair (0330 100 7838; ryanair.com) from Stansted, and Wizz Air (0330 977 0444; wizzair.com) from Gatwick, Luton, and Liverpool. Wizz also flies into Sibiu, from Luton.

Touring there
Cox & Kings (020 3918 3353; coxandkings.co.uk) offers a 10-day “Timeless Romania” tour that takes in Sibiu, Bran, Brasov, and Bucharest. From £1,195 per person, including flights.

Further information
turism.sibiu.ro; romania.travel