The Hunt for Dracula in Transylvania
In the heart of Romania, a search for Bram Stoker’s story reveals the truth of the legend and the locals' feelings towards vampires.
I was surprised when I came to the gorgeous town of Brasov in central Romania, on the edge of Transylvania. It wasn’t creepy at all. It was crowded with colorful baroque buildings and a pleasant atmosphere of humble beauty.
I witnessed no night-time drinking of jugulars beyond the odd tipsy English tourists sucking neck in an audacious protest to romance. So where’s all of the eerie fog, the dogs howling through the valleys, and the tall men with shadowed faces hidden by looming hat brims that I’ve been promised by years of vampiric media?
I decided I needed to find a copy of Dracula and read it again to set the story straight. Surely in this place I’ll be tripping over copies of the book!
The legend of Dracula Vs the real Dracula
I grabbed my cross and donned a necklace of garlic flowers to enter my first bookshop: Librăria Humanitas. You step into an orderly chaos of books in which piles of literature encourage you to browse the mounds without a goal in mind. Scary if you’re looking for a specific book, otherwise it’s quite plain.
An English section with absolutely no order or reason for its arrangement featured an eclectic selection in spite of its cramped space. However, no Dracula to be found. That got me thinking: What do the Romanians really think of the famous Dracula legend, the root of Transylvanian folklore for the English?
It turns out they think it's a bit of a joke, really. The name Dracula and — up to a point — the character is inspired by the legendary Vlad Țepeș, once Voivode (leader) of Wallachia (old Romania, sort-of) a whacking three times. He relentlessly defended his home country and with a medieval form of shaking his fist and shouting “and stay out!” to the Ottomans, he became idolized in the memory of Romanians.
In case you hadn’t surmised, that was the famous Vlad: Vlad the Impaler. His father was Vlad Dracul, a name worthy of an eyebrow flickering from George RR Martin that translates to Vlad the Dragon. He was part of an order of dragons, don’t ask too many questions.
Dracula literally means ‘son of Dracul’. Stoker seems to have been inspired by the blood-soaked story of a great warrior sticking pikes on sticks as readily as a Scout does a marshmallow for the fire. I think there’s more to it than that. Let’s continue, shall we?
What really inspired the story of Dracula?
The second bookshop I entered gripping my wooden stake beneath my cape was the famous Cărturești. I’d been to their fabulous four-story book orgy in Bucharest and the compacted equivalent in Brasov felt a faithful little sibling.
If you’re looking for an English read whilst in Romania then Cărturești should be your destination. They have a huge quantity of English books — perhaps more than in Romanian — to the point that they have their English books split up by bookcases of the genre.
I was in luck. They had a horror table specially laid out for the encroaching Halloween holiday. Trust an English-oriented shop to provide for something that the locals don’t care for; here were two copies of Dracula!
So I’d found Dracula but the search so far had stoked the question in my mind further; how closely linked is the fictional Dracula with the country of Romania?
Bram Stoker never visited Romania. In fact, at the time Transylvania wasn’t even technically in Romania. In the late 19th Century Transylvania was a part of the Kingdom of Hungary and it was the Carpathian mountains in and around the region that seemed to have inspired Stoker to a large extent.
Despite never visiting it and likely never having seen rudimentary photographs of the largely wild area, Stoker paints a vivid portrait of the mountains. From its quaint settlements and small community spirit to the vast beauty of its forests and the striking power of its solitary castles, Stoker’s imagery seems authentic. How could he achieve that, having never been there?
He fastidiously studied the area and its history in making the book. There were beautiful old sketches available to the English at the time of the mountains carpeted in trees and the odd stone tower looming between them. I ended up seeing some of the sketches of 19th Century Transylvania whilst at Bran Castle, famously considered to be Dracula’s castle.
Fun fact: Bran Castle has nothing to do with Dracula. Where does the link come from? Well, it’s a castle in Transylvania and “sources” reckon that perhaps old Vlad the Impaler once stopped off to say hi to the inhabitants. That is all!
The atmosphere of the mountains shrouded in thick beech, oak, and pine trees with the cold mist rising above the old stone villages paints a picture, and it's easy to feel the inspiration that Stoker took from it, even if only through words and pictures.
The book of Dracula seems to seamlessly meld the intense feeling of isolated terror with wonder at the beauty and vastness of nature. When the solicitor Jonathon Harker visits Dracula at his castle at the start of the book, his isolation, and fear in the castle are offset by an admiration for the old building and the stunning landscape beyond its trappings.
Romanians reveal their thoughts about vampires
At this point, I’d eased my suspicions of folklore nightmares to be found. In fact, everyone seemed so pleasant and friendly. Perhaps they were buttering me up to feed on later?
My next stop on the journey was at a beautiful bookshop named Librăria Ștefan Octavian Iosif. The unassuming ground floor presents tall bookcases stacked with all sorts of pleasingly arranged books. Then you discover the basement.
Follow a dark staircase down and you find a cozy room equipped with stained glass windows, powerful busts of presumably significant figures, and cute armchairs for sweatered men to read in. They feature a very compact English section with a range of fantasy classics bound in beautiful copies I’d never seen before.
There were two copies of Dracula here too, though lackadaisically hidden amongst everything else. They’re certainly aware of the book here but it’s not given much precedent. Now I think about it, I’ve barely seen anything Dracula related outside of the tacky tourist-trap museum and the bookshelves I’ve perused methodically.
Is it not embraced by the people of Transylvania? It suddenly dawned on me that perhaps they found it insulting, being associated with a blood-sucking beast of the night thanks to a foreign writer who’d never even visited the place.
My suspicions were sort of correct. On our way to visit Bran Castle, our barista joked about saying hello to Dracula for him, though with a resigned smile. On our way back from the castle my partner jokingly told the taxi driver that we didn’t see any vampires whilst there, to which he blankly responded: “Of course not.”
It seems the original and real figure of Vlad Țepeș is a national hero to the Romanians; a symbol of loyalty and sacrifice in the name of their country. They feel that Stoker’s character spits in the face of the historical figure somewhat.
A Romanian, Alex Deva, seemed to sum it up on Quora:
We think of Count Dracula as a very annoying fictional character, who is however somewhat good for tourism.
I think it’s a shame. The story is so wonderfully written and compelling. I have to wonder if the annoyance comes from the eventual novelty of vampires and their association with Transylvania. Nowadays, vampires are perhaps more associated with the Muppet’s Count Von Count than the terrifying yet charming figure from Jonathon Harker’s journal pages.
Perhaps it's not so much the book but the inevitable saturation of foolishness that comes from anything that becomes largely cultural that frustrates the Romanians. I mean, does Dracula even have anything to do with their hero Vlad “the Impaler” beyond the nickname?
Dracula’s relation to Vlad the Impaler
At this point, I had found 4 books of Dracula. My goal to find a copy to read — so as to soak the atmosphere through into my spirit by actually being there — was complete. However, my curiosity was still piqued as to how the legend fits the location and I don’t need much of an excuse to explore a bookshop.
I ended up going to many more bookshops out of curiosity as to whether they stocked Dracula. After seeing a copy of The Brothers Karamazov over a foot in width and eventually ending up in a shop with one table of books entirely in German — like, Der Grosse Gatsby — and a row of children in the corner quietly studying, I thought the hunt had lost its magic. But a question still remained: Is Dracula inspired by Vlad the Impaler at all beyond name?
In reading Dracula there is a fascinating section that shows that Stoker took more than just the name from Vlad Țepeș. At some point, Jonathon Harker inspires a passionate speech from Count Dracula after invigorating him with questions on the local area.
The questions animate the Count with a ferocious pride and he goes on a bizarre rant which puzzles Harker but — to an aware reader — suggests that the Count is himself Vlad the Impaler!
When was redeemed that great shame of my nation, the shame of Cassova, when the flags of the Wallach and of the Magyar went down beneath the Crescent; who was it but one of my own race who as Voivode crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground! This was a Dracula indeed.
Now it could of course just be an ancestral patronym for the “original” Dracula but the entire monologue from the Count breathes immense pride. One can easily imagine the words coming from great warriors recounting their victories and their sacrifices.
So maybe Stoker did twist the tale of an old emperor to turn his righteous violence into an animalistic bloodlust. Perhaps that explains why English tourists running through Romania’s once small and traditional villages shouting “I vant to suck your blooood!” grates on the ears of the locals.
This probably explains the approach of Magdalena Valentina Stegaru:
I use the vampire myth to scare away annoying people.
I ask them if they have heard of Dracula and then I say: “Well, I am Romanian and I will tell you something - (pause for suspense) — It is true, we do drink blood at midnight, every full moon.”
After this line, a deep and welcome silence is achieved.
I want to give an honorable mention to the Book Coffee Shop in Brasov, a place full of the brightest personalities and delicious coffee that made an excellent break from hunting vampires. They didn’t have a copy of Dracula but they did have a wonderfully warming rum and ginger tea.
Brasov and the rest of Romania are fantastically beautiful and I would recommend anyone to visit and explore the incredible countryside and meet the lovely people. Take in their culture, enjoy their nature, and remember: Vlad is a hero there, Dracula is a story.
