Visiting Vlad

We rolled over the Danube and straight into the arms of bureaucracy.
“Where are you going?”
“Bucharest.”
“Hotel reservation?”
I pointed at our home-on-wheels. “Campervan.”
He stared as if I’d claimed to sleep inside a hedgehog, stamped theatrically, and waved us into Romania.
Romania is properly big, and we’d sworn to save the west and north, Hungary, Ukraine, the lot, for a return trip. For now: Bucharest and the south-east, drifting toward the Black Sea. That was the plan anyway.
​We parked ourselves at a no-nonsense campsite half an hour out: lake, power, hot showers, and an encampment of cheerful Irish traveling families five weeks into a “short stay.” Peace reigned until the function centre next door erupted into Romanian bangers at 11 and finally surrendered at 2 a.m.

Sunday called for ceremony, so I announced bacon-and-egg brekkie, purely because the bacon, eggs and mushrooms needed using. Fuelled, we abandoned the van and summoned an Uber, our first taxi in nine months, unless you count the 280-kilometre “taxi” to Lake Baikal, which I now recognise as paid hitchhiking with receipts. It was absurdly cheap and, more importantly, it spared us from wrestling Bucharest’s traffic.

I’d heard good things about the city, nothing specific, just a warm hum of approval, and it turned out to be entirely justified. We slid in through ranks of communist-era apartment blocks, their concrete softened by balconies sprouting geraniums and a pavement life so lively you could practically hear the gossip. Then came the stern geometry of state power: hulking ministries and broad boulevards designed to make the individual feel pocket-sized. And finally, as if someone had flicked a set designer’s switch, the old town: hip, café-rich, cobbled, and gorgeously walkable. If a city can wink, Bucharest winks.

We drifted toward the Stavropoleos Church, a pocket of carved stone and icon glow that hushes even the chattiest tourist, then wandered the National Museum of Romanian History where grim helmets and hopeful coins make their parade. At Pasajul Villacrosse, a honey-yellow arcade made for lingering, we eavesdropped on a tour guide explaining that Romanians in the northwest (closer to Germany) take life rather seriously, whereas down here, with easterly breezes and a dash of Asia, life is taken with more cigarettes, clinking glasses, and late nights. The evidence, bars, cafés, laughter, presented itself on cue.

At a market skirting the CBD we scored marinated lamb belly for the grill, thick slices glistening with the promise of crispy edges, and then detoured to Primăverii Palace, the former nest of communist dictator Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu.

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when thriftless power meets a catalogue of global luxury, the answer is: eighty-odd rooms of it. Canadian maple floors inlaid with African mahogany, bathrooms the size of suburban lounges, a dressing room that could swallow a small boutique and ask for seconds. Much of it, we were told, under Elena’s personal instruction, the aesthetic of humble beginnings taking full revenge on subtlety. It’s astonishing how much money a dictatorship can pour into marble while the country is queuing for bread.
It's funny how quickly the hero’s of the workers become the people they revolted against, funnier still is their surprise when the working class revolt again and have them shot!
​That night we barbecued by the lake, cool, drizzly, perfectly and, blissfully, band-free.

The following morning we were to continue, toward the Black Sea. Instead, geography seduced us. “Transylvania is just there,” I said, pointing west like a pirate queen. ‘Drac’ said Pete. Purists will note that Dracula didn’t exist in the inconveniently factual way, and Bram Stoker mined his villain from history’s murk, chiefly one 15th-century Wallachian voivode, Vlad the Impaler. Depending on your reading, Vlad wasn’t uniquely monstrous for his age so much as a man who suffered the bad luck of a particularly enthusiastic Irish publicist

We began with Curtea de Argeș, whose cathedral Vlad may have seen if he’d been in the mood for soaring frescoes and stern saints. We walked streets he may have walked (he did not buy a cheese pastry where I bought a cheese pastry; that, I feel, we can say definitively)

We then drove along a ribboning road to peer up at Poenari Castle: a jagged crown of ruins clinging to a cliff, once his and now everyone’s Instagram. The path was closed due to “bear activity,” a phrase that sounds cuddly until you imagine 1,480 steps pursued by something with opinions about your lunch. We thanked the local fauna for their public-safety work and decided that admiring from below was a noble, risk-aware choice.
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Night fell as we threaded the Carpathians, hairpins, pines, the odd truck appearing like a grumpy whale and we rolled into Bran late, The  castle would have to wait until morning. 

I woke early, hoping for mist. In my mind the castle would heave out of a foggy hollow, bats forming punctuation marks across a pewter sky. In reality, it was a blue-sky postcard morning. The castle sat beaming on its rocky knoll, lawns crisp, the atmosphere more “storybook picnic” than “gothic terror.” If unicorns had pranced past, I’d have offered them a carrot.

The castle didn’t open until 9.00 so we had a coffee and perused the souvenir stalls out the front, Vlad may have only lived in the castle for a few years and it was actually an Irish writer who put it on the map, but that wasn’t going to stop the locals wringing out every last Lev from it!!
The castle is unusual in that it is still privately owned by the kin of the last queen of Romania, who actually lived in the castle until 1922

The gates opened at nine, which left time for coffee and a survey of the souvenir battalions outside: magnets, mugs, capes, plastic fangs, and at least one T-shirt inviting my blood type to present itself. Vlad may have passed only briefly through Bran, and it took an Irish novelist to do most of the myth-making, but you can’t fault local enterprise. Every last cape is enthusiastically courted.

Inside, Bran Castle is not the damp crypt of popular imagination. It’s whitewashed, wood-floored, and—heresy alert—cosy. Small rooms, warm corners, homely furniture that looks made for reading rather than plotting. It remains privately owned by descendants of Romania’s last queen, she lived here in the 1920s, and it feels more like a lived-in family stronghold than a stage set for sanguine dramas. Halloween decorations were still tucked about, a faint afterglow of autumn mischief. Now that, I thought, is when this place would truly sing: candles fluttering, shadows lengthening, somebody in a questionable wig trying not to spill their mulled wine on a 14th-century stair.
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We swung east at last, threading up through the Carpathians where the road clung to cliffs like a koala with trust issues, then gliding down onto Romania’s broad, green apron. This was the Romania I’d been hoarding in my head: quilted fields stitched with hedgerows, villages paused halfway between “under construction” and “folk art installation,” horse carts clip-clopping past vegetables of operatic scale. The cabbages were the real headliners, vast, beach-ball specimens stacked on utes every few hundred metres. Nonas toted them home with the confidence of women who know a hundred ways to cook a brassica, whereas I can manage… two, if you count “shred and hope.”
We parked up that night in a hotel car park near the border, a glamorous return to our youth, except this time we were sober and in bed by ten. The Wi-Fi was saintly, so we slunk into the bar to triage life admin, including the small matter of Turkish visas we’d artfully ignored. Three days’ processing, said the website; we were operating on what NASA would term “optimism.”
​The Black Sea plan took a turn over a glass of local lager. Our ferry from Varna to Poti, it transpired, would cost nearly $1,500, ouch, and, because it was off-season, wouldn’t sail until the 24th. A glance at the map, a quick marital summit: driving to Georgia would take three days. Decision made. We’d loop the sea by land, Bulgaria, Turkey, then Georgia, poke about in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and meander back through Turkey.
​At dawn we rolled onto the Danube ferry, waved Romania goodbye, and bumped ashore in Bulgaria with a plan, a deadline, and a renewed respect for cabbages.