bran

I wake up early and uber to the bus stop. From there I board a bus to Bran. It’s much cheaper to take public transportation to the city rather than a tour and you can do it on your own time.

The bus road goes quick and the countryside is beautiful consisting of sheep, old houses and a variety of mountainscapes. 

I get off the bus and the first thing I think is Bran is a Romanian Niagara falls. Littered with small tourist traps, this small village’s basic commodity is imported Chinese ware. Dracula, the word, rather than the face, is everywhere.  Small shops line the streets to and around the castle. Everyone is selling a version of the same thing, Dracula cups, shirts or mittens along with various objects thinly related to Romania or Vampire hunting.

As I make my way to Bran castle, I see another small haunted castle within a collective of shops can be experienced for a few lei, it’s no more than 30 meters away from the entrance to the Bran Castle grounds and I wonder who it caters to? The magic I came looking for is non-existent. There are people everywhere.

 

 

 

 

Though most castles pride themselves in their ability to recreate specific time periods with age appropriate furniture, Bran Castle it is primarily populated by foreign trinkets and foreign tourists. Inside, the air is heavy with recycled, tired breath. It is a version of hell populated by tired travellers and their over-walked children.

 

It is Halloween and the castle is filled with printed canvas art. The various canvases depict graveyards, witches, goblins and ghouls, with little originality. You’ve seen it before, only done better in the past. As I move about I hope I can find a quiet spot and somehow connect with some sort of aura, it doesn’t happen. The castle is filled with adult tourists and kids unattended and scurrying about.

 

Everyone around me looks tired. I think I may look the same but I don’t notice any mirrors. I remember vampires wouldn’t need them but doubt the lack of mirrors were done with this intent…. More and more I believe “The New Traveller” is the one marked by exhaustion, overwhelmed by the burden of revisiting the prediscovered in hopes of finding something new.

I try to find poetry around the castle, I try to remain optimistic, but they come in glimpses, brief as Vlad’s daylight presence.

I stick around shorter than expected and hope to find something in Rasnov.

I realize now why so many people recommended Peles Castle over Bran.

Bran has little soul. The insides of the castle consist of cheap copies of furniture, scans of old deeds and prop jewellery from Coppola’s Dracula movie. The rooms are small and the lines move slowly. The village, much like Niagara, seems to consists of a large shopping area composed of various stalls and huts.

I leave hoping Rasnov will be better.