The Life of Shell: May 2011

Today was the day I had been counting down too, like Christmas morning, marking off the sleeps on the calendar. Well I wasn’t as bad as that, my excitement had been dulled a bit learning that it was all a lie but still I was looking forward to the very touristy tacky place it was going to be.

Today was the day I was to go visit Dracula’s castle or Bran castle as its known. Dracula, Vlad Tepes is his actual name, never actually lived there and it depends on which guide book you read as to if he even stayed there a few nights, was imprisoned for a short while or never placed a foot in the door. Its all a Romanian tourism board little white lie. But the pictures looks amazing and I actually think it may have been used in the Bram Stoker’s Dracula the movie (the one with Keanu in it)

Ive been very excited as I really didn’t know what to think about Dracula’s birthplace in Sigihoasa. I expected something a little bit more than an art café, a big menu and a little plaque to say Vlad Tepes was born there. I guess it didn’t help that I was a little bit of a zombie after travelling through the night to get there. I had my picture with the Dracula cardboard cut out and the house. You can tell by the picture I was a little confused. Then tried to have coffee with him but didn’t have any money yet so that put an end to that. Therefore today is to be the day….

Me at Dracula's Birthplace - Sighisoara Romania

Can you tell I’m psyching myself up here. I should have been very excited but I hadn’t slept very well at all and all I wanted to do was stay in bed. I wasn’t feeling up to it. But up I got, put the Easter call to dad and out we headed.

I have made many a mistake with this holiday, school holidays, royal wedding, not flying from Prague and now of course Easter in a very religious country. Luckily Dracula doesn’t take stock in Easter and so he accepts guests on Easter Sunday. So we would not miss out on Peles castle one of the most impressive castles in Europe, we organized it so that we visited it on Easter Saturday a day that doesn’t mean anything in Romania and then would visit Dracula on Easter Sunday.

Our trip to Peles went off very well apart from convincing ourselves we were on the wrong train and would end up in Bucharest or somewhere in the middle of nowhere and have to find our way back. Our tickets said a different train to the one the carriage we were in said, we didn’t know the final destination of the train we were to catch, just had the platform the ticket lady said the train would leave from. We were in a fancy carriage but our ticket said we were to be on a regional train which are usually the old rattlers. The train had pulled up ten minutes before it was to depart and everyone rushed to get onto it including us as you get caught up in the rush thinking it will leave early. We grabbed some seats and then watched everyone try and find their reservations, this concerned us a bit as we didn’t think we had any seats. We assumed we were on the right train. Then we looked at our tickets and realized the train name was different but by this time the train was leaving albeit 5 min late. We settled back to see what would happed it was only 10am, the castle was open till six so we had all day to get there! The worst that could happen was we would be kicked off at the next station and we would have to buy another ticket to get us to the correct station.

The conductor came along after about ½ hr, we hadn’t stopped anywhere yet. This concerned me a little bit, as far as I was aware the station we were heading to was a small one. He took our tickets, looked at us, at our tickets, hesitated then punched them and gave them back to us. We assumed this meant we were on the right train, I couldn’t see him leaving us on there even if he couldn’t be bothered trying to explain to us we were on the right train. All I knew was we were to be on the train about 1.5 hrs.

When we arrived at the station we realized it was a ski resort for the elite Romanians and therefore an important stop. We got off the train and noticed some old rattler carriages at the end of the train, guess we had just found our reserved seats.

Peles castle is amazing, in time when it gets onto the must see check list, I think it will be almost as visited as Neuschwanstein, although it doesn’t have as dramatic a back drop and none of the rooms based on operas, it is almost as lavish. Its entirely completed, a whole 170 rooms worth and is also built just for looks not defense. Each room is based on a different theme, for example, the Florentine room , Turkish room, Moorish room, English room, Viking room, Hall of Honour (main entrance, 3 storeys high, entirely covered in wood carvings). It was built as a summer residence and is the first castle in Europe to have electricity, central heating and an elevator.

Peles Castle - Sinaia Romania

So back to Dracula, we headed off to the bus station, just around the corner from where we were staying, only for it to seem a little deserted. We didn’t expect all buses to be working but it didn’t look like anything was open at all. We tried to find the platform and timetable. We ended up asking one of the little shop people, the only shop open, about the bus to bran and he said no buses today, the bus station closed. We were devastated. I had read that the buses left from Bartolomeu station. This was just around the corner from the bus station, but when we asked the fellow he said it was only local buses from there. There had been buses at the main station so we decided to jump in a taxi to the main station and see if they were leaving from there only. We couldn’t find anything, we did have some random guy offer to drive us there and back for some ghastly amount of money. We asked inside the station and got told buses left from Bartolomeu. Well were we not happy that we had just come from that side of the city and that the fellow had given us the mis-information.

We went to get a taxi back but they wanted to charge us a fortune, we had been told what local bus we could catch back but we couldn’t find out where to get a ticket from. So we decided to start walking. By this time it was almost 11.15, so we realized that by the time we could find a bus to bran, if they existed, it would be half the day gone by the time we got there. We decided that we both really didn’t want to see Bucharest and would be very happy to stay another night in Brasov and see Dracula the next day and travel from Basov to the airport on Tuesday. It just meant all hope was resting on Dracula being home on Monday So we turned around and headed back to the station to try for a train to Sibiu.

The next train to Sibui was leaving in 5 min, we tried to purchase a ticket and she kept saying the 2 o’clock train instead. Turns out the 11.30 was cancelled. It just wasn’t our day. We asked what time that train would get in and it was a 4.5 hour journey. Thank goodness we didn’t get the 11.30 as I think the last train back was 5.30!

We decided to let that one go and try and find another taxi back to Bartolomeu Station and give it one last try. Well Bartolomeu was definitely not where we needed to be and the mini bus station also down the road was also only local buses. The information fellow there told us the buses leave from the bus station around the corner… the one we started at… but none today. So the original fellow hadn’t lied to me, what I hadn’t known, that would have made things easier was the bus station was also called Bartolomeu.

So there was no getting to Dracula today, instead we wandered into town for a nice relaxed day in the sun with what seemed like the entire town of Brasov eating icecream in the square.

Brasov main square and town hall

Where's Shelly? - Im amoungst this icecream eating crowd somewhere...

Dracula was now resting on us having accommodation available at our hotel for Monday night or at least in Brasov… but that was to be worried about later. Brasov was to be explored properly and icecream to be tasted.