Vampire weekend (Warning: contains mild Saxon violence)
We are in Transylvania (mwa ha ha ha) and our first stop was Sighisoara. This old walled Saxon town was the birth place of Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler, aka Vlad Dracul, on whom Bram Stoker's Dracula was based. Despite this – they are very restrained as far as Dracula 
merchandise goes – it manages to be not too cheesy and is a very pretty walled town with very pretty coloured houses lining twee cobbled streets. It's the epitome of quaint. It sits on a hill, has little towers around the outer wall and is topped by a church at the top – the whole place is like one of those porcelain dioramas of a fairytale town you see advertised in the back of certain newspaper supplements. From there we went on to another Saxon city – Brasov.
Brasov is a great city but I fear it may have aspirations above its station. Firstly there's the giant Hollywood-style "BRASOV" sign in big white letters on the hillside above the city. Then there are the big umbrellas at every bar proclaiming (in a Carlsberg kind of way) that Brasov is "probably the best city in the world". That said, we did have a cracking time. First stop was the hilltop castle where we stumbled upon a sort of medieval Saxon festival. I know, I know – another bloody festival. Well, thi
s one nearly was bloody. Among the visual treats on offer was a fighting display that involved your normal, everyday tourist being dragged from the crowd, wrapped in chainmail, given a helmet and sword and then being set upon by a trained "knight". There was no holding back – they really went for it. One poor guy in shorts and sandals got smacked round the head so hard that he got a dent in his helmet. We actually saw one punter being walked away with a towel to his head. It was merciless – but very entertaining.
There was some archery you could have a go at and, just in case you were thinking of staging your own fight, there was a whole arsenal of weaponry to play with. No health and safety nonsense here, just grab a mace/sword/axe and have a go! It was great. There were als
o a couple of Saxon peasants wandering around with falcons on their arm – any authenticity was shattered the moment they sat down for a fag break – and as I tried to befriend one (falcon not peasant) it nearly took my eye out. There was a medieval market too, selling leather goods, hand-carved wooden stuff, honey products and even some medieval frocks. Everything your average Saxon needs.
Down in Brasov proper, we had one of my favourite days food-wise. Firstly, for lunch, I had a "Medieval skewer". The skewer was about two foot long and stuck vertically into a wooden skillet. On the skewer was chicken, pork chop, sausage, onion and pepper. On the skillet were chipped potatoes, some sort of cabbage salad and some pickled gherkins. It was tremendously over the top and tremendously filling. Later on, as if I needed to put anything else into my body, we went to "IceCreamLand" where the walls are lined with ice cream dispensers of every conceivable flavour
(apple anyone?!) and for just £1.20 they give you a polystyrene cup and let you run wild. Each ice cream was a fantastically unnatural colour and the amounts being squeezed into each cup was just plain silly. Then you get to the sauce, sweets and sprinkles section – people were literally building wine gum towers atop the dayglo mountains of unhealthiness dripping down their hands. Great fun – especially if you're a fan of brain-freeze and stomach ache.
Then it was on to Bran and "Dracula's Castle". This turned out to be the worst decision of the trip. We left our campsite (called, of course, Vampire Camping) in blistering sunshine and headed up to the castle. We were greeted by an enormous queue of tourists snaking back through the hundreds of stalls selling vampire tat that line the approach to the gates. We decided to "let the queue go down a bit" and found ourselves skipping from shady stall to shady stall trying to escape the heat but instead being drawn in by the mesmerising array of mugs, t-shirts, fridge magnets, ashtrays and anything else you could stick a picture of Dracula on. We finally bit the bullet and I joined the queue while Claire went a got a drink. I was stood behind an Italian woman who was then joined by her husband. Then she was joined by another woman. Then another. By the time Claire returned, half the population of Italy had somehow managed to push in front of me. This did not put me in the best mood for a castle visit. Then, when we finally got to climb the hill and enter the fortress itself, we entered a wh
ole new level of hell. There were thousands of tourists all pushing and shoving their way around the narrow corridors and staircases that had only been designed for a few little medieval people. Plus, it transpires that this castle has nothing to do with Vlad The Impaler anyway! It might have been the castle that Bram Stoker had in mind when he wrote his novel… hang on, run that by me again… MIGHT HAVE BEEN?! How tenuous is that? Instead, there's a load of guff and artefacts from the Saxe-Coburgs (Queen Victoria's relatives) and some 18th century antiques. It was the single most depressing experience of the trip so far – and that includes the day we broke down!
merchandise goes – it manages to be not too cheesy and is a very pretty walled town with very pretty coloured houses lining twee cobbled streets. It's the epitome of quaint. It sits on a hill, has little towers around the outer wall and is topped by a church at the top – the whole place is like one of those porcelain dioramas of a fairytale town you see advertised in the back of certain newspaper supplements. From there we went on to another Saxon city – Brasov.
Brasov is a great city but I fear it may have aspirations above its station. Firstly there's the giant Hollywood-style "BRASOV" sign in big white letters on the hillside above the city. Then there are the big umbrellas at every bar proclaiming (in a Carlsberg kind of way) that Brasov is "probably the best city in the world". That said, we did have a cracking time. First stop was the hilltop castle where we stumbled upon a sort of medieval Saxon festival. I know, I know – another bloody festival. Well, thi
s one nearly was bloody. Among the visual treats on offer was a fighting display that involved your normal, everyday tourist being dragged from the crowd, wrapped in chainmail, given a helmet and sword and then being set upon by a trained "knight". There was no holding back – they really went for it. One poor guy in shorts and sandals got smacked round the head so hard that he got a dent in his helmet. We actually saw one punter being walked away with a towel to his head. It was merciless – but very entertaining.
There was some archery you could have a go at and, just in case you were thinking of staging your own fight, there was a whole arsenal of weaponry to play with. No health and safety nonsense here, just grab a mace/sword/axe and have a go! It was great. There were als
o a couple of Saxon peasants wandering around with falcons on their arm – any authenticity was shattered the moment they sat down for a fag break – and as I tried to befriend one (falcon not peasant) it nearly took my eye out. There was a medieval market too, selling leather goods, hand-carved wooden stuff, honey products and even some medieval frocks. Everything your average Saxon needs.
Down in Brasov proper, we had one of my favourite days food-wise. Firstly, for lunch, I had a "Medieval skewer". The skewer was about two foot long and stuck vertically into a wooden skillet. On the skewer was chicken, pork chop, sausage, onion and pepper. On the skillet were chipped potatoes, some sort of cabbage salad and some pickled gherkins. It was tremendously over the top and tremendously filling. Later on, as if I needed to put anything else into my body, we went to "IceCreamLand" where the walls are lined with ice cream dispensers of every conceivable flavour
(apple anyone?!) and for just £1.20 they give you a polystyrene cup and let you run wild. Each ice cream was a fantastically unnatural colour and the amounts being squeezed into each cup was just plain silly. Then you get to the sauce, sweets and sprinkles section – people were literally building wine gum towers atop the dayglo mountains of unhealthiness dripping down their hands. Great fun – especially if you're a fan of brain-freeze and stomach ache.
Then it was on to Bran and "Dracula's Castle". This turned out to be the worst decision of the trip. We left our campsite (called, of course, Vampire Camping) in blistering sunshine and headed up to the castle. We were greeted by an enormous queue of tourists snaking back through the hundreds of stalls selling vampire tat that line the approach to the gates. We decided to "let the queue go down a bit" and found ourselves skipping from shady stall to shady stall trying to escape the heat but instead being drawn in by the mesmerising array of mugs, t-shirts, fridge magnets, ashtrays and anything else you could stick a picture of Dracula on. We finally bit the bullet and I joined the queue while Claire went a got a drink. I was stood behind an Italian woman who was then joined by her husband. Then she was joined by another woman. Then another. By the time Claire returned, half the population of Italy had somehow managed to push in front of me. This did not put me in the best mood for a castle visit. Then, when we finally got to climb the hill and enter the fortress itself, we entered a wh
ole new level of hell. There were thousands of tourists all pushing and shoving their way around the narrow corridors and staircases that had only been designed for a few little medieval people. Plus, it transpires that this castle has nothing to do with Vlad The Impaler anyway! It might have been the castle that Bram Stoker had in mind when he wrote his novel… hang on, run that by me again… MIGHT HAVE BEEN?! How tenuous is that? Instead, there's a load of guff and artefacts from the Saxe-Coburgs (Queen Victoria's relatives) and some 18th century antiques. It was the single most depressing experience of the trip so far – and that includes the day we broke down!
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