Finding The Real Transylvania

Transylvania. The name alone sends a chill down your spine. Images of fog-enshrouded castles perched on jagged outcroppings fill your mind as the sounds of thunder and the baying of blood thirsty wolves fills your ears. You shudder and wonder if it really does exist or if the legends that surround it have any truth to them at all. And then you see it, the name on the map, indisputable proof of its existence. Transylvania. Scrawled across the heart of Romania, daring you to enter its mountainous lair, a challenge that you can’t refuse. Yet, a tingling fear has gripped your stomach and your body feels weightless as you board the train. The metal wheels begin to click along the tracks gathering speed until the sunshine, trees, and flowers that fill this peaceful summer day scream by you in a violent splash of green and white flecked with drops of deep blood red.

The train slowed to an amble as it made its way across the Carpathian Mountains. I sat on my bag by the open door at the back of the car, enjoying the breeze and the breathtaking view of the mountains dropping away below us. The sun was disappearing behind the peaks when we got off at Sinaia and climbed the steep steps from the platform to the town above us. Sinaia is a resort built by King Carol 1 in the 1800’s, and the grandeur of its origin is still evident in the magnificent old houses that line its streets. But the town, like the rest of Romania, has fallen on harder times and the houses no longer belong to courtly families seeking the king’s favor, but to people who live in the basements and rent out the rooms to tourists coming through to hike, ski or relax in the clean mountain air. We had barely gotten off the train, when we were intercepted by an old man who led us off to one of these grand old houses where we rented a room for next to nothing.

The town seemed engulfed in a heavy stillness, as if it were laboring under the weight of its history and the force of the legends surrounding Transylvania. Shortly after darkness descended on Sinaia, a violent thunderstorm cracked the sky open and sheets of rain tore through the streets. I slept poorly, my imagination fueled by the electricity humming in the air from the ceaseless lightning, until I was convinced that the whipping of the tree branches against my window and the creaking of the boards in the old house were none other than the approach of Vlad (The Impaler) Tepes, the inspiration for the legend of Dracula.

Incredibly, I was still alive the next morning and was amazed to see that it was a beautiful day. The sun was shining brightly in a cloudless sky, a perfect day for a hike. We took a short bus ride to neighboring Busteni, and rode the cable car up 1200 meters to several trail heads. Armed with a poor map, we followed the infrequent trail markers up and down the rocky slopes, through steep meadows of tall grass, over rushing streams of water from the melting snow high above us and past a dilapidated shepherd’s hut hidden in the damp forest. About every third tree that we saw had been struck by lightning and as the shadows of the day grew longer, we noticed the storm clouds gathering ominously above us again. We had lost and found so many different trails by this point that we were no longer entirely certain of where we were, but we knew that we were too far away from the trail head above Busteni to make it back before the storm hit. If worse came to worse, we could always spend a cold night in the scant shelter of the shepherd’s hut that was still only a short distance away. Luckily we spied a plume of smoke and the angles of a few roofs far below us and decided to forgo the shepherd’s hut and the trails and carefully made a beeline down the precarious slope toward the houses. The rain had just begun when we reached the town and realized that we were back in Sinaia. We made it safely home and listened to the angry storm howl through the night.

We set off on a more ambitious hike the next day to visit Vlad The Impaler’s castle in Bran, roughly a two day trek across the mountains. Our journey led us up steep, muddy inclines littered with bear droppings and gigantic paw prints. Fear forced us on when our muscles screamed and our faces burned with exertion. We climbed above the forest and edged our way along snowy rocks, stopping to read the crosses that bore the names and dates of people who had died on this trail, most of them in winter when the storms and ice would be treacherous. Lush green alpine meadows dotted with tiny purple and yellow flowers opened in front of us, cradling ponds of freezing water. A flock of sheep grazed in the sun along the far side, the ringing of their bells echoed in the thin air. We spent the stormy night in one of the cabanas on the trail, thankful for a dry place to hide from the drenching rain and forks of lightning. We started at dawn the next day, constantly losing the trail in despair and moving forward anxiously until we’d find it again. We walked up and down countless peaks, every descent promised a new ascent, every peak, every valley different from the last. After sharp rocks, thin forests, sloping grasses, snowy precipices, and oozing mud, we crested a peak and found ourselves surrounded by clouds so thick that we could barely see and our trail dissolved into a maze of boulders mired in slick mud. We walked around a large boulder several times, lost and confused, afraid to wander too far, since the ground dropped off steeply on either side of us. A noise froze us in our tracks. “It’s a bear!” Aaron gasped in terror.

A clang soon followed and I replied, “Not unless bears have learned how to use pots and pans.” A voice beckoned us, and we edged forward to meet an old man leaning on a large staff as he clambered up to help us. He took my arm and helped me down through the slippery mud and past his shack to the trail below. We had already been hiking for two days when we met him, up on that weather beaten peak, a hermit with a few animals and his rough home, perched on top of an indescribably beautiful world, blissfully alone.

When we finally reached Vlad’s castle in Bran, we were dirty, tired and exhilarated. The sinister legends surrounding the castle seemed laughable in the brilliant sunshine and my imagination could no longer send a shiver down my spine. I had fought real fear on the journey there and had found real joy and beauty that no castle could ever rival.