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The entrance into Transylvania develops the secret desire for a "close meeting" with Dracula. Who is not ready for entertainment, to accept the adventure and accept everything open-hearted and minded, he should select another travel destination. This one is just for those with enough blood in their veins.
Transylvania is the country of Vlad Tepes, called Dracula, and it is really not difficult to be caught in the legend network, while you are actually crusading on good roads through the valleys, dark, ancient forests and mountain passes, or skiing on the excellent paths of Sinaia, Predeal and Poiana Brasova. Dracula is almost six hundred years old and he is more and more alive in the offer of Romania, leading a tourist campaign under the title "Welcome Forever". A direct contact with the myth in it begins in the Bran Castle, about thirty kilometers from Brasov.

The most romantic and inspirational province in Romania is Transylvania, the genesis cradle of Romanian nation. Its name comes from the Latin word "transilvana", which virtually means the land behind the forest. A wrong name, since Transylvania is in the middle of endless forests, full of mountain peaks rising above the valleys, brooks, wooden churches with high roofs, ski centers, spas, legendary castles, constructed in the Roman, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles, a tumultuous history and mystics. At the entrance into this province, divided in ten counties and has got about 4.5 million inhabitants, there is a warning board with the text "You are entering the Land Transylvania. It is a quiet country of quiet people". You may understand it any way you like.

Ruined walls with nine towers, all around the hills, secret passes, the sixty meters high Clock Tower from the 14th century, the monastery church of Dominican monks, the Venetian House from the 13th century and 175 wooden shaded stairs from the 17th century, leading straight to - a graveyard, make this town irresistible.

In whichever hotel you may stay, in the town center or outside it, by coincidence or deliberately, with the first moon rise many dogs starts hauling as a chorus. If you have not taken a garlic from your home, just in case, you will regret it.
Anything related to Dracula supports tourism. The inhabitants sell pictures from Dracula's life, the wine called "Vampire" and T-shirts with a heart in the middle and the text "I love Dracula". The not very large Dracula's birth house, freshly painted in yellow, has been turned into a restaurant, intended, first of all, for tourists. Everything is in this respect, including the served meal Dracula's Medallions. The only one missing is the Count Dracula himself, walking in covered by the black mantle and the pink kerchief around his neck, to lick his lips passionately and say by his sonar voice the anthology sentence: "Relax and enjoy, I have already had my dinner!"

"When I say Transylvania, I mean Dracula", this could easily be the motto of all tourists who can hardly wait for taking one of the Dracula tours offered throughout Romania. They include anything related to Vlad Tepes, from Sighisoara, where he was born, through the Bran Castle, the fortresses Poenari, Targovishte, Bistritsa, from which he ruled. Among them all, Sighisoara, one of the best preserved Medieval towns in the world, constructed by the Saxons on the river Tarnawa, being under protection of the UNESCO, Dracula's place of birth leaves the strongest impression.

The castle is surrounded by mystery and legend left to the reader generations by the Irish writer Bram Stoker. The Bran Castle is a synonym for the region where Dracula lived and hunted, regardless of the pretty certain fact that he had never spent a single night there. But it sounds nice and the scenography is great.

The Bran Castle was constructed in 1377 by the Hungarian King Ludovic I de Anjou. Dracula's grandfather, the old Mircea designed a strategic, military and customs fortress in this castle, constructed on a sixty meters high rock. It is full of secret passes and numerous labyrinths which announce more than they discover. What could have happened there, other than just the 3% tax to all salesmen who traveled between the West and the Orient, may be completed by anyone's imagination. And the imagination jumps up, indeed, when one looks at the shadows shivering on the stone walls and it starts anticipating a fire in the fire place, but also in the engraved King's bed staying there, as a mute witness of the hot blood. At the end, comfort may be offered by the well in the middle of the indoor yard, into which anyone whose soul is looking for something, throws a coin.

As much Dracula may be the synonym for bloodshed and blood thirstiness in the minds of people all over the world, so much is Vlad Tepes a positive character of the Romanian history . He was born in 1431, in Sighisoara. His father, the Ruler of Wallachia, was a member of the "Order of the Dragon", a semi-military, semi-religious formation, which protected Christianity against the Turkish domination. The Romanian noblemen called Vlad's father Dracul meaning dragon, so that Dracula actually means "Dragon's or Dracul's son". In the 19th century, looking for an inspiration, the Irish writer Bram Stoker found in a London library myths on Dracula, completes them and creates this controversial character.