When we decided to visit Romania and to seek Dracula's castle, we disagreed
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initially on whether this meant the fictional Count Dracula or Vlad the
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Third of Wallachia otherwise known as Vlad the Impaler. We decided to start
with Stoker's Count. At the start of Bram Stoker's Dracula, the young solicitor
Jonathan Harker has a strange journey to Castle Dracula, ending up taken by
carriage to a 'vast ruin castle from whose tall black windows came no ray of
light'. This was our first goal! Harker faced wolves, mysterious figures
and warnings on his way to the castle... but our first challenge was the Bucharest traffic!
Bucharest, according to a 2014 study by TomTom, is the city with most traffic in all of Europe.
But anyway, now we're going to try and get out of Bucharest and head up towards the Carpathian Mountains...
and Dracula's Castle!
Transylvania, and Bran Castle, was mostly part of Hungary.
They would have actually had to come down through the Carpathians to get to the castle whereas we are going straight up to the bottom of the Carpathians to get there.
[MUSIC -'DRIFTING']
I can see a castle!
I'm pretty sure that's it! We've done it wife - we've found Dracula's Castle!
Heading north from Bucharest, our first destination was Bran.
Past souvenir shops and a small open-air Museum of old Romanian village houses
we approached our goal - Bran Castle!
We'e currently here just outside of Bran Castle - Castle Dracula.
When Bram Stoker wrote his book in 1897 he hadnever actually been to Romania or Transylvania
So he got his information from books - mainly from the British Library and other libraries
round London and one of the books had an etching of Bran Castle in it.
It is the only Castle that matches the description that Bram Stoker gives,
so this is now known the whole world over as Castle Dracula!
I think it's fair to say that I have achieved what we set out to do in less than two days and we have
found Dracula's Castle!
"Welcome to my house in to freely and of your own will,"
says Count Dracula on Harker's arrival. "Come in the night is chill and you must need to eat and rest."
As we were following Harker to the castle we decided we should eat as well!
Drinks?
I do not drink wine... That's what he says in the book...
Oh dear. We're at the Castle Bran restaurant,
the castle is just outside the window, and when we go in touch to get
permission to fly the drone here we were recommend to have dinner, so why not indeed!
You can get normal coffee, gonna give you three of the puddings but they're mini versions.
Is a mini version of the pudding it'll be enough? I don't know.
When there's three of them!
So Bram Stoker's Castle Dracula on a bright, sunny morning it's a beautiful,
beautiful castle but you can see already in a bit of a storm you can see why this
was a setting for Dracula and it does have all the things that he describes in
the book. It has the precipices where he's looking out the windows and you just see
a drop down. The fact that Jonathan Harker was just trapped in there in the book
and you can almost imagine that figure of Dracula coming out of one of the
upper windows and crawling down the wall.
Just looking at the castle I felt like a
ten year old boy again, reading of Harker's terrifying adventures in Castle Dracula.
On entering the castle, however, I remembered that there was another, less
fictional Dracula that we were here to find.
Vlad Dracula was a 15th century prince also known by his unofficial title
Vlad the Impaler.
He divides opinion. To many he is seen as evil, yet to many
within Romania he is a folk hero. On our search for this
Dracula's castle we will be seeking a legend as much as a historical figure.
Vlad was probably born in 1431 in Sighisoara, Transylvania. The second son of
Vlad the second. Vlad the second was made a member of the 'Order of the Dragon',
a chivalric order. This is why he used the title Dracul and his son the title Dracula.
Vlad and his younger brother were sent
as hostages for years to the Ottoman Sultan, as a guarantee that Wallachia
would follow Ottoman rule.
In 1447 Dracula's father was assassinated by
rebellious boyars, likely under orders from the regent of Hungary.
Vlad's older brother Mircea was blinded and buried alive and the Hungarians put
Vlad's cousin on the throne.
As a result, the Ottoman army helped install Dracula as
a puppet ruler of Wallachia instead, in October 1448. This lasted less than
a month before the Hungarian army helped chase Vlad back out of Wallachia.
Eventually Dracula managed to win Hungarian support as his cousin lost
favor and in 1456 it was his turn to arrive in Wallachia, with a Hungarian army
and he was out for revenge! On Easter Sunday 1459 Dracula arrested
those Nobles who had been involved in his father and brothers deaths.
The younger of them was sent an Poenari to rebuild Dracula's fortress. Those unable
to help were impaled on spikes. His wars against the Turks would involve much
more impaling of his enemies and his rule over Wallachia was seen as fair
and orderly but often brutal.
In November 1462 Vlad crossed to Transylvania for a
meeting with his Hungarian ally Matei Corvin. However on arrival he was
arrested on what were probably false charges of collusion with the Turks and
imprisoned in a dungeon where some say he was driven mad.
In 1476 Vlad was
released to lead armies against the Turks once again and in November he begins his
third reign as ruler of Wallachia.
Sadly this did not last long. In January 1477
Vlad was murdered and his head displayed upon a stake in Constantinople.
As Bran Castle lies inside the old region of Transylvania not Wallachia it
would not have fallen under Vlad the Impaler's rule and there are no records
to suggest he ever captured it, however he would likely have passed by the
castle from his capital in Targoviste on his journeys to punish the merchants
of nearby Brasov. We explored the castle looking for any links with either of our Dracula's.
The courtyard looked of considerable size and several dark ways
led from it under great round arches.
In no place save from the windows in the
castle walls is there an available exit. The castle is a veritable prison and I
am a prisoner. Last night the Count asked me in the
suavest tones to write three letters. The first should be June the 12th the second
June 19th and the third June 29th. I now know the span of my life, God help me!
The plain wooden desk, writing at the table. Writes the letters that Dracula makes him write.
To convince his wife or his fiancee that he's still alive.
The fingers point both ways- I don't know what to do!
There's a sign above you telling you to go that way.
Yes but there's one there telling me to go that way! Oh no!
He says in the book, Jonathan Harker gets
lost because the whole cast is maze-like. While it's felt a little bit like that it's not been... But when you get to this point here...
Suddenly all gets very confused.
We are in Transylvania and Transylvania is not England.
Our ways are not your ways and they shall be to you many strange things.
After you, my dear. . .
While Greg found much that reminded him of Count Dracula, my search for Vlad the third
was coming up a little ... short!
My favorite writer Karen chance
she takes real historic people and historic events
she puts a bit of mythology into them she spins it into a great story and then
gives the characters character and new purpose. One things that really
excited me about coming to Romania is that her main characters - you've got Mircea,
you have Vlad and Radu, known as 'The Handsome'. The father gave them away to
ensure his loyalty. He then sent the older brother leading the troops knowing that
they were going to fail. So you had the two younger children who were going to be
tortured because they were held prisoner and he wasn't loyal and then he had his
son whose own people turned against him, they blinded him, they buried him alive and
it just, in a silly kind of way, it makes me feel closer to her characters by
coming to where the original ones, the real people actually were.
One of the legends of Vlad said that on the well in Targoviste he kept a golden chalice.
Anyone could use it to drink and it was not guarded, such was Vlad's control that it
stayed where it was.
In his way, yes, he did brutal things but that's the time it was.
His own people - a lot of them didn't think of him as a monster. He was someone
that was good to the poor. Like they said here, a kind of Robin Hood character.
He was hard on the people who broke his rules but on everyone else he looked after them.
The story about the well with the golden chalice, it was a beautiful example of
exactly that. He will give you wealth, he will look after you but if you break his rules
you'll be impaled on a stick or tortured. But if you stick to the rules he was very fair.
In an exhibition in some of the rooms however, we were reminded again
of Vlads darker reputation. As we came face to face with some of the harsh
punishments handed out in his era and beyond.
That's less torture and more restraint.
and begins to think 'can I do an escape from that?'.
I guess I should just be grateful he
wasn't looking at any of the ones with spikes!
Very quickly any lightheartedness left us as we looked around the torture exhibition.
Weapons used by policemen and jailers to control and repress unarmed and often naked prisoners.
This is what people used to do to each other, a lot.
Just can't imagine - I know people still torture each other now but this was
judges and justice.
It's hard, don't want to imagine it really.
Lets face it, this was the torture we expected to see here.
If they got it right
you could be impaled so the spike comes out of your mouth and you're still alive,
for a while.
It does just make you wonder why Bram Stoker felt the need to
invent a monster.
The story of Dracula and the vampires and everything else is fictional
and yet still I don't think there's anything in Bram Stoker's
Dracula that is as grotesque as just one of these torture instruments.
I think it's time to leave the torture rooms and get back on with exploring the castle.
It's stunning.
This castle is stunning and it's Dracula's Castle in terms of Bram Stoker's book.
But to get to actually Vlad the Impaler
There are going to be castles that have more significance than this beautiful one.
It burns! It burns!
If we are going to find places Dracula actually was, and we're gonna find actual
Dracula's castle we need to start off with his birthplace in Sighisoara.
Here we are in sunny Sighisoara, as they say. It's raining today, we've managed to park.
There's no parking in the Citadel, the walled city itself so we've managed to
park up at the bottom, just about.
We've got the promised cobbled streets. Lets go look for his house!
Vlad Dracul was hosted here between 1431 and 1435 by the Mayor of City Sighisoara and
he had children here but for our purposes the most important is that in 1431 his wife
gave birth to Vlad who would later become Vlad the son of Dracul,
Vlad Dracula and he's what we are here for.
So we are stood outside the house where Vlad Dracula was actually born. However, they are apparently closed today.
We discovered that while the restaurant which now takes up Vlad's
birthplace was closed, we could get into a shop on the ground floor of the building.
I'm doing my bit of souvenir shopping.
So what we've discovered really so far in Sighisoara, as well as the
birthplace of Dracula (that we couldn't get into and is a restaurant) is everyone
here seems to be incredibly proud of the Romanian heritage and traditions. Now
obviously they were salesmen and sales women as well but they want to explain
the meanings of the spoons, they have a ceramic which apparently is the oldest
ceramic in the world.
With these, the birds - any that have the birds on- they mean woman. And then the beast means man.
Lets get one of each then.
They want to share it with you which is really nice.
Coming to Romania, I knew that I wanted to get one of the carved wooden spoons. I'm going to be a nerd again
but it's thanks to Karen Chance, in one part of one of her books, it explains
that Mircea's house is full of very expensive things and yet when the house is
being attacked and destroyed, the people who know him best go for his collection
of old wooden spoons from his childhood, they were the only thing in there that
had sentiment for him and so I knew when we were coming here, there's a few
souvenirs that I'm keeping my eye out for like the eggs we've just bought but the
wooden spoon is the one thing that I was really 'I have to get one when I'm here'.
Having found Vlad's birthplace and loaded up on wooden spoons, we climbed to the top of Sighisoara.
Modern city. All the traffic and noise down there. Then up here you have the cobbled streets and the old buildings.
I know that's how it happens but it feels weird to see it like this, that's all.
Okay so we were supposed to be spending the night in Sighisoara, which was the birthplace but because that hotel was covered in mud, we've had to make the best of it and we've come right out to Corvin Castle.
Now Corvin Castle is one of the places Dracula was supposed to have been imprisoned.
It's an incredible castle, isn't it!? Very Hogwarts. Isn't it though!
We are here today, just outside of Corvin Castle in Hunedoara.
I think is how it is pronounced. And somewhere in the dungeons down there Vlad Dracula was imprisoned.
It's before opening time,
security have cleared us to film with the drone. We've got permission go on to the bridge.
Greg is a bit nervous. It's a big drop and water under there.
So he's a tad nervous right now.
Dracula may have struggled to appreciate the beauty of the castle, as at 31 years
old he was brought here as a prisoner of Matei Corvin, accused of writing
letters colluding with the Turks.
Going into the dungeons which apparently sent Vlad Tepes mad.
I don't think this is it. It said 'below the castle'.
So this is a dungeon but not 'the dungeon'.
I set off to try and find the right dungeon while Felicity continued to struggle
with a major part of Vlads reputation.
'Vlad Tepes' means 'Vlad The Impaler'.
The Turks have another name for him which I probably can't pronounce right but it
all means The Impaler but it was the Turks that did it first. He has the
nickname for it, he's famous for it, he didn't create it. The Turks were doing it first.
They took him as kind of prisoner, he was
the hostage to keep the father loyal to them and they raised him.
You know they taught him the Koran, they tried to make him one of them and that
includes the way that they tortured. So he has this huge thing associated with
him that was not originally him at all. I don't get why.
We thought we might see
the room where Vlad was held prisoner, they've actually discovered using radar
scans the underground substructure of the castle and they found rooms under
there which would have been the prisoners at the time that Vlad is
believed to have been held prisoner here so while we won't be walking in those prisons
they would be beneath our feet. Tucked away in the dark where he could hear, I
mean we've seen some of the torture instruments and things, the theory is
that while he was down there he would have heard people being tortured and even
thrown to animals and that sent him insane - that's the theory that
believes that he went insane here.
As we felt Dracula once again slip through
our fingers, we took the time to explore the rest of this amazing castle.
That's where Dumbledore sits.
Next to McGonagall.
Next question, up or down?
Greg's favorite place - the kitchen!
It's empty though.
They knew you were coming, they probably locked it all down!
Nah, there will be food somewhere!
So what does it say about this well?
They had three prisoners dig it and they
promised them their freedom or the owner promised them their freedom and before
they completed the well he died and his wife refused to honor it and so there are
various versions of what the inscriptions said but the suggestion
is that they placed a curse on the castle. What they wanted to write was
'You may have water but you have no soul'.
So we've jokingly compared this to Hogwarts a few times, it has that style it has
that power and then, I don't know, snow just adds to the magic. It's amazing.
Thank you. I messed it up! (laughter)
Before leaving Corvin, we stopped off at a souvenir shop for an impromptu history lesson.
The coin, made by Vlad Dracul, the father of Vlad Tepes, and it's copying exactly
this image which is the head of a Dacian wolf, the body of a dragon and the
cross, the sign of Christianity.
So we've just been talking to the lady in
one of these souvenir shops and she was telling us that it's actually only the
second time it's snowed here this winter. She says she feels a bit sorry that it's
not all settling on the ground because it makes it look even more fairy tale but I
think we're happy- it's pretty fairy tale! But yeah we are incredibly lucky, it's only the second time it snowed here this winter.
I've been to some lovely castles, but I'm sorry, but I think this one is my favourite. It's so beautiful. It is amazing.
I think one of the problems we're gonna have with Dracula generally is he
is a legend. There is the legend of Vlad Dracula and it's a bit like if you try
to go and try to find Robin Hood, yes you can go to Sherwood Forest, yes you can
go to the supposed tree where he was supposed to be and it's all a bit sketchy
and I think that's part of the trouble we're having with trying to find
Dracula's Castle. Going to Corvin today and we know that Dracula was imprisoned
and it's believed that Dracula was imprisoned there and the actual spot he was
imprisoned is believed to be underground. He is a legend and so some of the
information is a bit more sketchy. So what we need to do is we now need to
go and find some sort of castle some sort of fortress where we absolutely
know he was ruling from. We've been to where he was born, that's somewhere we
can definitely one hundred percent pinpoint and say Vlad was here when he was born
but we didn't go to a castle in Sighisoara so let's head out, let's see if we
can find one of the castles that he ruled from.
We've come across here to
Poenari Fortress and we came through the mountain pass. Now the one problem
we've got here is the potential for bears- It's even on the map! The fortress
has been closed a lot over the last couple of years because of bear attacks on tourists.
Not that I'm afraid of grizzly bears or anything but, you know, a healthy respect for them!
A healthy 'not wanting to get too close to one, out in the open'.
I would just walk forward and see where we find out...
We are at the base of the Poenari (fortress) steps. There's definitely no one about here the
people in the restaurant over there tell us that the guy to pay is at the top.
It doesn't look like there's anyone here, there's only a car with ice on it- it's just...
That's their souvenir shop and everything (closed).
There are days like this where fourteen hundred and eighty steps would be our
biggest worry of the day. Not here!
That one looks a bit rotten, what do you think?
This is Felicity trying to decide on the best stick.
So we can still see off in the distance electrified fences which apparently have come in
sometime over the winter to try to stop bear attacks.
We're about third of the way up.
We've currently seen neither bears nor anybody we have to pay.
Or anybody at all!
I thought you'd seen a bear or something!
If I'd seen a bear I'm not saying 'hang on a minute'.
You might!
I'm gonna say bear!
They let themselves into people's fields. They let themselves into people's gardens and their rubbish bins. They walk along the main road.
If they can get in and do that stuff and we've seen that they can open cars
what chance has an electric fence of stopping a really determined bear?
We've got to be two thirds of the way now.
This is me, picture of elegance... about to fall on my face!
To quote Mr. Alexander, "It didn't look that high in the catalogue!"
I have not got any garlic cloves.
Have you got any onion? I have not got any onion.
Have you got anything that's supposed to work against a strega or a strigoi or a vampire or bear?
If I have to I will fashion a hasty stake.
Are we talking about the food kind to appease them or the jabby kind to deter them?
Are you just stalling because you don't want to climb up those steps?
Shucks!
Seriously I'm not sure what all this worry about bears is about,
they're absolutely fine. I know bears they have little rainbows on their chest and they
do some sort of rainbow dance or something, and they're all different bright colours.
What about Paddington?
He's not a Care Bear!
To be honest, Care Bears look like they're on drugs so that might be the scary kind of bear.
Isn't Paddington meant to be a friendly bear?
I don't know, a bear on drugs seems like it'd be alright.
Depends what kind of drugs - the ones that make you paranoid or the ones that make you chill.
True. What about the picnic baskets?
What about them?
That's Yogi!
I don't know many bears.
Uh oh!
What?
No, not that 'uh oh', the on video 'uh oh'!
The 'Uh oh' where Vlad has sent out a welcome party for us.
What are you talking about? Are there people?
I think there were, before Vlad got his hands on them.
I said not that 'uh oh'!
If they're on stakes, they're going to be no bother to us, are they?
yeah but it's not the people on stakes you worry about wife, it's the people
that put them there!
Well we finally made it up to the fortress. We've finally
found a man to pay right at the very very top.
Very nice, very friendly guy. We are the only people out here apart from him
(and his gorgeous dog)
and of course the two people currently on the spikes.
Look! Ready? Yep, go on.
That satisfying crunch!
It's hard to imagine what it once was, it feels quite small because there's only a little bit
of it left but this is the one where Vlad reclaimed it because it was his
family that built it originally, it was the Wallachian rulers that created it
and it was left to go into ruin. He took it over and he kind of rebuilt it
and then when his younger brother was coming to try and take him hostage he
escaped but his wife, not wanting to be captured and enslaved by the Turks,
she threw herself into the Arges river.
Vlad Dracula, leader or Wallachia, is forgotten because we found a dog.
Maybe we should call him Tepes.
I don't think 'The Impaler' is a nice name for a dog!
So as we are in what could probably be most
realistically described, of the ones we've seen so far, as 'Vlad's Castle' as
'Dracula's Castle' here at Poenari and this is a defensive fortress, it's an
incredible place and one of the big problems with trying to do a video about
Vlad Dracula is that he his story entwines history and myth so much
that trying to pick the pieces apart and trying to figure out which bits are
real, which bits aren't, really becomes such a difficult job and we're trying
our best. You know, we're a travel documentary we're not a historical
documentary but we want to get the facts right and what we're finding is the
facts are blurry. What we are presenting is a story, a legend.
So I always feel sorry for Vlad.
He had a horrible life, he did his best to rule and then you get
bits like after his wife died he married again but he also had mistresses. One of
them claimed to be pregnant and so he literally tore her apart to disprove it
and I look at that and think urghh.
It gets hard to feel sorry for him when that's what he did, for that reason.
But again you live in the world of who wrote the history and did
that ever happen?
They all said that it was written by his enemies and that they made him out to be a monster whereas his actual own people, they had him as a bit of a hero.
So one of the legends of Poenari castle and one of the
stories of Vlad is that he had to escape from here and he was being chased and so
he had his blacksmith's re-shoe the horses with their shoes on backwards in order
to leave a footprints going backwards. So in honor of that
little story, now I've got to get this right because it's no good just putting the
shoes backwards, you've actually got to swap feet as well if you're going to do
this. Okay, here we go. Let's see if we can get this working.
I'm sure that's just what the horses look like! The best bit about this is whoever comes up here
next is gonna wonder how somebody climbed up the outside of the castle here!
I would say that's it - that's pretty good actually! Have we got the footprints clearly in camera?
That ladies and gentlemen is not just travel documentary, that is historical recreation
experimentation at work. Now you've got to step in exactly the same prints.
Mythbusters eat your hearts out! My poor sweet dog is wondering 'what are you doing!?'
Now, if anyone asks you what happened here, you don't tell them as it would spoil it.
Okay, you just say somebody climbed over the wall.
Come on my sweet. There's a good baby.
Faced with a reminder of what impaling actually looks like and some of the other things that are
attributed to him and yes other people were doing impaling but he still did it
and suddenly, suddenly you can see why it's so easy to paint him as a villain
and it's very very hard to see past that.
So Gregory didn't like the idea of
calling him Tepes- Impaler, so I'm gonna call him Arges, after the Arges River.
We had to say goodbye to Arges at the castle but luckily Felicity had a new
anti-bear strategy for our descent.
Bears I am here therefore you be over there!
No bears.
I don't know who they're kidding
with the electric-fence, have these people not seen Jurassic Park!?
The expression 'bear with a sore head', now they're supposed to be hibernating right
now. We're told to go along making noise so that bears can get out of the area.
What if we actually just wake them up from their hibernation
they become a bear with a sore head and they come to smite me down for
making noise. How do you know which thing to do? If I tiptoed past them they'd
probably crack an eye and go 'nahh' and go back to sleep
if I'm there stomping along and shouting and singing I don't know about you but
I'd kind of smite me down!
Here we are nearly back down to the entrance of the
climb up to Poenari Fortress. We have, it appears, managed to avoid being eaten by bears.
Hey- we've got a few steps left yet!
But having avoided being eaten by bears, Felicity has decided we are going to try
looking for bears...
In the early 1990's in Greece and Turkey they actually first set up bear
sanctuaries. It was mostly for dancing bears, it was a place that the Bears
could go where they would actually be looked after instead of ill-treated for tourism.
Then you've got countries like this, when they actually joined the EU
they had rules about zoos, you had to reach a certain standard for the animal
welfare in a zoo and a lot of the zoos here weren't up to that level but police
didn't want to do anything about it because if you take the bear off them
what do you then do with the bear, put it down!? So the bear sanctuary like this
actually gave the Bears a safe place to go to where they would be looked after
and it's not like a zoo, it is a sanctuary. You can't take a big camcorder
in there so we've got a few pictures of the Bears. The place was set up in 1998
by Christina Lapis and she actually, this is where she saw the restaurants and
petrol stations that had bears in cages. We saw an example of one of the cages as
we were going round. She wanted to be able to rescue them, there was nowhere to take
a bear, like a sanctuary, so she set one up. As you go around they make sure you
don't get too close to them, they avoid taking you near any bear for example
there's one on the other side of the park they won't let you walk by that one
because if it sees people it gets up and it starts pirouetting because that's
what it was forced to do in order to get food. They've got one that we have to
keep bit of distance from and the poor thing, it is new here, it's 15 years old and
it is pacing backwards and forwards and just keeps bashing it's head against the side of the
cage. That cage they haven't got the electric wires on for obvious reasons.
They've got so much land here and that one, it just wants to pace back and forth
in that one spot and just hitting its head and they say these are they are
still in a form of captivity but they've got as much space as they can possibly
give them and the one that's walking backwards and forwards and bashing its
head, it came from a zoo where it was being kept in a very small cage, far too
small, that Zoo is still allowed to have another two bears. They built a bigger
enclosure and they've still got two bears after they've severely damaged
that one. This place is for the animals that zoos have destroyed and that people
have taken in to try and attract tourists, that is what they rescue here.
They also have a separate dog sanctuary where they're trying to help
the problem of the just overwhelming numbers of wild dogs we've seen around
and one of the things they do there is free neutering because people because
you have to pay and a lot of people can't afford it a lot of dogs over here
aren't neutered but they do neuter them all. They're not breeding them which is a big
thing for me, we go to a number of places that call themselves a Sanctuary and then
you find they breed them as well and for me that's, it's not a
sanctuary purely anymore. This one they've said they've had to open the
doors to visitors because that whatever it is that I think maybe 50 lei or
whatever it is you pay per person, that is keeping them going. They need
the money to keep the whole thing running but because of that they do, in
the wintertime, it's two guided tours a day. This is not a tourist attraction.
This is not a zoo aimed at trying to bring people in, this is just what it
should be, it is a sanctuary. If they had the money I feel that they wouldn't let
people in anyway because they're trying to keep us away from the Bears as much
as they can for the Bears own sake because of the trauma they've had from
people. If they had the money to care for the Bears without tourists they would do that
so it is for them, for the bears. And if you are watching this video on YouTube we will
have in the description we will put the link to their site. You can actually go
to their site and see the live webcam of the bears but you can also donate some
money and of place we go, I I strongly recommend you donate some money to these
guys to help them keep this going because this is a good sanctuary.
Leaving the Bears in peace, it was time for us to continue our search for Vlad Dracula in Targoviste.
So in a world of Dracula's castles this is the old Princely Court. This was where
some of the time he ruled from. Him and his father both had complicated reigns
where they got power and then they lost it and then they got it back and lost it
and got it back. Vlad Dracul only had two ruling periods
and lost power for a bit in the middle but Tepes, that's our Dracula, had the
power then he lost it, got it back for a while, lost it, he got it back and then died.
Hello person, welcome to my castle. Thank you so much, the lovely tower you have. Yes, the tower was
built by Vlad Dracula during his reign. That's fantastic, someone should
make a video about that!
So this building here is the church but it's a slightly
more modern Church. Built in the late 1500's when Vlad died in the 1470's
These ruins are too modern. Again this is the palace built 1583 so again about 100
years later that when Vlad had his court here.
Greg continued to search for the
remains of the palace from Dracula's time.
They are saying this is part of the original.
So I think this is still the 15th century, I think to find the last bit of the 14th
sorry, the 16th century this is. To find the last bit of the 15th century where Vlad Dracula
would have ruled, aside from the Tower, I think we need to go outside and up onto there.
it strikes me that of the places we can really tie Dracula to because we've had
Bran Castle fictional Dracula, we couldn't really placed Vlad there.
Corvin Castle we think he was imprisoned underneath but Poenari Fortress and here
at Targoviste we definitely have castles, fortresses, palaces that were lived in by
Vlad the Impaler and it just strikes me as odd, you build a fortress to last
you build to be strong and be defensive and yet so far the structure that has
most or that was most intact that we can definitely place Vlad Dracula in was a
place he was born and lived in four years at his birth, that house is completely intact. This
tower was the bit that was built during his reign so this is what we have to go
up inside.
Up we go!
Once again you've got the beautiful old ruins now mostly and then just
I don't know why I feel there should be space between them and modern life.
Having said that, I wonder how bustling
it was when he was here. The houses and everything would look different but
presumably they'd still settle around him, for protection and everything. But
because it's changed again, they've built on it since, I wonder what it was like,
the view when he was here. This tower was built during the reign of Vlad but his palace is no
longer there outside. It's just the remains, someone else's Palace has been built up
since. This doesn't have the heart of Dracula. I think to claim we've found
Dracula's castle in this one, I think that would be pushing it. It was once here, we're in a
location where it was once one of Dracula's castles but now there is a
tower and there is a palace from a century afterwards. I think when it
comes to finding Dracula's castle or Vlad himself you really you really can't
do better than Poenari Fortress. Bran Castle good for Dracula vampire. Then
you've got Corvin Castle which was the fairy tales princes and princesses or if
you're more like me and Greg, wizards and witches, that was a Hogwarts style one. Then when
you do Poenari, that one is Vlad Tepes. So apparently I was doing his name wrong, Tepes- Tepes.
That one did feel, still a ruin, it didn't feel like anyone
had messed with it. He lived there, he was chased away from it, it was left to ruin
there were earthquakes that destroyed it and now it is just left so people can go and
see what it once was. But it feels like his place. Then you come to this and
it's surrounded by a big city, you've had other people that built on it, you've got
modern stuff with it and it's just a tower. It doesn't have any heart or soul
in it. It doesn't capture his essence at all for me. Poenari really did.
So here's the thing, I think we found Vlad's castle in Poenari. I think searching for another
Castle this point in time, it's not the best use of our time. I suggest we go
back to the map and see if there's somewhere else important to Vlad's
life that we can visit before we head back to the UK.
Plan of action, sir?
Okay, well I think if we got one more place to head to for
Dracula's life, it's got to be to try and figure out and where he ended up.
Which is gonna take us to Snagov. Let's head out, see if we can find Snagov Monastery.
See if we can figure out where the last resting place of Vlad is.
So we've just come out of the Snagov Monastery. We weren't allowed to take the
video cameras inside but we did get permission to take some photographs and
this is where it is believed, under the square of concrete that you'll see in
the photographs, that is where it is believed that Vlad's remains are buried.
Or most of Vlad's remains of buried. This Monastery is kind of his monastery. The locals all
see him as a person that looked after the poor, was against the boyars, the rich
people. He defended them from foreign invaders, he was a good man to them even
though he was a vicious one. It's thought that he was killed very nearby.
And when we say the remains of Vlad, it's everything from the neck down. When he
was killed he was decapitated and his head was taken- I think it was Constantinople
so Istanbul now. It was put up on a spike to show that they had killed the Impaler as he
was known to the Turks as well. We came out here to find Dracula's castle. We
have got as close as I think we're going to come to finding that as we've moved
around. Also here we have finally come to just pay our respects to Vlad himself.
What's really interesting is we are constantly torn between Vlad the hero
and Vlad the villain. We saw in Targoviste there was a calendar for sale in
the gift shop there of heroes with Vlad on the front and when you walk in to
this church it is a shrine to a hero. So while we're torn, people here clearly aren't.
I feel like we've walked in his footsteps as close as we possibly can.
We've been to where he was born, where he was imprisoned, where he ruled
and now where he rests. For someone that is mostly now myths and legends I feel
we've come as close as possible to the real man.
Hold on. Yeah? There's dinosaurs on this.
Here there be dinosaurs.
How far away is that?
Couple of hours?
I think that needs investigating.
So we've followed the sign on the map that says there are dinosaurs here all
the way to what's supposed to be the Dino Park in Constanta. Just on the edge of the Black Sea.
We've finally managed to get here,
there were road closures and all sorts (GRR!) It should have taken us about two
hours, it's actually taking us nearer four hours (GRRR!) Trouble is we've not yet really
seen much sign of a Dino Parc.
What have they done to the dinosaurs!?
Can we rescue those!?
Turns out our long journey may have been to see a few destroyed dinosaur carcasses
and a smashed up children's play park.
So they've killed my dinosaurs and it looks like they have real dolphins in
tanks in a Natural History Museum!?! As far as we're concerned it's just plain wrong
and so this is not for us, we're moving on.
We have made it into Bucharest, despite the complete lack of traffic on
the Tom-Tom. We are heading up, we don't have time to
see all the museums in town. There are quite a lot museums in town. We've got
the Natural History Museum here, we've got a Geology and Fossil Museum
over the other side of the road which we will hit if we have time but first of
all our first intended stop is this one up here, which is the Museum of Peasant
Life. This is the front facade of the Romanian Peasant Museum
which is closed but only part of it. They're doing some construction and so
somewhere around the side we're hopefully going to be able to get in and see something.
Apparently the Romanian Peasant Museum is also a no-no for a week. So they're doing renovations so hopefully if
you decide to visit it will be open for you. You'll have to, if you do go, send me a picture or something.
It is a shame but I suppose we'll
have to go and look at some fossils and dinosaurs instead!
Dinosaurs, dinosaurs, give me dinosaurs! Dinosaurs!
I'm going to have to look up how to pronounce some of these properly.
A lot of them are found in the Hateg Basin. A few in the mountains as well but mostly the basin.
Oh look at his little mouth!
Ice age.
Mammoth! Oh look at their tiny Mammoth!
It cost us less than 2 pounds each to get in here and it's fantastic! This is what I
want a Natural History Museum, Fossil Museum to look like. It's Victorian. It's still
set in an old-fashioned, possibly Georgian even building looking at the decoration.
Looking at the hips, they're a bit old-fashioned on the hips. I like it but to be
dinosaur they need to be more underneath. Dinosaurs hips were more like human hips
than crocodile hips.
I was very intrigued because it does look quite Victorian, the way they have done the models.
The bones have actually got, he should have a very elongated face.
This is actually more like they did in the stop-motion films.
It makes me feel like a kid again, the style of it all. When I was a kid my mum would collect for me, I was like most kids
obsessed with dinosaurs and there was a big (book) collection that would come out probably
every month, about all the different species of dinosaurs and fossils and the
pictures are just like this.
I like this place!
After we geeked out at the old-fashioned dinosaur displays, we headed down to
the geology section of the museum, or as I call it, 'rooms full of rocks!'
When we get it at home, the cubes are tiny. Whether it's pyrite or marcasite, they are tiny!
This is like, wow!
This is calcite. I like calcite. Calcite when you move, is so shiny!
Oooooh! Stibina. (or antimonite)
Given how excited Felicity got over the dinosaur museum, I found one more place for us to visit.
Welcome to Dino Park! (sings Jurassic Park theme)
Dino Parc, Rasnov, is the largest dinosaur theme park in Eastern Europe
and made up for all the dinosaur disappointment of Constanta.
You know that's cheating!
Should have been you trying to climb up onto it!
Is it like with the Smurfs where we're supposed to pretend we're getting small?
Yeah but dinosaurs are big anyway!
Coelophysis! What is special about Coelophysis?
Dinosaur in space! Yey!
On the shuttle the...? Endeavor. Very good!
This is the dinosaur that I actually wanted to see here.
Magyarosaurus. And the baby.
He is actually the largest dinosaur in Transylvania. (But one of the smallest sauropods in the world)
It's mine! Isle of Wight!
Voldosaurus. Weald Lizard. Weald of Sussex. (Wessex Formation)
They said that Stegosaurus...
They origionally said that the stegosaurus had the smallest size brain for the size of
its body for any dinosaur. Then they got better with their technology and they
said that he wasn't actually the most stupid dinosaur. Sauropods have the least
intelligent bits of brain. So he was smarter than a sauropod.
And here we have, out here in the wilds of Romania, we have found a baby Tyrannosaurus Rex. Now these
little chaps they are perfectly safe as long as you avoid their parents... oh no!
We had found our dinosaurs. Before we left Romania though, we wanted to try and
visit a famous rock formation.
We're still trying to see if we can get to see the
Sphinx, which is a mountain formation. Thing is the cable car we gave up on and
now we're trying to drive to it. At the moment it's telling me that it's 14 miles away
but it's gonna take me an hour and a half to get there, which by my maths
makes it they're expecting me to average less than 10 miles an hour. Now they have
said there are some unpaved roads so I've got a horrible feeling sooner or
later we're gonna reach a stopping point but we are gonna try as hard as we can to get there.
This might be why it takes people so long.
Have to stop for change change of trousers!
Yikes!
Yikes! Stay well away from that edge! I'm staying well away from the edge!
We are not going to the Sphinx!
No, getting to the Sphinx is frightening me!
The road probably on my camera looks great but there is just a huge drop
on the other side of Greg right now.
I feel a bit better here when the Sun is. That on that side is okay whereas this is awful!
You're just driving to towards - Be careful! I'm being careful. Driving towards sky. Yeah.
It still says we're an hour and a quarter away. How!?
How many miles are we away? Seven and a half. I'm sure that must be the cross we saw from below.
I think you're probably right but stop looking at the cross and look at the road! There's a good boy.
Is this a hotel!? That looks like a hotel.
Is there a hotel up here!?! Yeah but it might be a hotel for hikers. Hikers....crazy.
Cabana Barbelle is that way. Look- no entry.
Well there we go, that ladies and gentleman - Is that where it wanted us to go?
That's where it wants us to go.
The no entry sign, only six miles from our
target summed up our search for Dracula to me. For so much of our journey he'd
seemed just beyond our reach. A figure we knew was there but we could never quite
connect with. We had seen where he was born,
we'd found his castle and we had visited his grave. At times we felt so close to
him but always through a mist of Legend and propaganda. So here, looking out
across the beauty of Romania seems the perfect place to bid farewell to a
legendary figure and a wonderful country.
I think I cut myself shaving!
How odd.
Wait a minute, I haven't shaved!