Bran, Romania

Bran, Romania

‘We’re going on a bear hunt. We’re going to catch a big one. It’s a beautiful day. We’re not scared.’ So goes the central refrain of one of my favourite childhood story books, as its characters negotiate swishy grass, squelchy mud and a dark cave to track down the elusive animal they seek. Never had these words been more apt than the morning of my second day in Brașov, when I headed west to a bear sanctuary near the Transylvanian town of Zărnești. A short train ride for a couple of lei took me to the village of Tohanu Vechi, from which it was a walk of nearly an hour uphill through open fields to the edge of a forest, to reach the ‘Libearty’ sanctuary.

The short Brașov to Zărnești line took me past misty mountains in the early morning

The village of Tohanu Vechi

The Transylvanian countryside close to the bear sanctuary

The gravel road leads to the edge of a woodland, where the bears are

I had had to arrive in the middle of the morning because the bears were to be fed around noon, and no visitors are admitted after 1100. What with the walk and the infrequent running of the trains on this branch line, I had already been up for hours by the time I was admitted. However, it was thoroughly worth it.

Romania has a terrible record when it comes to animal welfare, but recent efforts have been made to improve the situation, particularly as part of the conditions of the country’s EU accession in 2007. Bears and other animals were long abused in circuses and substandard zoos. The sanctuary was set up as a shelter for rescued bears, to enable them to live out their lives in as comfortable and natural an environment as possible. The guide who led our group around was excellent, with a thorough knowledge of each individual bear’s story and a clear passion for helping to raise awareness of the awful conditions that had led to the sanctuary’s establishment.

The most heartbreaking tale was of a male whose had been kept in a very restrictive cage, causing his fur to become permanently damaged. His captors exhibited him chained up outside a castle, where he was a prop for tourists’ photographs. To keep him in a condition that was safe enough for humans to pose alongside him, he was constantly drugged with alcohol and other substances, and eventually blinded to make him even less aware of his surroundings.

Others had been likewise disfigured and were psychologically, if not physically, scarred from their ordeals. Often these involved being made to fight with other bears, or cruelly forced to ride bicycles for people’s amusement. None of these bears were in any state to be returned to the wild, and although many of them looked large, healthy and strong, they had insufficient knowledge of the forests to be capable of surviving alone. For this reason, the males had all been neutered to avoid any cubs being born, for these cubs would also have no ability to live independently.

One of the sanctuary's many brown bears

The sanctuary's wolf

This male had been blinded and kept drugged with alcohol to maintain a drowsy, harmless state

One or two were in solitary confinement because they were aggressive and possibly a threat to themselves and other bears, whilst a couple of males were isolated from the majority and fed copious amounts of food (largely bread, carrots and chicken) to fatten them up to as close to a normal adult size and weight as possible. Impressively, though, one enclosure had no fewer than a dozen bears, all wandering around close to the fence, and no doubt many more in the expanse of paddock that went into the trees. These bears would never have lived in such concentration in the wild, but here tolerated each other and lived contentedly in an environment that allowed them to walk on grass (not just concrete), climb trees and swim in ponds. It is a wonderful way to see bears in something close to their natural habitat, and all the better for the fact that the entrance fee helps support the programme to further recover bears from the inhumane conditions in which some are still kept. In all, there are around 80 bears at the sanctuary, almost entirely brown bears from Romania, but there is also a wolf and a couple of wild bears that were flown in from Georgia where they had been repeatedly encroaching upon a town.

These two bears were being kept isolated so they could fatten up before being released into an enclosure with other bears

Eleven bears enjoy a feeding frenzy

A magical Transylvanian scene: a tiny wooden chapel and a backdrop of mist covered mountain peaks

At the sanctuary, I met a couple of Americans who had flown from Pennsylvania to go on holiday in Romania, and had been exploring the southern Transylvanian mountains for a few days. They had come from Brașov by taxi, and we agreed to share a taxi to the place we were all coincidentally but unsurprisingly heading next, Bran Castle. This saved me an hour’s walk across an open valley, for which I was grateful. The taxi driver didn’t speak English and I was rather suspicious because his meter ‘didn’t work’. Practising my minimal Romanian, I established the price he would charge, which was reasonable for the distance, and in the end he kept his word.

Romanian is, by the way, an intriguing language. More than any I have come across, it seems that all its positive words sound pleasant – atrăgătoare (attractive), frumoase (beautiful) – and all its negatives sound ghastly – murdar (dirty), urât (ugly), rău (evil). I am particularly fond of the words pisică (cat), because it sounds endearing, cuțit (knife), because it looks and sounds like what a knife does, and minge (ball), for obvious and unashamedly immature reasons. Moreover, it has some beautiful connections that hint at a blunt, plain-speaking society, if not now then certainly in the past. Prime examples are seen in familial words, such as tată vitreg (stepfather), in which vitreg also means ‘cruel’, and copil (child), which stems from a Slavic root meaning ‘bastard’.

Rural scenery close to Bran

Bran Castle (Castelul Bran) is known far and wide as Dracula’s Castle. It is not. Historically, the castle was built by Saxon knights in 1377 due to its strategic location on a small outcrop commanding the entrance to a mountain pass. Vlad III of Wallachia, known as Vlad Țepeș (Dracula), passed through the valley but didn’t own the castle, nor was he a vampire. In literary terms, Bran Castle is also not the home of Dracula, because the Irish writer Bram Stoker, who authored Dracula in 1897, is not believed to have known about this castle’s existence. Stoker never visited Transylvania, though for his novel he did draw upon extensive research into Central and Eastern European myths and legends. His Dracula’s Castle was a fictitious fortress atop the 2,000 metre peak of Izvorul Călimanului, around 25 miles from Bistrița in the north of Transylvania. Regardless of the authenticity of Stoker’s story, his Dracula has done more than anything else to perpetuate a romanticised ideal of Transylvania, and has drawn in tourists for years.

Bran Castle, seen from the village

A stone cross featuring an inscription in the old Romanian version of the Cyrillic script, which includes several letters that are no longer used in any version of the alphabet

The castle has great views of the countryside to the north

Vlad III of Wallachia, 'Dracula', who neither lived at Bran Castle nor was a vampire. He was, however, rather fond of impaling people

Even though this wasn't the real life home of Dracula, Bran Castle does acknowledge that it's scary.
(Not really; the sign is warning about the stairs)

There is little to Bran besides the castle, and at its foot is a small market filled with vendors selling souvenirs at inflated prices. The castle is the only real sight, and it has an interesting history of its own, its strategic location meaning it was important during conflicts between the Hungarians and the Ottoman Empire. When this land was transferred from Austria-Hungary to Romania in 1920, the castle was passed into the possession of the royal family, although it was seized by the government when the communists took over in 1947 and Romania’s last king, Mihai I, was exiled. After the revolution in 1989, the castle was deemed to have been illegally appropriated and was returned to the Habsburg family, who subsequently opened it as a museum in 2009. Today, its Saxon-built mediæval structure houses a collection of furniture and personal effects belonging to the Romanian royals of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

One of the bedrooms of the castle

This rug looked to have had a somewhat less fortunate fate than the bears I'd met earlier in the day

A Cluedo-esque secret passageway connected the first floor with the third

A flat plain extends to the north of Bran

To the south is the beginning of a mountain pass that cuts through the Southern Carpathians (also known as the Transylvanian Alps), linking Brașov with Pitești

This tower isn't the castle's highest, but it is the most attractive

The inner walls of the castle surrounding its small courtyard are beautifully uneven and disordered

The two Americans and I found a shop selling lángos (fried flatbread), more evidence of Hungarian influence here, and then we took a bus back to Brașov. We then split up as they climbed Tâmpa mountain, as I had done the day before, but met up again for a meal in the evening. A relaxing couple of hours discussing our respective experiences of Romania and of Europe in general, as well as sharing our opinions on the then forthcoming American election, passed quickly. I gathered my stuff in plenty of time and went off to find the bus station I needed. To cut a long story short, I missed the bus. Brașov has a confusing set up, with the major stops all on the same road, and identified by a name and a number, although these two systems weren’t used consistently. The internet and the people I asked for advice contradicted each other, and in the end, with only a few minutes before departure, I called the number on my ticket. The woman at the other end spoke only Romanian. With a concerted effort to remember the key phrases I knew and the odd words I had picked up from elsewhere, plus a smattering of French and Italian words, I got the message about my situation across. She rather uselessly repeated the name of the bus station to me, and my attempts to describe my location didn’t prompt her to give any indication of where the bus stop was relative to my present position. In the end, I went to the most promising looking bus station, arriving ten minutes early. Unfortunately, my gamble hadn’t paid off and I now faced a dilemma.

I was trying to get to Timișoara, but not many buses served a route on the east-west road between Brașov and that city. I would have to call the hostel owner and ask for another night, and try again in the morning, although there would be no guarantee that I could get a bus onwards. I would end up trapped in Brașov, which admittedly is probably one of the nicest places in the world to be trapped, but it wasn’t convenient because I had to leave Timișoara in 36 hours’ time in order to return to my job for Monday morning. I proceeded to the railway station to see if there were any overnight trains in that direction, but there were just a handful left before the following morning. Even then, nothing was going directly due west. I ruled out taking one of the many trains south to Bucharest on the grounds that I could then be stuck a further two hours from where I needed to be, as it was uncertain whether it would be easier to get to my destination from there or not.

One last option remained; Baia Mare. Frantically looking for it on the map, I found it was far to the northwest, close to the borders of Ukraine and Hungary. Not necessarily any better than here. However, Cluj wasn’t far south, and that city is something of a regional hub for northern Romania. There was every chance I could get a bus to Timișoara, and if not, I was much better poised to get to Budapest on Sunday and make my connection to Prague. I bit the bullet, and at 2345 I finally waved goodbye to the wonderful city of Brașov, exhausted from a long day and not likely to get a good sleep tonight. I needed to stay alert to avoid oversleeping and missing the connection I had to make at the town of Dej. Moreover, on my last overnight train journey, I had been robbed, so I was anxious to remain vigilant. An uncomfortable night passed. The next day would be my last in Romania, my last in the Balkans (if Transylvania and the Banat can still be considered as such), and I had to be hopeful that I could get as much out of it as possible.

Back in Brașov, the town hall is dwarfed by Tâmpa mountain

A final look at the Black Church (Biserica Neagră)