Last Updated on iulie 18, 2014
I had dreamed about visiting this castle since childhood, and now, about 35 years after first hearing about the famed noble prince Vlad (or Dracula, as I knew him then), I felt awe, excitement, thrill, humility, ancient respect, and a deep, overwhelming sense of something eternal, like the memory of rock and wood, the reverberating echoes of footsteps that never quite fade, voices that haunt, of the shivering touch, when least expected. And it was real. I was right in the middle of it. No one was trying to scare me, no props, nothing. Just the natural presence of places touched by history.
This was the effect that castle Bran was having on me, as I but approached. And then we entered the courtyard, passed the old well, and looked around us, at the inner balconies, framed by old, beautifully preserved wooden hand-railings. Visited August 2013 (foto: Romania’s Friends)
