Romania
The royal family who own the castle live in the United States themselves but have allowed the public access.
It was the result of a year-long lawsuit against the former communist regime, to wrest the castle from the state and back into the hands of the family.
Now they use it to showcase Romania's long history. The castle has served as inspiration for the fiction of Count Dracula, but the story of Dracula is not really something the family markets. Prince Vlad Tepes III has owned the castle as one of many.
Author Bram Stoker was inspired and very rich to invent the myth of the bloodsucking Count Dracula.
There is a modern ticket office and everything is nicely set up.
We can choose between a guided tour or just wander around ourselves. We choose to walk around ourselves.
In the entrance there is a kind of mummified horse with a sinister rider on it, so the style is set.
It is a beautiful castle, and you can clearly see where the inspiration for Dracula comes from. The entire architecture just fits the narrative. Romania oozes history and goes back much deeper than Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship.
We walk around the castle through secret passages between the floors. It is very exciting to explore in an old castle.
The castle houses an exhibition about medieval torture. These are cruel things you were exposed to back then. You could be pulled and lifted at all ends and edges. If that wasn't enough, you could also be impaled in various ways.
Some of Vlad Tepe's grim reputation stems from an incident where he impaled his own peasants to scare the life out of the invading Ottoman army.
It worked - they were scared and told far and wide that a completely erratic psychopath ruled here.
And you probably won't sit in this chair for too long.
We leave Bran late in the afternoon, now it is time to set the course for Denmark again. In the soft evening light, we come through a village where they are driving cows and goats home from grazing.
The animals themselves know which farm they live on, so the cow driver goes through the main street and then sorts cows and goats himself as they go through town.
On our way towards Hungary, we pass some farmers who are busy carrying hay home to the farm. It's just up on a stretcher and off to the house with it. It's a big pile they've got together, but they don't seem to think it's heavy to carry around.
In Hungary, we set the GPS to find a campsite for the night. When we arrive, however, there is celebration and colors with a sound level that can make even the Roskilde festival pale. We can work out that this is not where we will get a restful night's sleep, so we drive further out of town and find another place to sleep. It has started to thunder, so we are once again hit by storms in Hungary. Fortunately, it is not with rain and wind. The lightning stays up in the clouds and it's really nice to watch.
We continue the next day towards Graz in Austria. The fact that it is that city is mostly because Johnny is a big Mercedes GD enthusiast and would like to see the factory where our car is produced.
The car must also be immortalized in its birthplace.
On the way over the Austrian mountains, the car gets a little warm and we have to pull over to the side and just breathe a little. It was a bit unexpected, but now we know that we must have invested in a bigger cooler.
We drive some long stretches to get home. So when we see a sign for a small forest ZOO in Germany, we think it's a good place to take a break. We go for a walk in the forest and see deer. It's nice after so many hours of driving just to take a break and get some air. There are also pet pigs that frolic around and enjoy themselves.
We are now in the usual dilemma, should we stay overnight, or drive all night and then have an extra day at home?
It is also nice to come home again, fully saturated with experiences. But it is also a pretty long trip ahead. We decide to drive to the ferry and see if we can get a late ferry to Denmark.
Fortunately, we can do that well and we won't have to wait that long. On board the ferry, we can just grab a good nap before we have to drive again and then we will be home early in the morning.
