- BORGO PASS, Romania (Reuters)
- Die-hard Dracula fans are flocking to the Carpathian Mountains to visit
the count's old haunts, watch a medieval witch trial and attend the Miss
Transylvania pageant for this year's Halloween.
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- They come to the remote Romanian countryside lured by
both the blood-thirsty vampire of Hollywood movies and the historic prince
whose notorious cruelty toward Turkish prisoners inspired the novel "Dracula."
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- "They are welcome to come but they must know that
they might not survive the experience," said Nicolae Paduraru, president
of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, which organizes some of the expeditions.
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- Banned by the communist dictators, Dracula was translated
in Romanian as late as 1992, and the small Balkan country only recently
has started to capitalize on one of its most-recognizable names.
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- At the Borgo Pass, home to Bram Stoker's fictional character,
the snow-covered hotel is a communist imitation of Romanian castles but
the guests appeared not to mind. They took their drinks to the nearby cemetery
for a midnight stroll.
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- "There is a fascination with the unusual,"
said Howard Cohen from London, who is on his fourth tour of Dracula land.
"What you have is the added mystique because the whole concept of
Dracula was banned for so long here."
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- The two dozen, mostly American and British visitors on
the Transylvanian Society of Dracula's weeklong tour, will have a chance
to join the society and even become knights of Count Dracula Order -- for
a small fee.
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- They will then attend the pageant, where 13 Transylvanian
maidens will compete for the honor of becoming "Countess Dracula."
After coronation, the winner descends a staircase only to return white-faced
and with bite marks on her neck.
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- 'I WANTED TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT'
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- "It's a nice fairy tale. I wanted to do something
different," said Tony Whiting from Tamworth, Britain, who was planning
to take the six chivalry tests, including arm-wrestling, archery and riddle-solving,
to win a knighthood.
-
- The real 15th century Prince Vlad "the Impaler"
Tepes, who defended his country from hordes of invading Ottomans, has little
to do with Stoker's Dracula, whose legend is set around 1890. But Romania,
which emerged from decades of communism almost 13 years ago, is quickly
filling in the blanks.
-
- Like Castle Dracula, the Golden Crown hotel in Bistritsa,
where Stoker's innocent London lawyer Jonathan Harker spends the night,
is a concrete communist hotel complex.
-
- "People are creating the history to match the myth,"
Paduraru said.
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- Bran Castle, a medieval fortress 156 miles from the count's
traditional feeding grounds, often is called Dracula's Castle because it
resembles the typical horror film backdrop but is not part of Stoker's
novel and Vlad never set foot there.
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- The Prince was born in 1431 in the medieval town of Sighisoara,
where the society holds a Halloween witch trial every year. Although vampires
are not part of Romania's folklore, witches were tortured and burned as
late as 1753.
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- Paduraru's tours are filled with such historical and
cultural facts, but he denies he uses Dracula almost as a pretext for getting
tourists to know his long-isolated country.
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- "I am only a humble servant of the Count,"
he said.
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