When you wake up you feel like new. You have never thought that a XNUMXth century bed could be so comfortable. You get up and open the window. The refreshing scent of Transylvanian forests fills your lungs as you scan outside. The landscape is just as Bram Stoker described it: under the window a horizontal drop of a thousand feet, adding the castle wall and the precipice; around an infinite green sea that ripples in the breeze; here and there the sound of streams running through the forest.
You close the window, grab the bunch of keys, and trot into the kitchen, listening to the echo of your footsteps in the hallways. You almost got lost, but you finally get to that huge room, itself four times the size of your previous floor. You look for the cupboard where you have left the groceries, and you take out a package of cookies and a brick of juice. You wish you had hired someone to do the food, but with what you paid for the castle, better save.
At the end of breakfast, you pack your backpack and leave the kitchen happily ready to explore your new home. You go room after room: although the castle is large, you want to see everything. Throughout the day, time will pass like a dream. When it's time to eat, you stop and serve a sandwich right there, sitting on a sturdy Wallachian wooden bench. Then you continue walking, opening and closing doors; observing old carvings shaped like whimsical creatures and being watched by them. His gaze is almost hypnotic to you, and before you know it, it's already dark. Then you remember with a smile the earl's warning to Jonathan Harker:
“For no reason did he fall asleep in any other part of the castle. He is old and has many memories, and there are many nightmares for those who do not sleep wisely. I warn you! In case sleep overpowers you now or another time, or is about to overpower you, hurry back to your own room or these rooms, for then you can rest safely. "
You think: "What the hell!"; and you decide to take a nap there, in the south wing, to see what happens.
According to ForbesFor this fantasy to come true, you would need $ 140 million. The American magazine considers Bran Castle as the second most expensive property in the world, largely due to the economic benefits that could be obtained from its exploitation. That is, due to the tradition that considers it the castle of Dracula, and, ultimately, thanks to the novel by Bram Stoker. Curious collateral effects of a literary work.
Let us also bear in mind that the tradition that considers Bran Castle Dracula's castle lacks a historical basis, as the website of its museum would like to remind us and this article published three days ago in the Toronto Star. Neither the castle served as an inspiration to Bram Stoker, who was not in Romania and was probably unaware of its existence, nor did the real Vlad Tepes, that energetic statesman, ever inhabit it, beyond spending two days in its dungeons.
However, when you see it in pictures, it is easy to think that it could very well be the home of the vampire and that, in some mysterious way, Bram Stoker got it right. Maybe we imagined its walls darker, but those blood red roofs make up for it. We can imagine the passages of the novel that take place in the castle without too much effort set in Bran.
Dracula It is the masterpiece of a craftsman in a state of grace. Touched by some dark muse, Bram Stoker composed a novel so powerful that we perceive it almost as real. So much so that when we turn the last page, we get the feeling that somewhere in Transylvania there must be a physical space that corresponds to that of the story we have just read.
Scholars explain to us that Dracula's castle has never existed beyond the pages of the novel. Then we smile with self-indulgence thinking about the delusion of looking for the house of a paper vampire in the real world, but deep down we cannot shake the idea that, after all, perhaps Bram Stoker knew something that his scholars do not know.