The Libearty (sic) Bear Sanctuary and Bran Castle
Where are we Going Today?
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| Romania |
Emerging onto Council Square in the morning we were pleased to see that whatever shenanigans the army had been up to last night, it had all been tidied away. Even better, the Romanian summer, which had deserted us at Sighișoara was back; the sky was (largely) blue, the sun shone and the light sparkled. We met up with Vlad and were soon on our way.
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| Bran is 25km southwest of Braşov, the Libearty Sanctuary is about 10km north of Bran |
Vlad drove us the short distance to the bear sanctuary. On the way Lynne could not resist the usual picture of the antique agricultural
practices, which still survive in odd corners.
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| Making hay |
Bears in Romania
Romania has one of Europe’s largest populations of brown bears, some 6,000 to 7,000 individuals. The dense, unspoiled forests of
the Carpathian Mountains provide an ideal habitat, with an abundance of the nuts,
berries, insects, and small mammals that comprise a bear’s diet. They help
maintain the ecosystem by dispersing seeds and controlling populations of other
animals.
Bears get into trouble when they cross paths with humans. Typically solitary, they roam vast territories which are increasingly threatened
by logging, infrastructure development, and general human encroachment. Bears
beg for food along stretches of highway where they have been previously fed. The
dangers of mixing large animals with fast moving vehicles is obvious, but the
food is not good for them. either. Mr Ranger, Sir, often told Yogi, that bears
should eat nuts and berries not the contents of picnic baskets, and he was
right.
And while some people feed bears at the roadside, bears wandering into human settlement in search of food are never
welcome.
Libearty Bear Sanctuary
The Libearty Sanctuary opened in 2005 and is now home to over 130 rescued bears. Some danced in the streets or begged for food
outside hotels while their handlers begged for money. Others rode bicycles in a circus.
All spent off-duty time in cramped and barren cages. The least fortunate were driven slowly insane, living permanently in such cages outside restaurants, hotels or
guesthouses as tourist attractions. Such mistreatments are now illegal.
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| Bear cage |
We were shown the 69-hectare site, provided by the nearby town of Zărneşti on a 49-year lease. The fences, we were told, were to
keep us out, not the bears in. Beyond the wire an oak forest provides shade and
trees to climb, they have pools in which to bathe and access to an appropriate
diet.
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| A bear at Libearty |
Many bears gravitate towards the fence and human company, because that is all they have known. One, kept for years in a tiny
cage, has settled into a corner of the sanctuary with fences on two sides. She
creates two more mental fences and continues to live in the only way she
understands.
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| This may be the bear mentioned above, or not - all bears look the same to me |
They live here at higher density then they would in the wild, but they seem comfortable in each other’s company.
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| Solitary animals sometimes chose to relax in groups, Libearty |
Neither of us are particularly sentimental about animals, and I wonder about those who treat their cats, dogs or horses as people
who have unaccountably grown tails, but we should not wilfully mistreat animals
in the name of dubious entertainment; these bears deserve a break. Laws, and
more importantly, attitudes have changed. I would hope Libearty would work itself
out of a job before its lease is up – but with humans you never can tell.
Bran Castle
Vlad drove us the 10km to Bran where the rolling Transylvanian countryside meets the foothills of the Southern Carpathian Mountains, which rise to
a series of peaks around 2,500m (8,500 ft).
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| Rolling Transylvania and the edge of the Carpathians |
Bran castle stands on a rocky protuberance near the Wallachian border overlooking the pass through the mountains that connects
Wallachia to Brașov and the Transylvanian interior. The first castle on the
site, then known as Dietrichstein, was a wooden fortification built in 1212 by the
Teutonic Knights.
Dietrichstein Fort was destroyed by marauding Mongols in 1242, but after the death of Ogedei Khan later that year, the Mongol threat receded.
It was not until 1377 that Louis I of Hungary gave the Transylvanian Saxons of
Kronstadt (now Brașov) permission to build a new stone
castle on the site – at their own expense. The relevant documents are the first
time the name Bran appears in writing. Over the centuries that castle has
developed into the present structure.
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| Bran Castle |
The settlement of Bran soon grew at the foot of the castle. Today it is the largest of the five villages making up the commune of Bran.
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| Looking back to Bran from Bran Castle |
Although the Ottomans did not take Constantinople until 1453 their first serious incursion into Wallachia was in the 1390s and
the principality was under loose Ottoman control for most of the next 400 years.
Transylvania remained part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire throughout this time
and Bran castle played a strategic role maintaining the status quo.
Dracula's Castle?
Bran Castle should not be confused with Castell Dinas Brân in North Wales (see the Llangollen post), or Brian Castle, the
retired (2015) Bishop of Tonbridge. Nor should it be confused with Dracula’s
Castle, though it is advertised as such.
Bram Stoker started writing Dracula when visiting Whitby. The novel is set mainly in London, where Stoker lived, Whitby and Transylvania. Stoker never visited Transylvania and his knowledge of the landscape and customs came from his reading and fertile imagination. Dracula’s Castle is a generic local castle modified for the requirements of the story, his descriptions is nothing like Bran Castle.
And Who was Dracula?
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| Mircea the Elder |
After
his death all his sons, and then grandsons, plus a few other relatives wanted their
turn as Voivode, there were 14 of them before 1500 averaging less than 6 years
each. But it was more complicated than that, quite a few had two or three
stints as ruler, two of them managed four, coming and going with the fortunes
of war. Some were backed by the Ottomans, some by the Hungarians and this instability
continued until Wallachia combined with Moldavia in 1862 to form the first Romania.
Vlad II Dracul (Vlad the Dragon) was Mircea’s second son who ruled 1436-42 and 1443-47.
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| Vlad II Dracul |
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| Vlad Țepeș 1488 woodcut, Pub Dom |
Unfortunately, these characters were not as comic as the look.
Whose Castle is it Anyway?
Originally built and owned by the Transylvanian Saxons of Kronstadt (Brașov), Bran passed at some stage to the Hungarian kings. In
1533 Vladislav II defaulted on loan payments and the castle reverted to the
city of Kronstadt.
When Transylvania became part of the Kingdom of Romania in 1920, the Saxons of Kronstadt-Braşov, who could no longer afford to maintain
the time-damaged castle, gave it to the Royal Family. It became a favourite
retreat of Marie of Edinburgh, Queen Consort of King Ferdinand and a grand-daughter
of Queen Victoria, who oversaw extensive renovations. On her death in 1938 Bran
passed to her youngest daughter Princess Ileana who converted it into a
hospital during World War II. In 1948 the Royal Family was expelled and the castle
was seized by the communist authorities.
In 2005 the Romanian parliament passed a law allowing restitution claims on properties illegally expropriated. Bran now belongs to
the surviving offspring of Princess Ileana, who run the castle as a private museum
in collaboration with the people of Bran,
The museum contains furniture…
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| Most of the furniture on display was heavy, dark wood. 19th Century I would think, though information is in short supply |
…regalia….
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| A crown and sceptre, but whose? Bran Castle |
….and some arms….
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| Weaponry, Bran Castle |
…among other things.
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| Some rather more modern glassware - but still no information |
In a nod to the Dracula legend it devotes a couple of rooms to the ‘Dreads of Transylvania’, the Sântoaderii, a wild and
dangerous group of horseman who roam the Earth on specific nights, Iele female
spirits of otherworldly beauty who are both revered and feared being benevolent
or malevolent depending on how they are treated, Strigoi, malevolent,
restless spirits or undead entities, the Solomonari who ride on dragons
and can summon storms, hail and blizzards, also the Grim Reaper, Ghosts
and Werewolves who need no explanation. Interestingly the list does not
include Vampires, though Strigoi have some vampire characteristics.
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| Exit/Entrance and queue, Bran Castle. Dark and forbidding? No |
In Conclusion
Bran Castle is not Dracula’s Castle. It is not the castle Bram Stoker wrote about and it was never the castle of Vlad Dracula aka
Vlad the Impaler. And Vlad has as much to do with Stoker’s Dracula
as Birds of the West Indies author James Bond, has to do with 007. They
are merely borrowed names.
And does the fluff of the tourism industry and Hollywood in any way invalidate Bram Stoker’s novel – of course not. Nor does it
invalidate Bran castle, it is worth a visit in its own right.
Lunch in Brașov
Back in Brașov, Vlad dropped us in Council Square, arranged a meeting time for the morning and as Brașov
is his home town, went off to see whoever it is he sees when he comes home. We
sat outside one of the many restaurants lining the square for a late lunch.
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| Council Square, Braşov |
We like to eat local, but after exhausting the varieties of supă and ciorbă, the local cuisine left few appealing choices for a light
lunch. The restaurant claimed to be Italian so we decided to share a small
pizza. Many generations ago, Neapolitan emigrants took the secrets of their
carefully crafted pizzas to the United States. In that melting pot of nations,
they simplified the pizza so that everybody could enjoy it. They worked so hard
to produce a dish that would offend nobody, that they long ago simplified their
secrets out of the recipe. When it had finally been reduced it to a dough-y carbohydrate
disc topped with a slick of trans-fats, they exported it back to Europe so a
huge swathe of people from Iceland to Romania and beyond think what we ate in Brașov
was a pizza. While fine pizzas are the norm in Italy and commonplace in France,
everyone else remains in the dark. The worst pizza I have ever encountered was
in Ulan Ude in the Russian Far East (at end of that post).
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| Council Square and the Black Church, Braşov |
We spent much
of the afternoon in the shopping streets around the square, looking for gifts
to take home and a bottle of țuică (the plum brandy
that is Romania’s national drink) for us. For the țuică we probably needed a
supermarket, but we were not in that sort of shopping street and instead found
ourselves in an upmarket bottle shop. They had no țuică,
but suggested instead pălincă, a plum brandy
produced specifically in Transylvania (and Hungary, but they did not tell us
that). Despite the rather hefty price, we bought it. They are more differences than
just region of origin, țuică is single distilled, sold at 20 to 40% alcohol (I
think most we drank were closer to 40%) and considered an aperitif. Pălincă
is double-distilled and sold at 40+% (ours was 45%). It is deeper flavoured and
smoother and considered a drink for ceremonial and festive occasions. [ours did not last long after we got home - we must celebrate and fester a lot!].
After spending so much money we went back to the hotel to lie down in a darkened room. Then we tidied ourselves up and set out find dinner
Dinner in Braşov
When we again stepped out into Council Square the lovely, warm early summer day had become an equally lovely evening. The cafés and restaurant lining the square continue
down the wide pedestrian boulevards that feed into it, and here, tables and chairs were not just outside restaurants, they also colonised broad strips down the centre of the streets. This abundance offered an illusion of choice, but the menus varied little and yesterday’s duck with pickled cabbage and pork with stuffed cabbage and sauerkraut was as adventurous as they get. To
prove the point, we sat down not quite at random and then independently decided chicken
and chips was the best offer. The chicken was on the bone, there was a dipping
sauce and just for once, a salad. I would, though, just like to remind the restaurant owners of the wisdom of Mr John Finnemore
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| Chicken and chips, Braşov |
We ordered țuică which arrived, as it often does, in small conical flasks which would look more at home in a
laboratory than on a dining table. and a slightly more expensive bottle of wine than usual.
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| Drinking țuicǎ, Braşov |
Colocviu la Paris translates as Colloquium in Paris. Colloquium is an odd word but maybe it sounds better than Seminar by the Seine as a wine name. A
limited edition, it comes from Cotnari in the Moldovan Hills wine district.
The grape is Busuioacă de Bohotin a variety unique to the region, taking its
name from Bohotin, a village, like Cotnari, in Iași County (see map). Little known local
grapes makes a pleasant change from the regulation Cabernet, Shiraz,
Sauvignon Blanc etc. and you can discover anything from a hidden gem to a stark
reminder of why it is Cabernet and its pals that are known worldwide. Bohotin is well
towards the positive end of this spectrum. Purple grapes make it a natural for
rosé and although it is usually vinified sweet, this example was fully dry. Pastel
peach in colour, with an aroma of ripe berry fruits, crisp on the palate with
what Winestatistics calls a wide flat feel. This strange phrase is an odd but accurate description
of the mouthfeel, unique (as far as I know) to Romanian whites and rosés. I
rather like it.
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| Colocviu la Paris, Braşov |
I have written at length about the wine, so what about the food? Chicken and chips is chicken and chips ‘nuff said.
Romania: An Introduction
Part 1 Bucharest
Part 2 Cozia Monastery and Sibiu
Part 3 Hunedoara and Alba Iulia
Part 4 Biertan and Sighișoara
Part 5 Rupea and Brașov
Part 6 Bears and Dracula's Castle(?)
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