And since yesterday was a free day in the chess tournament, I caught a bus from Brașov to Bran Castle, which is less than 20 miles away.
There is apparently no proof author Bram Stoker based his bloodthirsty character on Vlad the Impaler, also known as Vlad Dracula - dracul being Romanian for the Devil.
But it is certainly a reasonable supposition that the 15th century Viovode of Wallachia, infamous for impaling prisoners on stakes, was at least a partial source.
Then again Hungarian countess Elizabeth Báthory, a convicted serial killer rumoured - probably unfairly - to have bathed in the blood of her virginal victims, is also thought to have played a part in Stoker's imaginings.
Unfortunately Vlad never owned Bran Castle, which during his lifetime was in the hands of his political enemies, and there is no evidence the countess ever set foot there either.
But none of that bothers the owners of Bran Castle, and it was fun to play along for the sake of an interesting half-day out.
Bran Castle has an interesting history in its own right.
It may have been the site of a wooden fort built by the Teutonic Knights in 1212 and destroyed by Mongols in 1242.
Permission for a stone castle was granted by Louis the Great, King of Hungary, Croatia and Poland, in 1377 to Germans, known as Transylvanian Saxons, who lived in what was then Kronstadt but is now Brașov.
The castle was used as a defence against the Ottoman Turks and became a customs point, with the village of Bran - now town-size - growing up in its shadow.
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