A Journey Through Romania, Dracula Lore and Transylvanian Family Roots
I am related to Dracula. That is, to his alleged real-life counterpart, Vlad Tepes. And more specifically, to his second wife, Jusztina Szilágyi—the one who didn’t throw herself off a bridge in despair. Centuries later, we Magyars arrived in America, departing from Transylvania for a land similarly steeped in legend and lore: New Jersey. My father is a third-generation American and a full-blooded Transylvanian: all four of his grandparents emigrated to the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century. I’m a half-blood—and, ancestrally, cold-blooded, too.
You could see the Americanization of our immigrant community at St. Basil’s Romanian Catholic Church in Trenton, New Jersey, even as we tried to maintain our heritage. The Magyars would join our kinfolk to sing in Romanian, pray in Romanian, eat Romanian food (stuffed cabbage, more appetizing than it sounds—or looks), and drink to Romania with shots of țuică, a potent Romanian brandy. My family celebrated our heritage. I had Romanian dolls in my bedroom, embroidered doilies with traditional patterns everywhere, wood carvings of vampiric-looking counts and needlepoint portraits of Transylvanian gypsies. And I learned very early to identify with the monsters and werewolves and vampires native to my land. “You should be cheering for the Huns,” my dad told me while watching Mulan, pointing to the monstrous cartoon villain with a menacing falcon on his shoulder. “Those are your people.”
It’s believed the Huns didn’t retreat to Asia when their empire collapsed in the 5th century, instead hiding out in the Transylvanian mountains. Like so many Romanian legends, the veracity is debated. But with his long, dark hair, bloodshot eyes and suspiciously manicured mustache, the animated character on-screen did look a lot like my other famous relative.
“You’re dressed up like your great-grandfather,” my grandfather joked one Halloween, seeing my younger brother in full Dracula regalia. “You look just like him.”
But the child who looked the most Romanian was me. I have the most olive complexion of all my siblings, and my angular features resemble those of my grandmother, Emma Apai, after whom I was given my middle name. In my tempestuous teenage years and in my quest to answer that eternal question—“Who am I?”—I leaned into my Romanian heritage.
My mother’s side of the family, alternately, had been in America since before the Revolution. I felt my Romanian blood set me apart in a sea of WASPs.
For a middle-school ancestry project, I presented my familial heritage: “On one side, my ancestor fell off the Mayflower,” I informed the class. “On the other side, we’re related to Dracula.”
My teacher grilled me for evidence of my drunken forefather falling off—and successfully getting back on—the famed ship (a scene fictionalized in Pocahontas, where once again, my people were not the good guys). But everyone quickly believed in my self-proclaimed status as Dracula’s great-great-great-granddaughter. That was, however, the more controversial claim, as many historians believe Jusztina was childless, while others contend she did have a son, ignominiously known as Vlad Drakwlya, or Vlad the Pretender. Regardless, Vlad remains on my family tree.
Nobody was surprised by my vampiric heritage. And to be honest, I’d always somewhat connected with the legend of Dracula—he loves to sleep all day and stay up all night, as do I. He always has dark under-eye circles, which I do, too. And he was misunderstood—this I was told often as a child. The real-life inspiration for Dracula, Vlad Tepes, was a 15th-century count who managed to stave off the Ottoman Empire with one-fifth of the troops and even fewer resources. His scare tactics were, of course, the stuff of legend: impaling enemies on stakes, attacking in the middle of the night—medieval guerrilla warfare gone berserk.
Vlad eventually lost to the Turks and lost the support of the nobility, too, who favored his Ottoman-supporting brother. Dracula literally means “son of the devil” in Romanian, so it was probably extra insulting when his brother, known, incredibly, as Radu the Handsome, took the throne. Vlad was then imprisoned in Hungary for 12 years, but that wasn’t his last act (a likely story for the notoriously undead). He mounted an army and briefly reclaimed power once more against similarly improbable odds, only to die in battle a few months later.
This was 1476, and centuries later, his legend strikes fear in the hearts of his enemies (notably, decent people and children, in popular Hollywood depictions) but inspires loyalty amongst his countrymen. Dracula fought off the Turks, fending off invasion from a larger, more powerful nation—caught between Asia and Europe, it’s always one battle after another in Romania. Or that’s what I was told. And imagined. Which is why I had to see this mythic land for myself.
Embarrassingly, I could have visited in high school, when the rest of my family went on a pilgrimage. We’d embarked on a road trip across Eastern Europe, and I had decided—in all my 19-year-old wisdom—that I’d fly home from Istanbul to go to Bermuda with my college boyfriend. I thought I’d be able to visit Romania one day soon. Alas, the college relationship didn’t last, but my shame and guilt at not having visited my homeland when I had the chance were much more enduring. I’ve returned to Bermuda four times in the decades since, but my trip to Romania this past spring marked my 104th country as a travel writer. But how did I visit 103 countries before that, and still not return to my ancestral home? What kind of Dracula descendant was I?
When I boarded my flight to Bucharest, I imagined Romania would be cast in the bleak, muted tones I associated with the former Communist Bloc—if popular culture depicts Mexico bathed in sepia, Eastern Europe is shown enshrouded in shades of gray. Plus, I was going to the birthplace of the undead—I’d be forgiven for assuming a bit of pallor would hang in the air. When my siblings had returned from their maiden voyage to the motherland in 2006, they recounted wanton poverty and depressing snapshots of rural destitution; people cooking over open fires along the road and a general sense of decay. And that said something, as we’d spent the weeks prior delayed at the Serbia-Bosnia border, where you could report corruption or crimes by calling some international number.
I’ve imagined Romania as a place of valiant struggle. My maniacal monarch ancestor was in power nearly 600 years ago, and since his bloodthirsty game of thrones, his descendants managed to survive in Transylvania for centuries before (some of us) arrived in Trenton. Key word: survive. Driving away from the airport, the hotel driver handed me a tiny Romanian flag and two nips of țuică as I settled into the back—he had an impressive stockpile of both in a tidy cardboard box on the seat beside him. (Family holidays had prepared me for the sheer volume of plum brandy I’d consume in the following days.)
I was unprepared for the view outside my window: manicured city parks, outdoor cafes along cobblestone streets and stately boulevards. I’d imagined a smattering of warehouses and Brutalist buildings—the most depressing style, in my opinion. I was shocked by the beauty of the city’s Beaux-Arts and Belle Époque architecture that earned the city its nickname of Micul Paris, or “Little Paris”—there’s even a matching Arcul de Triumf.
I shared my thoughts with my driver, Alex: that I didn’t think Bucharest would be so pretty, and I had pictured it a bit darker and gloomier. And, to be honest, a bit …
“Less safe!” Alex gleefully cut in. (He was the first of several Alex/Alix and Alexeis/Alexandrus I would meet on my trip. My brother, also named Alex, joked about naming his firstborn child Vlad—maybe he’s the most Romanian, after all.)
“And you thought it would be less clean!” Romanian Driver Alex laughed. “Bucharest is the safest capital in all of Europe now, you can leave your purse anywhere, no one touches it.”
I’d envisioned Romania as a downtrodden, yet proudly recovering, nation in flux. My grandparents were celebrated for getting out of the country—in one instance, stowing away aboard a steel ship for America.
“Well, after Ceaușescu, Romania’s a democracy now,” Alex told me. “But still, no one ever likes their government.”
The very name, Ceaușescu, evoked a feeling of wickedness and evil. I knew this man was depraved before I knew about much else. The last communist dictator of Romania, he kept his subjects drugged and impoverished. His 1989 execution was the climax of the Romanian Revolution—he and his wife were assassinated by firing squad on Christmas Day. My father went to Romania the following year, when I was a toddler, securing a writing assignment for a regional newspaper.
Visiting Ceaușescu’s Spring Palace (Palatul Primăverii) was eerie and unsettling—his name was invoked as a bogeyman for so long (a true Dracula, of sorts) that entering through the unassuming exterior of his deceptively enormous, opulent mansion felt like walking into the true haunted house. He poisoned his subjects, tried to keep them incapacitated and uneducated. Under his communist rule, people struggled for a loaf of bread, and yet he lived in the utmost luxury—peacocks strolled the balconies, Murano crystal chandeliers lit the halls, and an indoor swimming pool was adorned with mosaics. But even here, in this testament to past atrocities, my Romanian hosts were breezy.
“If you want, you can sit out here,” the museum docent, Roxana Iliescu, told me with a smile, gesturing around the executed dictator’s manicured courtyard. “Have a drink, a cigarette—whatever you like.”
I recognized this live-and-let-live—or die and stay undead—attitude from my own family, and from my guide, Robert Ivanescu, the next day: “Here, we believe in the wisdom of an old Romanian proverb: you don’t know what’s inside someone else’s house.” (Unless it’s Ceaușescu’s, of course.)
It’s been less than 40 years since the Romanian Revolution, and Therme Bucharest, the largest indoor spa and botanical garden in Europe, is undoubtedly one of the biggest signifiers of the country’s turn toward modernity and capitalism. I was excited to experience the hedonism and body positivity I’ve always associated with this region of Eastern Europe: the swim-up pool featured an extensive cocktail menu, and house music played after the sun went down.
A stern, rotund and overly tanned man with gray hair and a matching gray Speedo lectured me about the correct method for entering and departing the Himalayan salt baths before offering me a cigarette and a beer. I felt, in short, quite at home.
“You have true Romanian roots and Transylvanian blood,” Alexandru Ciobâcă, Therme’s manager, told me over a shot of țuică. “In this country, we have a saying: ‘Eventually, everyone steps on the land where they belong.’”
Though I’d been excited about this visit, I’d never quite imagined the warm welcome I would receive as a visitor. Nor did I imagine I’d be embraced as a long-lost daughter who’d blessedly returned.
While American roots tourism has become a million-dollar industry for countries like Italy and Ireland, it’s far less common in Romania. That’s partially because the diaspora is relatively tiny—there are only about 500,000 Americans with Romanian heritage (versus 31 million for Irish ancestry)—as well as the lack of records and destruction under communist rule. And Romania remains less popular as a tourist destination, with remote rural communities and language barriers that can be challenging even for the most determined travelers.
Those challenges became more apparent as I drove out into the Transylvanian countryside, where I was preparing to make the most meaningful pilgrimage of my trip: to Bran Castle, the former residence of my dearly beloved forefather, Vlad the Impaler. Driving across the rolling foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, across ancient villages and medieval fortresses, I was stunned by the beauty and serenity of the Transylvanian countryside. Far from the haunting, forbidding forests and ghostly towns of vampire movies and ghost stories, the Transylvanian Alps most resembled the mountains of Austria. “In the countryside, we call pălincă the elixir of life,” said Ivanescu, approving of my mid-day cocktail, a double-distilled cherry liqueur.
The blood-colored liqueur was the perfect pregame for my arrival in Bran Village, where the spookiness and horror of Romanian folklore and mythology are celebrated and memorialized. Built into a 200-foot rock face by the Saxons in 1377, the Gothic spires of the castle loom over the town below like a dark fairytale. Arriving in Bran Village was like entering a town where it is permanently Halloween—or a living museum to Magyar family pride. It seemed like everyone in Transylvania took the same delight in the region’s spooky reputation as my father, who proudly donned a Dracula T-shirt beneath his button-downs at our fancy beach club in the summertime, revealing a ghoulish illustration of his terrifying forefather surrounded by stakes. Here, I could find stakes and coffins and plush kid toys—bats, werewolves and more. “A Smile from Transylvania” spelled in blood-soaked fangs was a particularly popular T-shirt motif—as was, serendipitously (or was it fate?) a hoodie emblazoned, simply, with the words “New Jersey.” Surprisingly, and fittingly, it was the only American-themed merchandise I found in this morbidly medieval wonderland.
Cafes serve Bull’s Blood, a sweet Romanian red varietal known as Sânge de Taur, and the castle throws one of Europe’s largest Halloween festivals every October—a haunted house with a DJ set playing until 4 a.m., the perfect combination of hedonism and kitsch, appealing to little kids and techno-loving adults in celebration of the nation’s most important season of the year. “They say Bran Castle is royalty by day, wicked by night,” said Ivanescu, weaving between Dracula impersonators meandering through the alleys with wooden stakes and long, dark wigs.
The castle is a tribute to the lore and fear inspired by Vlad’s reign. The interior boasts wooden thrones, ancient torture devices and ghostly reenactments of vampiric legends. Ghost tours and local legends are viewed with pride in Transylvania—as is the most infamously nefarious vampire of all: Vlad Țepeș. When I told a castle attendant I was related to the former resident, he gasped and welcomed me inside with a handshake and a smile. “Dracula is the only reason we’re not speaking Turkish right now,” he said, ushering me up a narrow stone staircase.
Ancient legends abound in Transylvania to this day—strigoi and moroi are vampires unleashed every year on November 29 for Saint Andrew’s Eve, or “Romanian Halloween.” This is the night when the undead roam the earth, and werewolves emerge under the command of their patron, Saint Andrew. Rather than trick-or-treating, villagers stay home practicing ancient protective rituals—rubbing garlic on doors to ward off vampires, placing basil beneath their pillows to manifest a love affair. While many in Transylvania believe these old customs and superstitions, they’re also equally ready for a laugh about it all—disarmingly self-deprecating while maintaining Romanian pride in the same manner my father jokes about Vlad the Impaler. Or, for that matter, the state of New Jersey. Blood is, perhaps, thicker than
That evening, I partook in another Romanian tradition for the final night of my trip—shots of țuică at the beginning, middle and end of dinner. “Here, we know how to drink,” Ivanescu remarked, raising his glass. “My father told me: you have to learn how to drink alcohol, and if not, the alcohol drinks you.” (A sentiment shared by both sides of my family—even my WASPy grandmother.) We dined on stuffed cabbage rolls (sarmale), a feast that reminds me of Colinda, Romanian Christmas, with my father’s family. “It’s not an occasion if there isn’t sarmale,” noted Ivanescu. Maybe I truly was home.
Though a forbidding rain cloud hovered on the horizon, the storm was kept at bay. “Your heritage is keeping the rain away,” said Ivanescu. “We lucked out.” And I did feel lucky: proud to be Transylvanian, and prouder, still, to have returned. “This place is your home,” he told me. “It may not be Ibiza, but it’s your place.”
May my undead spirit return forever.
