Bran’s Castle and the Legend of Vlad the Impaler

I had promised my friend Silvio to take a journey to Bran’s Castle for a planned radio show on Vlad Tepes, the Romanian hero who fought successfully against the onslaught of the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century A.D.

On the way, I was surrounded by the majestic Carpathian Mountains covered with forests of blue spruce and pine. The villages, with typical Transylvanian wood and rock homes of the western Romanian province, reminded me of grandma’s cabin on a salt mountain in Wallachia, the southern province of Romania. Brown bears and wolves often visited her porch, looking for food. Wolves howled in the night, quite close for comfort, their eyes shining in the dark.
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