Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

As the plane landed at Otopeni Airport in Bucharest, Liang En and Jeanne finally set foot on Romanian soil a week after getting a castle.

After arriving in Bucharest, Liang En originally planned to take a stroll here, but found that the city was more run-down than expected, and the security was not very good.

Compared with some Western European cities, this city obviously looks a little depressed and dilapidated. Except for a few new buildings, the entire city seems to have stayed more than thirty years ago.

So after briefly visiting a few representative attractions such as the Romanian Parliament Bow or the Old Town of Bucharest, they rented a car and left here and went straight to their goal: Brown, located in Brasov County, Transylvania. castle.

This place is not far from Bucharest, the capital of Romania, only about 170km, but they need to cross the South Carpathian Mountains.

After crossing the mountains, the land of Transylvania appeared in front of Liang En and the others. Unlike the other side of the mountains, Transylvania retained more of the oldest appearance of this land.

Transylvania is located in the heart of Europe, west of the Eastern Carpathians. After World War I, it became part of Romania due to the Treaty of Trianon signed in 1920.

Although it is surrounded by the flourishing European civilization, it refuses to be influenced by modern technology. The wilderness and mountains are full of natural charm, and the beautiful lakes and mountains are like the peach blossom garden we yearn for.

If it comes to those ancient and grand festivals, local people will dress up in costumes to attend various ceremonies, making it very lively.

The local people Liang En and the others met during their previous trip to Romania would all tell them without exception: You must go to Transylvania to see it, which has preserved the European medieval style intact.

Because they set off in the morning, it was only noon when they arrived at the small town of Brown under the castle. Under the sunlight, the castle on the rock looked particularly tall, and the surrounding mountaintops were covered with snow.

Brown Castle is a very ancient castle, its history can be traced back to the wooden fortress built here by the Teutonic Knights in 1212.

The earliest official written record of Brown Castle was in a document signed by the King of Hungary in 1377, approving the local Saxons to build a castle and build a castle with stone on the basis of the original fortress. To resist the Turkish attack.

The castle was completed in 1382, and in the following years it gradually became a political center integrating military, customs, local administration, and justice.

Historically, this castle once belonged to Prince Vlad Tepes of Wallachia, whose alias was Dracula, which means the devil.

However, he was not bloodthirsty, but devoted himself to developing the country from 1456 onwards. At that time, the Principality of Wallachia was oppressed by the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Dracula led his troops to fight bravely and invincibly, but his only shortcoming was his suspicious and cruel nature.

For example, he likes to punish people by piercing, which is to nail a sharpened wooden stake to the ground, poke the living person into it, and use the weight of the human body to slowly sink, just like a skewer.

Eventually the stake kept coming out of his mouth. The executed corpse would be displayed on a stake for several days until it rotted and turned into a skeleton, as a warning to others.

Dracula once drove the Turks to the south bank of the Danube River and captured two thousand Turkish soldiers. He ordered all two thousand prisoners to be executed at stake.

At that time, the Sultan of the Ottoman Turkish Empire was the famous Mamet II, the one who captured Constantinople at the age of 21 and destroyed the Byzantine Empire for thousands of years.

Unable to stand this provocation, Maimaiti II personally led an army of 100,000 to fight back. As a result, on the march, he saw a large "forest" in the distance. When he got closer, he discovered that the two thousand bodies had rotted or even become skeletons. of Turkish corpses.

The Turkish army was forced to pass through the "forest", and the horrific scene can be imagined. The morale of the Turks was instantly destroyed, and they had to withdraw in a hurry.

Since then, "Vampire" and "The Impaler" have become Dracula's nicknames. Under his harsh rule, the then principality of Wallachia did become a strong and united country, but his brutality also made enemies everywhere.

In 1462, Dracula was killed in the war with the Ottoman Turks. The subjects soon forgot the peace and contentment he brought to the people, only remembering his cruel punishment, and local legends about vampires were derived.

This is actually a characteristic of the entire Transylvania region, from Central and Eastern Europe to the Balkans, especially where the Ottomans ruled in the past. There are many folklores, such as vampires, old witches and even the Wild Hunt.

Even hundreds of years ago, these legends were not just legends, people actually believed that these dangerous creatures would attack humans, and for this reason they would carry various religious items with them.

At that time, there were believers of various religions in the area, and each religion developed something to target these monsters, and those believers would wear these religious objects to protect themselves.

What is particularly interesting is that there is a local phenomenon that is absolutely not found in other areas, that is, many people feel that their own religious items are not easy to use, and then borrow items from other religious believers for use.

However, although these legends are widely circulated in the local area, except for a few of them, most of them are only circulated locally. Few outsiders know about them, and only some tourists who have been here know about them.

However, since a Polish game company made a game based on these Central and Eastern European legends as the background and design source, these contents suddenly became popular.

Different from what Liang En and the others imagined, the castle didn't look that scary. Walking from the parking lot to the foot of the mountain, the short road of a few dozen meters was lined with some simple stalls, and some tourists were walking among the stalls. Come and go.

Like cheap tourist spots all over the world, the tourist stalls here sell products that you can tell at a glance are most likely to be purchased from a certain wholesale market.

After a simple inquiry, Liang En learned that there were too many legends about vampires throughout Eastern Europe, and this castle was not very prominent, so it could only become a cheap tourist attraction.

In addition, the 40,000 tourists a year mentioned before is only the best year and not the average. According to the results of Liang En's inquiry, the average number of tourists a year is only about 20,000.

This also explains why the other party paid a whole year's land tax and maintenance fees in advance. Obviously this was to compensate Liang En.

Fortunately, Liang En had already guessed this kind of trick before, so he didn't feel disappointed. So after walking around the town for a while, Liang En and the others climbed up the stairs from the foot of the mountain and walked upwards for more than a hundred meters to the gate of the castle.

In the Middle Ages, the castle had no doors at all, and only a rope ladder was thrown down from the south side for people to enter and exit. The current road and the city gate were actually built in the 17th century.

However, the design of the city gate and the road in front of the city gate is indeed very careful. At least to Liang En, the city gate seems to have been there originally, with no trace of subsequent additions at all.