Travelogue: Transylvania, Romania, 2025

For years, my son has loved Dracula. The book. The old black-and-white movies. We saw Nosferatu in the theaters, and he is well acquainted with the old silent film version of the movie. And the year before, we saw it performed in a ballet. Count Dracula was his choice for “book character day” in 7th grade. When he was younger, he wandered out of the house and down the road in his hunt for vampires (which involved the police, a neighborhood search, and him walking in the door casually, wondering what all the commotion was about). I got curious after he mentioned a real medieval castle in Romania that served as the inspiration for the book and featured in the original Dracula movie, and the rest is history. We traveled on a mother/son trip to Sibiu, Romania, one of the most charming cities I’ve ever visited. 10/10 would recommend for the museums, the outdoors, the history + architecture, and the kindness of the people.