undead are pretty much unavoidable in Romania, a land where vampires were an integral part of folklore long before Bram Stoker took the arbitrary decision to set Dracula in Transylvania. (Stoker never visited Romania, his first draft was set in Austria and Dracula’s castle – which the novel places on the Borga pass and the tourist industry equates with the castle at Bran – was based on Cruden Castle in Aberdeenshire. The common association of epe with Dracula is just wrong, based on the coincidence that he was nicknamed ‘Drculea’ – son of Drcul – after his father was awarded the Order of the
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