Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 446 Brown Castle
As the plane landed at Otopeni Airport in Bucharest, Liang En and Joan of Arc finally set foot on the territory of Romania a week after they got a castle.

After arriving in Bucharest, Liang En originally planned to take a stroll here, but he found that the city was more dilapidated than expected, and the law and order were not very good.

Compared with some cities in Western Europe, this city is obviously a bit depressed and dilapidated. Except for a few new buildings, the whole city as a whole seems to have stayed more than 30 years ago.

So after simply looking at a few representative attractions like the Romanian Parliament Bow or the Old Town of Bucharest, they rented a car and left here to go straight to their goal: Brown in Brasov County, Transylvania. castle.

This place is not far from Bucharest, the capital of Romania, 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 Carpathian Mountains. After World War I, it became part of Romania because of the Treaty of Trianon signed in 1920.

Although surrounded by the flourishing European civilization, it refuses the influence of modern technology. The wilderness and mountains are full of natural style, and the beautiful lakes and mountains are like the peach blossoms we yearn for.

When it comes to those ancient and grand festivals, the locals will dress up and attend various ceremonies, which is very lively.

Before Liang En and the others met when they were traveling in Romania, all the locals would tell them without exception: You must go to Transylvania to see it, where the style of the European Middle Ages is well preserved.

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 extraordinarily tall, and the surrounding mountaintops were covered with snow.

Brown Castle is a castle with a very old history. 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 is in a document signed by the King of Hungary in 1377, approving the local Saxons to build a castle and building a castle with stones on the basis of the original fortress.In order to resist the attack of the Turks.

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 the Principality of Wallachia, whose alias was Dracula, which means devil.

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

For example, he likes to impale people, that is, nail a sharpened wooden stake on the ground, sit and poke a living person on it, and use the body's own weight to slowly sink, like a skewered meat.

In the end the stake came all the way out of the mouth.Executed corpses were also displayed on stakes for several days until they decomposed and turned into skeletons, as an example to others.

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

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

Unable to stand this provocation, King Maimaiti II personally led an army of [-] to fight back. As a result, on the marching road, he saw a large "forest" from a distance. When he approached, he realized that the two thousand animals had rotted and even turned into skeletons. Turk corpses.

The Turkish army was forced to pass through the "forest", and the horrible scene can be imagined.The morale of the Turks was destroyed at once, and the troops had to be withdrawn in a hurry.

Since then, "vampire" and "Piercing Lord" have become nicknames for Dracula.Under his strict rule, the Principality of Wallachia at that time did become a strong and united country, but his brutality also made enemies everywhere.

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

This is actually a feature of the entire Transylvania region, from Central and Eastern Europe to the Balkans, especially where the Ottomans ruled in the past. There are a lot of folklore, such as vampires, old witches and even wild hunting.

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

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

What is particularly interesting is that there is a phenomenon in this area that is absolutely not found in other regions, that is, many people feel that their religious items are not easy to use, and then borrow items from other religious believers to use them.

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

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 had imagined, the castle didn't look so scary. Walking from the parking lot to the foot of the mountain, there were some simple stalls on both sides of the short road of tens of meters, and some tourists walked among the stalls. come and go.

Like the cheap tourist spots all over the world, the tourist stalls here also sell products that can be seen at a glance with a high probability that they are purchased from a wholesale market.

After a simple inquiry, Liang En learned that there were too many legends about vampires in the entire Eastern European region, and this castle was not very prominent, so it could only be a cheap tourist attraction.

In addition, the [-] tourists a year mentioned earlier is just the best year, not the average number. According to Liang En's inquiry, the average number of tourists a year is only about [-].

This also explained why the other party prepaid the land tax and maintenance fees for a whole year in advance. Obviously, this was to compensate Liang En.

Fortunately, Liang En had already guessed such a pitfall before, so he was not 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 up 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 dropped 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 thoughtful. At least to Liang En, the city gate seems to have been there in the first place, and there is no trace of adding it later.

(End of this chapter)