Touring Dracula's lands

I've always wanted to take a trip to Dracula country and to travel Central and Eastern Europe, from Prague to Budapest to Bucharest. The travel guides line the bookcase behind me. Life always got in the way of the dream, however. Some day, though, I will travel in the land of Count Dracula. Freelance writer Eric Lindburg did and recounts his trip to Transylvania and the Ottoman Empire in The Kansas City Star:

BRAN, ROMANIA — The old Gypsy woman at Dracula’s castle looks hard into my face as she divines my fortune: “You will travel many places, always looking,” she says in broken English. “But is better you stay close to home and have longer life.” Sitting in the kitschy Dracula Bazaar deep in the heart of Transylvania, I wonder whether buying a garlic braid in the next shop might be a life-extending investment for the darkness approaching. Or maybe I’ll spend my final hours dancing the night away at Dracula Disco just down the road.