The last destination of our Vlad Tepes tour was the Lake Snagov. About 40 kilometers north of Bucharest, on an island in the middle of the Lake, lays the monastery with the same name. Built around the time of Vlad the Impaler's grandfather, the monastery has become famous as the burial place of the infamous prince of Walachia, Vlad Tepes aka Dracula.
It is believed that Vlad's decapitated body (his head was sent to Istanbul so that the Sultan could prove that the prince was dead) was found in the woods around Bucharest by the monks of the Snagov monastery and brought here to be buried since both Vlad and his father had donated money to the church.
The monastery has had its fair share of bad luck: floods, earthquakes, the burning of the bridge connecting it to mainland during the 1821 revolution as well as being transformed into a prison in the 19th century.
It was a cloudy and rainy day the day we went to Lake Snagov to visit Vlad Tepes' grave. After exiting the road that leads you from Ploiesti to Bucharest, we took a small road through the forest. We put on again Dracula's OST to get into the mood...
We parked our car and a man with just one eye came to us and ask us to open the window... He looked at us gravely and we felt scared and ashamed at the same time. Scared because of his dantesque look and ashamed because of our music...
He just started laughing and saying: Dracula, Dracula... And something else in romanian. It was the creepiest part of the trip. At the end he just wanted some money for parking, but he really manage to put us in the perfect mood to see Vlad's grave which, as you see on the pictures, was awesome. It is really a special place with a peaceful atmosphere and, above all, beautiful frescos.
You have to pay to take pictures inside the monastery and, since it was our last day, we didn't have enough change to do so, so the pictures inside the monastery are taken by Fusion of horizons.
- end of the Obsession -
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