The undisputed A-lister among Transylvania’s cabaret of supernatural blood-drainers and face-eaters, Count Dracula is both a publicist’s dream and nightmare. Like Donald Trump, despite unremitting horrifying behavior, the public can’t get enough of him even after more than a century of being name-dropped in literature, TV and film.

Little known to most people is that our vampire friend is the namesake of someone with similar PR challenges, Vlad “Tepes” Dracula, the extravagantly mustachioed 15th century prince of Wallachia. Depending on which medieval gossip magazine you read, Tepes was characterized as a brutal tyrant, a hero, a traumatized child who became a psychopath, a passionate leader whose reign brought order to a region in chaos, scourge of the overwhelming forces of the Ottoman Empire and/or a textbook sadist who prolifically impaled tens of thousands of enemies.

Backpacking with Dracula is my quest to explore fact, legend and fiction (and the copious, delectable gray areas), sifting through the divergent, sometimes fantastic stories about the mercurial prince and modern confusion with the vampire.

As I peel away these layers, I’ll share my accumulated knowledge of modern day Romania, where I lived and traveled for a cumulative two years while researching multiple editions of Lonely Planet guidebooks.

My quest explores Wallachia and Transylvania, the respective homelands of the prince and the count, located in modern day Romania. This tour will focus on visiting surviving sites associated with Vlad including Transylvania’s Bran Castle, where Vlad briefly stayed (or was possibly imprisoned - it’s complicated); the ruins of his stronghold, Poenari Citadel, in Wallachia; Vlad’s boyhood home (now a restaurant) in Sighisoara; and the ruins of Wallachia’s Princely Court in Târgoviste.

Finally, I’ll delve into the various theories of Vlad’s final resting place - minus his head, which, in lieu of a Snapchat photo, we know was bagged and shipped directly to a relieved Sultan Mehmed II in Constantinople as confirmation of his death.

Vlad was like the Jack Bauer of Wallachia: patriotic almost to a fault, steadfast in defending the region from external enemies and internal provocateurs, misunderstood by co-workers and quick to punch anyone in the face that got in his way. In the surprisingly brief seven non-consecutive years of his rule (1448; 1456–1462; 1476), he staked ass and took names, using pure terror to virtually wipe out crime and corruption in his principality and, on multiple occasions, repulsed and scared the bejesus out of Ottoman invaders.

Four centuries removed from the facts, such as they were, Bram Stoker’s fictional, bloodsucking Count Dracula recast Tepes as an undead corpse reliant on the blood of the living to sustain his immortality. Though he never set foot in Romania, had Stoker made the journey he would have enjoyed a wealth of additional vampire material, being that vampires formed an integral part of the region’s extensive folklore.

Vlad Tepes died in 1476, and Bram Stoker in 1912, yet Count Dracula lives on in an extraordinary subculture of literature, TV and film. The original Dracula novel has never been out of print.

Buzz for Backpacking with Dracula:

"Leif Pettersen has sucked the life *into* the Dracula phenomenon. He mines his topic expertly, leaving no coffin unturned, weaving the hard-to-put-down narrative between his own travels in Romania and centuries past."

– David Farley, author of An Irreverent Curiosity

"Most people try to stay far away from bloodthirsty tyrants, but luckily for us, Leif Pettersen has plunged straight ahead and lived to tell this rollicking, history-rich tale. BACKPACKING WITH DRACULA offers an up-close view of the man and myth of Vlad Dracula, along with Romania past and present, all told with Pettersen's trademark wit and insight."

- Doug Mack, author of Europe on 5 Wrong Turns a Day and the upcoming The Forgotten States of Ame