Romania: 2 Canadians survive a night at Dracula’s Castle

BUCHAREST, Romania — All night long, a cold wind howled around the gothic castle that inspired the Dracula legend, as a Canadian brother and sister became the first people to pass the night there in 70 years.

But it wasn’t the wind that kept Robin Varma, a PhD student in political science, awake at Bran Castle in Transylvania. Rather it was the incessant chattering of his sister.

“He put the lid on his coffin so he could sleep. … He was sick of hearing me talk,” Tami Varma, an events manager from Ottawa, told The Associated Press Tuesday.

The pair outdid 88,000 people who entered a competition hosted by Airbnb to get the chance to dine and sleep at the castle in Romania, by describing how their grandfather — Devendra P. Varma, a scholar of English gothic tales and an expert in vampire lore — had visited the medieval fortress in 1971.