Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Hello, Hello. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Mallory's Weird World Adventures, the podcast. I'm your host, Mallory.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: And I'm your host, Michael.
[00:00:12] Speaker A: And we're here to show you just how weird this world of ours really is. If this is your first time tuning in, be sure to check out mallorysadventures.com. that's M A L O R I E S adventures dot com. Find us on Instagram @mallorysadventures, and you can find us on TikTok. Mallorymackey. What are your socials, Michael? We've done this before.
He doesn't have them.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: I have an instagram that is meldonadomd3. That's M A L D O N A d o m d 3.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: Thanks for the sass.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: No problem.
And I have a Facebook that I've had since college. Mike Maldonado.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: It's weird when people personally friend you, though, right?
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't have any, like.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Like, no page.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: I don't have a page.
It happens, you know.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: Will you help me?
[00:01:01] Speaker B: I've got a LinkedIn, you know, my resume on it.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Right. You know, go to the Facebook, Weird World Adventures. And Michael will be there.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Yeah, that's probably the easiest way, honestly, is just to go to the Mallory's Adventure stuff. And I'm prominently featured.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Yeah, you are not that prominent.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm occasionally. I'm occasionally involved.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: You had a big shout out today.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Yeah, you did.
So I'm very excited for everyone because Weird World Adventures Season 2 is releasing on Amazon prime this fall.
Make sure you watch season one of Weird World Adventures on Amazon prime right now. And two's coming out in the fall. So we're gonna do a countdown to.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Season two, also available for free streaming now.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: It is. Season one is available for free on Roku TV through the Fawesim app. So you can watch it just online through Fossum, or you can also go on Roku and watch it that way.
Excellent, Excellent. So the first episode of season two, do you know what it is?
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I was there.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: All right, tell us about it.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: You tell us about it.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: All right, fine, Mallory. It's called Traversing Transylvania, where we investigate the myths and legends of Transylvania.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun dun.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: I can honestly say that Romania was at the top of my bucket list until I went there, and it did not disappoint.
It was beautiful too, by the way.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: Yes. The Romanian countryside was very idyllic.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: Yes. We were driving at one point through Cluj Napoca down to Brasov in That area. And we kind of went on this little mini road trip. And it's so green, very green. There's so many fields and all these beautiful settings, and it's just not what you think of when you think of Transylvania.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: I think of dark woods with wolves chasing me out of Dracula's castle when I think of Transylvania.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: And I don't think there's really any wolves there either.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: No. We were warned about bears many times.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: I thought it was a joke.
When we picked up the rental car at the airport, the rental car guy was like, watch out for bears. This guy's just.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: We thought he was kidding.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: This guy's just messing with us.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: Yeah. When we first got there, we got a rental car. The guy said that he thought it was a joke. And then we were given the opportunity to kind of move through the grounds of Bran Castle after everybody left after hours and kind of do our own thing. And the person that we were interviewing, he even said, make sure you're really careful about the bears. There's a lot of bears out here.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: Didn't you?
I got lost.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Yeah. You went to pee, right?
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: And somehow ended up outside of the castle.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: So he was like, take the third left, and that's the bathroom. And then you're just gone for, like, 20 minutes. I was like, what is happening? And you're. You're. This is after hours, too. We were there after hours doing the evening interview and tour, and you're just gone. I'm just in the courtyard with the dude.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: What happened?
Well, I overanalyzed everything aggressively.
And he said it was something like the third room on the right or whatever it was. And it was down the stairs. You're going twisting down the stairs and then finding the third room. And I think one of the rooms was like, is this a room? Is it a closet? I became really hypercritical about it. And instead of actually finding the bathroom, the room.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: It's not so much a room as a foyer. I'm gonna skip this one.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: I really had trouble with that. And then I wound up the door I chose let me outside. And I thought, oh, well, maybe he meant that it's outside. There's bathrooms outside. Right.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: I do like that you even saw that you're going outside. You're like, this is probably right.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: And I walked out, like, 20 or 30ft and realized, there are no bathrooms out here. I should go back in.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Just castle battlements.
[00:05:05] Speaker A: And then I had to retrace my steps up the stairs. And then, like, okay, so it should Be the next door. I see. Then should be the right door.
[00:05:12] Speaker B: Speaking of castle battlements, you wrote an article about the old school shitters in castles, right?
[00:05:18] Speaker A: I did. It's like a poop chute from the.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: Top of the towers. It's like a hole you poop in.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: It just falls out from there. So leading up to Transylvania, I spent a couple of weeks in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and we went to Karlstein Castle. It's like one of the big famous ones in the Czech Republic, or Czechia, I guess it's called now. And they have one. It's like a wooden room, Ish. Kind of built, just proceeding out from the castle. And there's just a hole to nowhere. So you would kind of move in this little, like, shack that's, like, protruding from the castle and poop just down it and it would splat outside.
Great hygiene back then.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: Did you try it?
[00:06:10] Speaker A: No.
They did seal it up so no one could try it.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: Yeah, Someone would definitely try it, right?
[00:06:16] Speaker A: Oh, definitely.
Yes, absolutely.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: Blat out is a good graphic. Thank you for that.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: You're welcome. There's not a lot of those still left. I feel like they kind of just removed them from castles more.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: Yeah, we don't need castle poop chutes anymore. We have toilets.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: It's true.
And it also. That was a really interesting castle because it had the poop chute toilet.
And then it had three towers, and they were all connected by wooden bridges on one level. So you could only get from tower to tower by one level of the castle.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: So you had to go to floor four or whatever, you know, to, like, move through and cross through.
Yes. And the reason. What, the reason why was because if there was an invasion, I was gonna.
[00:07:06] Speaker B: Say it has to be defensive.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Yes. They would burn them and they would. They would burn away. And then you were safe in your tower. That popped really loud.
Funny.
Michael, over here. Popping cans.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: Popping cans. Just a diet Dr. Pepper.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: Mm. Mm.
But yeah, so you would burn the bridge quite literally. I mean, I wonder if that's where the saying came from. You would burn the bridge, burn your bridges, and then you would be on one side. So whatever tower you in was. Was fortified then at that point.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: And thank God I've got this poop chute here now that I'm stuck in my tower.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: All right. Yeah, see, I see how it works.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: Now this is going to be in episode one, also the side excursion.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: Yes.
It'll have some of the weirdest things that we saw in is the poop shoot. In it now it has to be. I definitely have poop shoot footage and now it has to be.
And we spent a lot of time in Prague and there's some really weird stuff in Prague.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: I was not there for the Prague portion of this episode and trip, but I have been to Prague and it's.
It's weird and beautiful.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: Yes.
And it has a museum of alchemist of old Prague.
And it has the craziest. Just reimagined scenes of like ritual sacrifice. It's very cool. I was. I walked in like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna love this place.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Isn't the famous Bohemian king Wincelosis. Isn't he from one of the famous Christmas carols?
[00:08:45] Speaker A: Maybe old St. Wincelosis.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: It's like that dude, I think.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Really?
[00:08:49] Speaker B: I think so.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: Wow.
I do love. I love that. That whole area.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: You see, I might be butchering this pronunciation of that name, by the way.
It's like one of the big main streets. And he's got a big statue at the end.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:09:04] Speaker B: I think he's. I think he's in a Christmas. One of the Christmas carols randomly, which is odd to me. But Prague was the seat of the Holy Roman Emperor. Twice. Holy Roman Empire twice.
[00:09:15] Speaker A: Wow. I don't think I knew that.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: Really. Two different times in history. It was.
It's a weird city because it's very secular now. It's very atheistic now.
[00:09:26] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Because it got fought over for so many centuries by multiple different religious sects. Just, you know, every time a new one would come in and everyone else just gets massacred. Right. And then Soviet Union had it.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: So they also don't like communism because they were treated terr. It's like a city that has been treated terribly so many times throughout hundreds of years of history that I think they're just.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: They're in it for themselves.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Did you see the pond with the giant middle finger sculpture in it?
Facing. I think it's facing Russia. Like facing what would have been the Russian side. Like the Russian side of the communist side of.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: That's really funny.
There are some weird sculptures in Prague too. There's one of a man hanging from the side of a building.
There's a mummified arm in a cathedral in Prague.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Is it the Charles Bridge? Charles Bridge, where they had a bunch of heads on it back in the day. They executed a bunch of people and stacked the heads along the bridge. That's a good bridge.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Because King Charles. That's why Carlstein the castle was his seat. Oh, yeah, Got it. And it Was cool because it had.
The throne room is not what you would expect it to be because his chair is positioned really awkwardly in between two large windows so that he was backlit and dramatic, so that you would go in and he would look intimidating and you couldn't look the king in the eyes.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: I like that. I'm gonna have to set that up in my office. Just be all backlit and dramatic.
[00:10:53] Speaker A: Like, low lighting. Lots of windows behind me, so you're.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: Kind of squinting in my direction. I can see you fine. All dramatically backlit.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: It was done to instill fear.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: That's how I like to live my life.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
We're also gonna feature very briefly, they won't love me.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: They'll fear me. Mallory.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: That's the way to go.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, fear can go a long way.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: Mm.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: Mm.
And there's. We also feature briefly, the labyrinth under Buda Castle.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: I've never been there.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: You know, I. It was just on my bucket list to go to Budapest. Really? Just because it's Budapest.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: I didn't realize it all the time. It's two different cities.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: You see two cities?
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: Buda and Pest.
And there was actually a third that was so irrelevant, it kind of. Wow.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: Don't even get in the name. Wow.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: And then they eventually merged into Budapest. But it's crazy to see how dramatically different the two sides of the city are, because one is Buda and one is Pest, and Buddha's up on a hill, and it's kind of nice. That's where all the museums are, and it's very pretty. And the castle's there, and then Pest is very flat, and that's where like, the parties happen.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Oh, I'm team Pest.
[00:12:05] Speaker A: I'm team Buddha.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: Well, we are on two different wavelengths.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: We're gonna fight now. Yeah.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: And the I'm team Whatever the third sect city was.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Gosh, I wish I remember Whatever doesn't even get mentioned.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: Not even an honorable mention.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: I'm gonna pull it up.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: Oh, please do.
It's quite a digression. For the Romania episode, it was Obuda. Obuda, Obuda. Oh, well, that's how I got. You can't have a Buddha attached to an obuddha.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: It means old Buddha. So that makes sense. Right?
Got rolled into Buddha. We just dropped the O, but we were walking through the area by Buddha Castle, and then there's just this big, like, labyrinth under Buddha Castle. I'm like, we have to go into the prisons of the castle. That sounds great. And it's turned into this dramatic adventure. Like, it's a gimmick. Right. It's a tourist trap now. And you're going through where the prisons used to be, and there's a point where there's no lights and you have to, like, feel your way through the walls to get through it in, like, a maze, which is way more frightening than it sounds. And unfortunately, it doesn't really work in modern times because everybody has a cell phone with a light. And I saw at least a dozen people go, screw this. And, you know, just take out their phone light. I'm not doing this. And took out their phone light.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: But it's cool because if you make it through all the way in the back, they have a staged cell where it's not. I don't think it's the exact cell. They don't know where the exact cell was, but it's staged to look like it. Where Vlad Tepes was held because he was actually arrested by the King of Hungary.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: Tell us about Vlad Tepes. You haven't even gotten to the Vlad text.
[00:13:55] Speaker A: I know the good stuff. So the meat of the episode, we start in Cluj Napoca. We get to go to the Salina Turtle salt mine, which is very cool, really.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: Amusement park in an old salt mine.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: It's a very deep salt mine.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: Yes. You just keep going down.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: It was like, 15 flights down. Something like that.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:14:15] Speaker B: And then that's to the top of the park. And then you're like another 10 down, down. And then there's an even lower level with the boats down in, like, a river where you can take a boat. Not a river, a pond where you.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: Can take a boat ride in the lake.
[00:14:32] Speaker B: In the very, very bottom of the soul line.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: Yeah, that was. That was very cool.
And we did that before hopping on the Mystery of Vlad Tepes's footprint in Transylvania. And, you know, naturally, he was the inspiration for Dracula.
[00:14:49] Speaker B: Vlad the Impaler.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: Yes. Vlad Tepes is Vlad the Impaler. He was the Prince of Wallkia, which doesn't exist anymore.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Yes. The way of Obuda.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Yeah, went the way of Obuda. So he actually never was the ruler over Romania or Transylvania. It was Wallachia.
And he.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Do you know where Wallachia would be?
[00:15:12] Speaker A: Let's see.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: What would have absorbed that region?
Modern.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: In modern times, Waliakia today is a southern area.
Romania. Yeah. By the Danube. So they were different countries at the time and different kingdoms.
And he.
His. His legacy is so bizarre because a lot of people in Romania see him as a hero. You know, we think of Vlad Tepes. And we think Dracula, we think, you know, Vlad the Impaler just destroying all these people and impaling them and doing all this crazy shit and drinking human blood.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Hero.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: Yeah, hero.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: And they are full on. This man is a hero. And it was in Sighisoara where we first stopped, because that was where he was born.
And the reason why Dracula's castle is called Dracula's Castle is because it was en route between Sighisoara, where he was born, and. And where Wallachia would have been.
And we're in his birthplace. And just vendors on the street are, oh, here's, you know, we have the Tepish dragon family coins from our hero. He's a real hero to us. The man telling us the coins was very, like, positive about that.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: They unironically consider him a hero.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: Yes, very passionately so. And it just. Just going to his birthplace and experiencing the weird old kind of creepy ambiance that was more Transylvanian to me than Dracula's castle because it was a little dark. It was really pretty on a hill. But then it had this covered bridge that went from the ground level up to a church on a hill. And it would kind of just let you out near the cemetery up there.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: It felt.
Yeah, the cemetery church at the very top. It's essentially a walled town village. I don't even know if you would call it a town.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: It was the old city center.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: Yeah, that's elevated. So it's clearly there to be defensible. I mean, it's like where you would build a small town settlement to defend it easily. It had a very tiny paved road getting in and out through a gate, just like in olden times, one car at a time.
But, yeah, you'd go in there, and it's just a small, almost walled off town on top of a hill, but with limited ways to get in and out of it. And then at the very top of that, even within the town, it's kind of elevated upward into the middle.
And then the cemetery church is at the topmost point of this elevated.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: And you have to get there through this creepy covered bridge. That looks like something you'd see on Scooby Doo.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: Definitely.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: Great stuff.
We were eating dinner one night on this patio of this restaurant, and it just out of nowhere starts thunderstorming aggressively. So we're kind of, you know, in Vlad Tepes's birthplace, and there's this creepy covered bridge right next to us, and it's just pouring, and there's thunder and lightning, and it was Very perfectly thematic. And we just sat there through the thunderstorm because we had an umbrella around, and then afterwards wandered up the covered bridge and somehow accidentally wound up in the cemetery at nighttime.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: I feel like that happens to you all the time.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: It does.
It's like living my Scooby Doo fantasies. Right.
[00:18:42] Speaker B: I never really watched Scooby Doo. I know you love it so much. I just.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: So disappointed.
Scooby Doo is where I think I initially got my love of, like, monsters and weird stuff, but it was always.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: Just a dude in a mask.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: But it was so ingrained in folklore. I mean, it covers, like, the Pepper's ghost effect that we talked about.
Yeah, it does.
Everything is, like, debunked. And it's pretty clever for a skeptical.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: Show, which I approve of. I just never watched it as a kid.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: And a lot of the legends are real legends from around the world. So they made up some of them, sure. But some of them they didn't. And it's very interesting and cool to get to see it. I don't know. It enticed me as a kid. And then I just wanted to know who did it, you know?
[00:19:27] Speaker B: So he's the old dude.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: Old man Smithers. That guy would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids. Your dog.
But what was the highlight of Sigishore, though?
[00:19:43] Speaker B: Well, I know.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: You know what I want to say.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: I know what you want to say.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: I.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: I honestly can't tell anymore if you actually think it's the highlight or if you're just messing with it.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Oh, no, it was the highlight.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: You actually think it was the highlight?
[00:19:57] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: The church in the wooden bridge or the covered walkway or the highlight.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: So there was this Dracula experience, and it was like an art exhibit, but it was interactive and it had audio and visuals and, like, movies playing and then like, these sculptured scenes that told Vlad Tepes story. And I think the idea of it was to prove that he was a hero, because at the end they said.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: And he's a substantial rewrite in some of the narratives. In the room.
In the rooms, yes.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: Because at the end they give you these little boxes that you can put as a hero or a villain.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: You put your pebble in the hero box or the villain box.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: And the hero box, by the way, was overflowing.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: They want you to be like, this man was a hero. And they sold me for the first couple rooms because you go in and, you know, he talks about how, you know, he was always at war with the Ottoman empire, and his, you know, brother was loyal to them, and he was a ward of, you know, the other kingdom, and he had this difficult time, and he wanted to take his land back. And, you know, it's a very, like, almost like Daenerys Targaryen thing. Like, oh, yeah, you're rooting for this poor guy.
And then they get to the pessimist.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: Wouldn't the brother be more reek?
[00:21:26] Speaker A: Kind of. Yeah, he's a loyalist.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: Well, it would have been the Greyjoy.
[00:21:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: Being with the. Yeah, it would be Theon with the Starks. That's. Yes, he's a prisoner.
[00:21:39] Speaker A: He's a prisoner.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: We were both prisoners. Right, right. And his brother was totally fine with it and loyal, and he was like, I'm not gonna be a prisoner here. I'm gonna take back my land. So they want you to.
To, like, you know.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: Get a. Get behind it and. And feel it. But it was. It was in the. The banquet room that everything went south, where we were. We sat down at this table, and there's a figure of Vlad Tepes, you know, sitting at the end of it with, I think, a wine glass. Very dramatic.
[00:22:10] Speaker B: Goblet.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: Yeah, goblet. Very Dracula y.
And you're like, okay, I wonder what's gonna happen here? And then it starts with, I don't really like peasants or homeless.
And you're like, oh, no, this seems like this room's not gonna end well, bro.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: You're getting canceled. You can't say that. 20, 25.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: Right.
And then he goes on to say, so he invited all of the homeless people and the peasants into a big banquet one day and gave them lavish food and drinks and then asked them, do you want to be poor or homeless for the rest of your lives?
In which they said, no.
So he burned them all alive in the banquet hall.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: Well, now you're definitely getting canceled.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: Right.
And we were looking at each other from across different sides of the table, and our faces are just so shocked and exasperated as it just keeps getting worse. We're like, oh, this isn't gonna end well. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no, no. What are you doing? What are you doing?
You can't just burn all your people alive.
Targaryens.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Yeah, but you like the Targaryens.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: I do.
Well, apparently, they're heroes in Romania. Well, yeah.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Every room after that was also not great.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: Lots of impaling.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: Mm. Yep.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, there was a room of impaled bodies. Impaled bodies?
[00:23:39] Speaker A: Yes. So it was. It was.
[00:23:41] Speaker B: I wonder why they call them badly. Impaler.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: Hmm. I wonder.
So, yeah, it was. It was an incredible experience. We'll feature that a little bit on the show. But I wanted to give you this behind the scenes, fun little banter about it, because there's a lot that won't be in it, so you get to hear that fun stuff. And then the highlight of the episode, the big meaty part of it, is when we went to Brashov and interviewed someone at Dracula's castle.
And he was great.
He was very into the legends and lore and vampires and the way he spoke about them. Felt like he really believed that there's vampires out there.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: I'm not convinced he doesn't.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: I know.
And one of the big questions that I presented, just to give you a little something, is a lot of people say that Vlad Tepes never actually went to Dracula's castle, but he never was actually there. And that is a very offensive question to them because they're immediately just there to tell you, well, that's just not true, because clearly he grew up in Sighisoara and he ruled in Wallachia. So in between, in that route where he was going back and forth, this is the castle he would stay in. So it doesn't need to be documented that he was here. He spent a lot of time here preparing for war.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: Plus, what are we gonna do with this gift shop if he wasn't here?
[00:24:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Right.
They're very adamant about that part specifically. And, you know, Bram Stoker was never actually at that castle either.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: That's also funny.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Yeah. They say that a friend went and gave the, like, design layout to him, which is interesting.
[00:25:19] Speaker B: When was Bram stoker alive?
[00:25:21] Speaker A: Late 1800s, I think. Is when he wrote Dracula.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: Is that what it is? Yeah. I don't have a good feel for that. That sounds right.
[00:25:28] Speaker A: He was born in 1847.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: And died in 1912. Yeah. Checks out. I think he wrote Dracula in the late 1800s.
[00:25:37] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: And I mean, I wish. I'm gonna have to go back and reread Dracula to kind of compare the layout of the castle with the layout in the book.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: Because I am curious.
[00:25:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Because they're very adamant about that there. But it's a great interview. It's kind of the highlight of the episode. So we're very excited to be able to share that.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: It's a beautiful castle.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:26:02] Speaker B: With a lot of very weird little hidden things. Things in it.
[00:26:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: Little hidden stairway.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: Yes.
He actually said in the interview, because I'm going back to rewatch it now for the edits. Like, this is where, you know, Dracula would go and come from, like, the living space and go behind the walls into the guest room where he would drink guest's blood.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: This guy is getting canceled all over. You can't just go creeping into a guest room. You can't have a secret peephole into your guest room.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: What if you eat the people, though?
[00:26:33] Speaker B: Well, that's like. What do you mean?
[00:26:36] Speaker A: That's what vampires do.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: I'm missing the.
As opposed to what?
Peeping Tom them.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: Only me and Jimmy, who, for those who don't know is one of my very good friends, used to have debates about them. Vampires are just kind of sexual in nature. And Jimmy's like, they're just not at all. I don't see it. And I'm like, well, if there's somebody, like, creeping in your bedroom at the middle of the night and just getting all up in your space, it's a little like, I don't know. It just has a lot of sexual undertones in a repressed Victorian time period. Right.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: If you got caught doing that.
[00:27:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: You go into jail for weird sex stuff.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: So, yes, vampires are weird sex things.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And it definitely became. There were not very many blatant sexual tones in the book Dracula, but obviously it's been in a lot of modern interpretations.
[00:27:31] Speaker B: All of them, I mean, essentially are. Have some sexiness to it. Right. That does not exist in any other monster world. Yeah. I don't remember, like, the sex scene in werewolf movies or the Mummy. I guess the Mummy has a little. I guess, like, sets off the Mummy. He's not in his. He's not in his mummy rags doing the nasty.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: No, it was like his love for someone else. Yeah, right. But it was.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: Remember that sex scene in the Blob?
[00:28:09] Speaker A: But I feel like for a very repressed Victorian time, it was probably pretty sexual.
Definitely. I mean, there's a point where he.
[00:28:18] Speaker B: Like a girl that probably showed her lower thigh.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
No.
I mean, there's even a scene where, you know, the famous scene where in the book, where is it? Van Helsing And I think Dr. Seward come in and they see, like, Dracula biting Mina. And it's when he kind of confronts them about, like, you know, don't. Don't mess with me. And he has this whole speech. It's very dramatic. And he came in there and her husband is in bed with her. And he, like, entrances the husband not to wake up while he's like, you know, sucking on his wife. There.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: Spoilers.
[00:28:54] Speaker A: If you haven't read Dracula by now, 50 plus years too late. I'm sorry.
But anyway, it was.
They had a whole section at the top of Bran Castle that covered the different mythological creatures of Romania, which I also thought was great.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: That was cool.
They had some that I had, you know, heard of. I wouldn't have been able to tell you the names of them.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Like the Lele.
[00:29:23] Speaker B: The Lele.
[00:29:25] Speaker A: That was wild. And they had a screen playing all the film adaptations of Dracula. And I was just so excited because they had a guy named Paul.
Because the Hammer Horror also created a vampire craze in London in the 60s, by the way. But the Hammer Horror Dracula movies, there were nine of them, I think, and they just got worse and worse, obviously. But it was Christopher Lee. So I'm like, well, I have to watch all of them.
And there were several of those movies where the guy's just named Paul. It's like they gave up on giving anybody new names, but it's not the same characters at all. But this guy, his name is also just Paul.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: Were they trolling you? I mean, it was like an inside joke.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: They had to be trolling you. Yes, definitely. Right? It had to be a joke. And one of them was on the screen there. And I'm like, it's a guy named Paul.
Oh, so good.
[00:30:14] Speaker B: I like the torture chamber exhibit.
Some fucked up things they did.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Wasn't there that pyramid that went in your butt?
[00:30:24] Speaker B: Yeah. They like spit roasted you on the. On the butt pyramid. Oh, yeah, we saw that. I'm not sure how that would.
Like, what do you even do with it?
[00:30:33] Speaker A: You just died. Split you in half. Yeah, it's over.
[00:30:35] Speaker B: It's not. It's not sized to look like something that's like, well, that's gonna hurt. But, you know, maybe you can get in there. That thing is just. Well, that's just gonna kill you immediately. Kill you. Right. You're gonna split in half. The thing was the size of a log.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: Pointed at the tail.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: Jam you on.
[00:30:54] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:30:54] Speaker B: Okay, well.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: And there were several that whole trip. I saw several iron maidens all over Eastern Europe.
[00:31:02] Speaker B: Yeah, you got in one.
[00:31:03] Speaker A: I did get in one. That was really not a great move because my boss dared me to do it. And I really trusted her with my life in that moment because she could have killed me.
[00:31:11] Speaker B: Yeah, we're gonna downsize. By the way.
[00:31:15] Speaker A: I stepped in and then I had a sweater on and it got caught on all the spikes.
[00:31:20] Speaker B: Who would see that coming?
[00:31:21] Speaker A: Who would have thought?
Yeah. That was pretty brutal.
But, yeah, it's gonna be a great episode. We're gonna highlight a lot of the weird stuff, spooky stuff in Eastern Europe, and specifically move through the story of Vlad Tepes's life. And you guys can decide for yourself if he's a hero.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: Definitely a hero.
[00:31:41] Speaker A: Or a villain.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: Definitely a hero.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's our.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: I put my pebble in that hero.
[00:31:48] Speaker A: I know you did. I didn't.
[00:31:50] Speaker B: I did.
[00:31:50] Speaker A: I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. After the peasant room. I have too much like Evita and can't burn the prayer.
[00:31:56] Speaker B: Gotta give them one room. Just, you know, he was young, impressionable, murderous. That, too.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: So that's going to be the highlight for that episode. That's our little sneak peek of episode one of season two of Weird World Adventures on Amazon Prime.
Yeah. And we're going to continue a series up until the release of season two, giving you little behind the scene tidbits, talking a little bit about the fun endeavors we went on filming season two of Weird World Adventures.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: Sounds good.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: Are you excited?
[00:32:31] Speaker B: I'm excited.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: I'm excited. So be sure to tune in on Amazon prime this fall, but you can watch season one now free on Roku through Fossum or on Amazon Prime.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: And check out mallorysadventures.com.
[00:32:47] Speaker B: Yeah, the promo reel is out for season two.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: It is. That's right.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: And on your Instagram.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:32:53] Speaker B: So check that out.
[00:32:54] Speaker A: If you just Google Weird World Adventure Season 2 promo, it'll come up. Okay, I've done that. So it's available there. Make sure you check it out. You can get a little sneak preview of the amazing, immense array of exciting locations we went to.
You're laughing at my vocabulary.
Yeah. Yeah.
All right, until next time, everybody. I'm your host, Mallory.
[00:33:17] Speaker B: And I'm your host, Michael.
And stay weird.
