It was on the dark side of twilight when we got to Bistritz, which is a very interesting old place. Being practically on the frontier -- for the Borgo Pass leads from it into Bukovina -- it has had a very stormy existence, and it certainly shows marks of it. Fifty years ago a series of great fires took place, which made terrible havoc on five separate occasions. At the very beginning of the seventeenth century it underwent a siege of three weeks and lost 13,000 people, the casualties of the war itself being assisted by famine and disease.

Count Dracula had directed me to go to the Golden Krone Hotel, which I found, to my great delight, to be thoroughly old-fashioned, for of course I wanted to see all I could of the ways of the country.

I was evidently expected, for when I got near the door I faced a cheery-looking elderly woman in the usual peasant dress - white undergarment with a long double apron, front, and back, of coloured stuff fitting almost too tight for modesty. When I came close she bowed and said, "The Herr Englishman?"

"Yes," I said, "Jonathan Harker." She smiled, and gave some message to an elderly man in white shirtsleeves, who had followed her to the door.

Vocabulary:

Twilight: Between dark and daylight
Frontier: The border of a country
Havoc: Destruction
Undergo: Endure something difficult
Siege: When an enemy army sits outside your city
Famine: When there is no food in the area
Ways: Here it means 'customs'
Undergarment: Something worn under the clothes
Apron: Something to cover the front of your clothes