If you have already read The Sons of Gomorrah, you might suspect what I wanted to see in the Carpathian Mountains—Scholomance, the legendary and sinister school of magic in Transylvania where Tristan studied 🙂 It’s mostly known for being mentioned in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but it might have been an actual place—at least it appears in Transylvanian folklore.

It’s supposed to have been situated by a mountaintop lake south of Hermannstadt (now Sibiu). In a place like this one 🙂 Though I’m not sure how scholars got there without a cable car—the road is still covered with snow in May and the lake is still frozen! It must be magic.

If you want to know about my Romanian adventures, there are more pictures in my FB group. Feel free to drop in 🙂