34 days ago we started our adventure. So it's been over a month and surely you would expect that we would have seen all of Romania in that time. But to be honest, our progress is really slow. Research, interviews and the many hours we spend driving from one remote place to the next, sometimes sleeping in the car or in a tent because we were just too tired to get to the next place with a hotel.

To me, all this does not seem at all like over a month. Rather as we would have left only two weeks ago. Which may also be because we are having a great time. We see a lot of this beautiful country, meet many interesting people and hear many exciting stories. Even if the stories are rarely true. But these people tell them with such conviction that they are just exciting.

A few days ago we arrived in Wallachia. Besides centuries-old monasteries and churches, but also new works of art, it offers one thing above all, seemingly endless expanses of nature, rivers, green meadows, wide fields, mountains and dense forests. Just like Ireland, Wallachia offers enough strange things to make the most wondrous stories out of it.

We saw colorfully painted trees but also ghostly deformed trees. We saw a bear and a few wolves, the normal ones that everyone knows. We saw a valley covered by fog and in its background the mountains. Beautiful to look at, also a little creepy.

In the meantime we rented an off road car with a roof tent. Lee sleeps in the car, Zhan and I in the roof tent. This gives us the freedom to spend the night anywhere. Because here in the vastness of Wallachia, it is difficult to find a hotel. And it would probably also rob us of precious time, we would have to look for a hotel first.

A week ago Zhan and I let Lee in on my secret. Until then we had been able to hide well that I am a vampire. She only wondered now and then, because even in the summer heat I always wore clothes that completely covered my body.

Zhan had told me that he knew Lee well and trusted her. But that he would only tell her about my secret when I was ready and wanted it myself.

Well, a week ago I told Zhan that we could tell her about it. Because I trust Lee. She often acts like a caring mother to me. And the rest of the time like a cool teacher. She never gets tired of explaining things to me. And she explains them in such a way that no questions are left unanswered.

Well, anyway, when we told her about my secret, she almost started crying because she finally had the 100% proof of the existence of vampires. The proof she was looking for since her childhood. But not to prove it to others, but only to herself.

As I found out, Lee had a tragic childhood. It started with an experience when she was seven years old. Her parents were with her and her brother, who was two years older than her, when they were still living in China, at a folk festival in an amusement park in the evening.

She and her brother had gone to the restrooms with their mother to wash up after a small dinner, and when they returned, they saw their father talking to two men and a woman. When they joined them, the three strangers looked at them smiling and licking their lips. Lee thought this was creepy and hid behind her dad until the three strangers left.

Together, they then went to two more rides before heading home. They drove their dad's new car, which he had been saving for for a long time. When they got home, her parents sent her and her brother to shower and then to bed.

In the middle of the night, Lee woke up because she suffered from nightmares, as she so often did at that age. She would then usually sneak outside to the shed. They had a dog that was not allowed in the house, but lived in the shed. And on that night she crept to the dog in the shed.

After a while she heard her mother's screams coming from the house and thought her mother had woken up and was now desperately looking for her. She was about to sneak back into the house when she saw shadows of people in the living room.

Lee crept to the window of the living room looked through it. As she did so, she recognized her parents, her older brother and the three strangers whom they had met that evening at the amusement park. Her parents and brother were kneeling on the floor. One of the strangers asked where the girl was. Her father claimed that Lee was just the child of friends, what they had taken with them.

The stranger woman screamed that they should have chosen the other family and that one small child was not enough for her. She would hardly become full of it. So her words. Then the woman grabbed Lee's big brother, pushed his neck to the side and bit into his neck until her brother did not move anymore. She simply dropped her brother to the ground and grabbed her crying mother.

The two stranger men grabbed her father. And the same thing that was done to Lee's brother, was now done to her parents. Lee ran back to the shed and hid there with the dog. And only in the morning when the sun had risen did she venture out of the shed.

She walked slowly to the living room window and looked in. She saw her parents and brother lying on the floor. The three strangers had been gone. Lee ran to the neighbor and asked him to help her. He couldn't believe what Lee told him about the three strangers and went back to the house with her, where he saw the bodies and only then called the police.

When the police arrived, Lee was put in one of the patrol cars and locked up. She had to watch as her family were taken outside in body bags. And only after more than three hours, had the police officers remembered that Lee was still in the car. They drove with her to the police station to question her.

But instead of calmly talking to her and questioning her, they yelled at the then 7-year-old and demanded an explanation from her as to why she didn't seek help immediately. They blamed her for the death of her family. And in addition, they labeled the scared little girl a liar.

Lee said, though, that she had been labeled a liar by everyone she told what had happened. Even though it was proven that the bodies were bloodless, no one believed her. And because not even her grandparents believed her, and no one wanted to take her in, she was taken to a children's home.

All her relatives preferred to pay monthly money to the children's home rather than take her in. A year later she was put up for adoption. Fortunately, a couple came and adopted Lee. They moved with her to Romania. Where they then went together with her in search of proof of the existence of vampires. Because they believed her and supported her.

So when Lee learned, after all these years, that I was a vampire, she was happy. Because for her this was the proof that she did not lie and did not imagine anything, to forget the cruel truth.

However, Lee's story brought me to another question. Are there people who know about the existence of the vampires and protect them by lying? Because Lee also said that the bodies of her family had been burned immediately, without the consent of relatives, after it was determined that they were bloodless.

In addition, after I realized that I had become a vampire, I had done a lot of research to find out if there were others like me. However, I did not find any clues. So no real clues. Only stories that most had made up. So it is within the realm of possibility that the existence of the vampires has been covered up.

Well, or at least the fact that there were bloodless corpses. Today it is not so anymore, because the reporters are fast and hardly anything escapes them. But back then it was all different. Lee's case was about 49 years ago. The media were much more controlled back then. Back then, someone gave them a text they had to stick to. There was actually no journalistic freedom. There was no Internet, no surveillance cameras, and no cell phones with high-definition cameras and Internet access.

Who knows how many things happened that we will never know about? How many like Lee, lost their families to vampires? How many cases of bloodless corpses have never been reported?

To the generality of people, vampires and werewolves are nothing but mythical creatures. Made up by authors like Bram Stoker. But they exist. They live among the people. Like me, Youn and Wooseok. Or like Zhan and his pack. And our existence will remain secret. Because I think people are not ready to know the truth.

For example, Zhan read me the diary of an early scientist who performed cruel experiments on vampires. He wanted to know what could kill the vampires. He didn't even stop at strangling the vampires. Cutting off their hands and feet. Opening their chests and removing organs while the vampire was awake. He left them in a water tank for days to see how long they would survive. He even left one to starve until it went into a sort of coma. Ten years later he returned to where he hid him and put some blood in his mouth, which made the vampire wake up again. And he could again perform new crueler methods on him.

And likewise, Zhan read to me what another early scientist did to some werewolves. How he put them in tiny cages. Tortured them until they almost died. Then he waited until they recovered and tortured them again. One female werewolf he had raped several times to impregnate her. And that was just to learn more about the pregnancies and births of werewolves. When the baby was born, he killed it and threw it to the mother to eat. Just to prove how cruel werewolves are, when the mother ate her dead baby. And that was only because she was starving and had lost her mind when he kept raping her and ended up killing the baby in front of her.

Makes you wonder how stupid this man was, doesn't it? Who was the more cruel? The scientist who did all those horrible things? Or the female werewolf, to whom all those terrible things were done?

But there were also diaries in which people reported peaceful coexistence with vampires and werewolves. They simply stayed out of each other's way. According to the motto, live and let live. But so thought and thinks only the minority.

Now that we are in Wallachia, we hope to find more information. Only yesterday Lee managed to find a man who could give us hints where there are supposed to be werewolves. We definitely still want to go there. But first we will visit locals who wander through Wallachia from spring to fall.

We hope to get new stories and maybe one or two clues to the legend. Because all the clues we got and found so far led us here to Wallachia. And maybe we'll finally find out something about the legend that will help Zhan and me in our case.

But for today we call it a day. The sun has just set. We'll have dinner together soon, then we'll call home and go to sleep. Tomorrow we have another long day ahead of us and we have to be fit for it.