Oscar Wilde wrote that Life imitates Art more than Art imitates Life. And he wasn’t even considering the tourism factor.

Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was the fact that it wasn’t shot in Europe (as author J.R.R. Tolkien envisioned it), but on the other side of the world, in New Zealand. Rings fans were blown away, and declared that New Zealand WAS, in fact, Middle Earth. Thousands of fans booked flights to visit the locations where the films were shot. As a result, many of the sets and landscaping created for the films was left in place, to allow visitors to get their full Rings fix. They could take tea in Bag End, relive the Battle of Helms Deep, and look out over Rohan from the door of the Golden Hall. Meanwhile, in real life, Rings director Peter Jackson decided to shoot The Hobbit, the prequel to the Rings. And of course the best way to do that is to take full advantage of some of those locations. Which has resulted in the odd problem of having to clear the set of fans of the LAST movie before shooting scenes for the NEW movie.

This dynamic is now repeating itself in Eastern Europe. The success of the recent Twilight movies has caused an uptick in travel to Castle Bran in Romania, the ancient home of Vlad the Impaler, better known as Dracula. And now Bulgaria is getting in on the vampire trade. A news report this morning claims that, at a burial site in the Black Sea town of Sozopol, “vampire skeletons” have been found with iron rods stabbed through the stomach and chest. Almost immediately, travel companies in Germany and Britain announced an uptick in “vampire vacation” reservations. Meanwhile, Hollywood is shooting more films in Eastern Europe to take advantage of creepy historical locations and cheaper production rates. “The Chronicles of Narnia” was shot in the Czech Republic, “The Black Dahlia” was filmed in Bulgaria. Yup, in life as in film, Dracula’s allure is proving hard to kill.

Luckily, if you should travel to these exotic locations and return with a peculiar ailment (or an iron rod through the chest), you can be diagnosed by Dr. House (sort of). Fans of the Fox series House know that the good doctor works out of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. But, in reality, for the past 8 years while the show was running, there WAS NO Princeton-Plainboro Teaching Hospital. It was a fiction. Meanwhile, in real life, the small town of Princeton has grown so fast that the REAL Princeton Hospital just wasn’t meeting the area’s needs. And there wasn’t any available Real Estate to build a new hospital downtown. So folks looked elsewhere and found a suitable spot: in neighboring Plainsboro!

And so we come to this: on May 21, 2012, the final episode of House aired, and the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital ceased to exist. On the next day, May 22, 2012, the brand new Princeton Plainsboro University Medical Center opened its doors.

For real.