Days 9-10: At last, DRACULA!

Day 9:

Did nothing. Exhausted from wedding. Sat around house like lump.

Day 10:

This was the start of our Romanian Honeymoon. Ioana, me, Em (who, in case some of you have forgotten the list of dramatis personae, is Io's friend from Boston out visiting for a few months), and Marius "Gagi" Gomiou (Io's step-father, which I guess makes him my step-father-in-law, or S.F.I.L. for short) all piled into this Dacia sedan, along with luggage for a week and food for a week (apparently there was some fear that all the rest of Romania would be denuded of food), and towels. Why towels? Because I am one hoopy frood, that's why.

We were scheduled to leave Bucharest at 8:30 in the morning, and got out of there 45 minutes late, which was about an hour earlier than I expected. I figured that would be good, though, because we'd miss the morning rush-hour traffic. Then I realized that everyone else in Bucharest was also late, of course, so it didn't do us any good. But eventually we made it out to the countryside and hit the road for our first destination, the town of Bran. This was about four hours away, so we broke up the drive by stopping at various points along the way.

The first major stop was a mausoleum whose name I forget. This was the site of a major battle between the Romanians and the invading Germans during World War I. The actual fighting took place on lines a bit downhill from the monument, and each side lost many thousands of men. Afterwards the mausoleum was built to house the remains of fallen Romanian fighters, at least those remains that were recovered. The vault underneath contains 40 skulls and approximately 500 skeletons. I cannot even begin to describe how unnerving it is to see 500 actual human skeletons. I didn't even want to take a photo of it.

The mausoleum included a lot of displays about the battle: maps, photos, memorials, uniforms, weapons, etc. The guy who ran the place was most proud, though, of this exhibit (sorry it's out of focus). It's a life-sized diorama showing Romanian soldiers. The guy made us understand that this was going to include a pretty amazing "movie." He herded us in along with some other visitors, quickly walked over and closed both doors to the outside, and turned down the lights. We waited expectantly. After a moment, a soundtrack started playing martial music. Then there were the voices of "soldiers" speaking in Romanian, followed by bursts of gunfire and machinegun-fire. A single, lonely light-bulb in the middle of the diorama would light up in time with the gunfire in the recording. And, like, that was it. It wasn't even like there were different lights for the different gun emplacements. Just this recording of gunfire and people yelling, and this light flashing on and off in the middle of the scene. That went on for about 5 minutes, and then the guy brings up the lights with this look of "EH? EH?," like maybe we think we're pretty swank in Los Angeles with our Hollywood and so forth, but have we ever seen anything like that? So I'm trying to tell the guy, you know, yeah, very nice. Very realistic. It was like I was there, or perhaps like there was a squirrel walking along the electric cable. But, you know, good job with the materials at hand and all. Fortunately, I barely speak any Romanian.

The entry of the mausoleum had a really cool mosiac ("Built by Italians," Gagi said). The whole domed roof was also done in mosaic.

As I looked up there, I couldn't help but notice this hidden among the faces!!!

So, even here you haunt me, Vlad Dracul.

We got back into the car after seeing the mausoleum and drove on to Bran. This was another two hours or so of driving. The first thing we saw there was a museum of old artifacts from Queen Maria's day. They had a lot of cool old furniture and paintings, and a really incredible display of old weapons and armor. I took lots of photos and could put a zillion of them up here, but I'll resist since probably most of my loyal readers (i.e. both of my parents) are not that interested in that stuff. But I love old things and particularly old weapons, so I loved this part of the museum.

The museum was pretty small, probably just 10 or 12 rooms. The curator (or whatever you would call her) of the place was this really nice older woman who has made this collection her life. Apparently it used to all be on display in the nearby castle, but the family that owned the castle got into some dispute with the government and forced them to move the exhibit out into a smaller building nearby. So this woman, who had spent her life giving tours of the castle and explaining about all the objects, now had to move to this other building and do it there -- despite the fact that she's probably as much an expert in the castle as the items that were kept in it. It was odd and sort of sad. When I asked her (through Io) if it was okay to take photographs, she said "Yes, yes! I'm just glad you're here looking at them."

After the museum, we headed to our next stop:

CASTLE DRACULA!!!!!

!!!!!!!

...I am going to totally level with you here: there is no such thing as Castle Dracula. Dracula is a fictional character made up by an Irishman named Bram Stoker, who had never even been to Transylvania or any part of what is now Romania. Stoker wrote Dracula as a pulp thriller of his day. He was a novelist who specialized in tales of horror and the supernatural, basically the Stephen King of the 19th century. He based his "Count Dracula" character in large part on Romanian prince Vlad Tepes. Vlad was called "Vlad Dracula," which means "Vlad Son of the Dragon," and because the dragon was a symbol of the Devil, Stoker interpreted this to mean that Vlad was the Antichrist. In actuality, he was called Dracula because his father was called Vlad Dracul ("Vlad the Dragon"). Not because he was evil, but because he belonged to the Order of the Dragon, an order of Christian defenders of the faith along the lines of the Knights Templar or Knights Hospitallers. They had the dragon slain by St. George as their symbol, and so Vlad (the father) became known as Vlad Dracul, and his son as Vlad Dracula. Vlad Tepes was considered a hero by the Transylvanian people

for his staunch defense of the country against the invading Turks. Although he did execute people by impaling them, he was generally no more or less vicious than most other political and military leaders of his day. He was ruthless to the Turks, but that probably had less to do with his being a supernatural monster and more to do with the fact that when he was a teenager, the Turks captured him and kept him in a dungeon and had him whipped all the time. And there never was a Castle Dracula. The Romanian government just arbitrarily decided that Bran Castle would be Dracula's castle because they wanted something to show to all the foreign tourists who were crazy for Dracula.

OR AT LEAST, THAT'S WHAT THEY WOULD LIKE YOU TO BELIEVE. Nice try, Romania. I'm not falling for that bullshit. This is CASTLE DRACULA, BABY! We explored around the castle, which is huge, in great detail. They had lots of old furniture, weapons, armor, coats of arms, etc. There were also lots of posters and plaques about the Dracula "legend" and about the people who supposedly "really lived at Castle Bran." Whatever, propagandists!

The Dr. Van Helsing and Wilhelmina to my Jonathan Harker: Gagi and Ioana

So we wandered around quite a bit and read a bunch of stuff, and I even got to walk along a secret passage that is not so secret anymore. I wanted to buy a bottle of Count Dracula Wine, but Ioana pointed out that it was absurdly expensive and probably not very good. That was going to be your souvenir, Jason Quirino. Sorry about that, bro.

Eventually we had seen everything there was to see there, and no Dracula. He's way too smart to be found there. I was a fool to even come. The hunt goes on.

So then it was back on the road again, destination: Sigisoara. Sigisoara was another three hours or so from Bran. I am telling you, by the time we got there I was really, really sick of riding in that Dacia. It's a good car and all, but there's only so much road-tripping I can take in a day.

Eventually, after many many hours, we finally made it to Sigisoara. This was a long, long day -- about ten hours of travel, although a few of those hours were spent touring various places along the way. Still, any way you slice it, long time in the car.

Sigisoara was totally worth the trip, though. What an amazing town. It's an old medieval city, which Ioana said was "the New York of Romania" back in the day. The town has been largely preserved intact -- a lot of the buildings are either original constructions or restored original constructions, including the seven towers that dominated the city's defensive wall. Each tower was built and maintained by one of the city's guilds, so you've got the Tailors' Tower, the Clockmakers' Tower, etc., each one different and each one really cool. The city also features tons of medieval churches, cobblestoned streets, etc. It's great. We got there just before sunset and took a long walking tour of the town at night, which was amazing.

Eat your heart out, Dracula

I also got to try Turkish Conac, which is not quite as good as a Furious Donut but pretty close. They start with long strips of sweet dough, which are wound around a thick cylinder and cooked over hot coals. Then they roll the cooked bread in sugar and ground nuts, push it off the cylinder, and give it to you steaming hot. So delicious! I can't believe Vlad Tepes wanted to kill the people responsible for conac. I guess it was all the whipping.

Delicious conac! So we did our walking tour of Sigisoara and then went home late and collapsed. Next up: daylight tour of Sigisoara!

Day 8: My Big Fat Romanian Wedding

Day 8:

Let me explain.

No, there is too much. Let me sum up:

Big day. Wow. It's difficult to even get my head around everything. The day started early: we had to leave at 8:30 to get to the church on time, so I was up at 7:30 and ready to go by 8:30. This being Romania, we didn't actually leave until like 10:30. With all the out of town relatives, plus the god-parents Ovi and Kathy, we had I think five cars heading out to the countryside.

On the way we had to pick up the meat for barbecuing, the cake, and some ceremonial candles that you use during the wedding. So we're driving all over Bucharest in this five-car Presidential Motorcade. Once we had hit the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker (hey-o!), it was off to the village.

Luckily there was no traffic on the way out to the village, so we still managed to arrive in good time. In big fat Romanian weddings, the entire guest list arrives early and helps you set up for the wedding. Thanks, guests! So we had a ton of people there who started setting up tables, chairs, centerpieces, food, all sorts of stuff. It was utter madness.

That is a pair of cars, and a horse and wagon.

Io's parents had laid in enough food to withstand the Siege of Leningrad. TONS of food. And probably 500 gallons of water (one great thing about Romania: they have lots of mineral water springs, so the stuff is super-cheap) and lots and lots of bottles of beer. And I don't mean 12 ounce bottles. In Romania you can buy beer in 2.5 liter plastic bottles, like the Family Size cokes you can get at Costco in America. Go Romania!

Once the wedding stuff was set up, it was time for the ceremonial preparing of the bride. The godmother and the bride's friends all get together and swarm around the bride like little makeup-applying electrons, fixing up her hair and face and whatever else it is that brides do to get ready for a wedding. In this photo you've got godmother Kathy on the right, and then the two Roxannes. They call the left one "Dark Roxanne" and the right one "Light Roxanne," even though they both have dark hair. I don't mind, though, because it gives the whole thing a cool Star Wars-y feel.

Then everyone gets a flower pinned onto their clothing, which like officially says you are part of the wedding. It's like getting your hand stamped when you go into a bar that charges a cover. Even the bride and groom get them.

And finally, the ceremonial Shaving of the Groom With A Wooden Knife. There's nothing quite like being told "Sit here" and then some dude comes up and holds a knife to your throat. So, yeah. Shaved with a piece of wood. Don't ask me how that is supposed to work. Luckily I had already shaved myself that morning with a good old American Gillette. U-S-A! U-S-A!

And then, with all our preparations in place, it was off to the miracle church!

30 partying Romanians. 40 liters of beer. 1 pit toilet. UTTER MADNESS!!

We managed to get to the church right when we were supposed to, and I met the priest, who seemed like a nice guy (other than the whole keeping-people-in-self-torturous-ignorance thing shared by all purveyors of organized religion). He didn't speak any English, so Io translated for us. Although I was supposed to get baptized Eastern Orthodox today (because otherwise we can't get married in church), the priest said we could actually put that off a week because I had already been baptized Roman Catholic. Apparently it's a lot easier to just switch someone's baptism than to baptize them from scratch, or something. Don't hate the playa, hate the game.

So then we jumped right into the ceremony. I don't have any photographs of that because I was in it, so I couldn't really take pictures, but other people were taking pictures and I'll add some to the blog as soon as I can. For now, my Shakespearean prose will have to suffice.

I didn't realize it, but an Orthodox wedding is sort of like an endurance trial, like one of those old ceremonies where people would have to starve themselves or hang by hooks. I assume the idea is to make a wedding so unbearable that if you get through it, you should be able to get through any difficulties in your marriage no problem. Also, it probably keeps the divorce rate down, because everyone knows that if you get divorced you might someday have to go through a wedding again. Here are my collection of tips for the Ultimate Wedding of Doom:

* Start off by scheduling your wedding on one of the hottest days of a record-breaking summer.

* Make sure everyone, especially the bride and groom, dress in stiflingly hot clothing. Just as the ceremony is about to start, have an officious distant relative come up and insist that the groom button his suit jacket up.

* Hold the ceremony in a small stone building with windows to let in light but absolutely no ventilation whatsoever. Stained glass windows are great for this because they can't be opened.

* For the ceremony itself, have everyone stand in place for 90 minutes. It's important that people not move at all, because this, combined with the lack of any moving air, means that the air around them quickly heats up to about 100 degrees and becomes saturated with water vapor, thus defeating the body's only natural defense mechanism against overheating.

* Just when people think the air could not get any thicker, break out the incense burner.

* About midway through the ceremony when it looks like the bride and groom are going to collapse, clamp tight metal bands around their heads, like a little iron maiden for your skull. I had actually been looking forward to the crown part of the ceremony: I was going to be King of the Wedding! I didn't realize that they tighten those crowns enough to cause fractures. Although it did have the bonus of conducting some heat away from my head.

* Give the couple some wine.

* Grab everyone's hands and make them run around in a tight circle a bunch of times. Although this will allow some air circulation, the dizziness more than makes up for it.

And then you're married!

Joking aside, having the ceremony in that church was way awesome even though it was insufferably hot. I mean, how many people get married in a historical landmark Genuine Miracle church? Not many, I bet. Mostly because it's out in rural Romania and has no air conditioning. But the building, the paintings, all that stuff was amazing.

The church is also a landmark because it contains some of the only Orthodox paintings depicting God. Orthodox churches and shrines have lots of depictions of Jesus, of Mary, of various saints and apostles and angels, but almost never do they contain depictions of God. The church in Letca Noua has three paintings showing God, so it's considered nearly unique.

After the ceremony, it was back to the village house to par-TAY!

In Romanian tradition, everyone brings a change of casual clothes to the wedding, and changes after the ceremony. Unfortunately this tradition apparently doesn't apply to the bride and groom, at least not until much later in the night after dinner, so I got to eat and dance and socialize in my suit, although at least without my jacket.

So we all hung out and had music playing (a mixture of traditional Romanian folk music, and modern American rock), and gorged ourselves.

Emma and godfather Ovi

Godmother Kathy and various guests

The first round of food was smoked fish, stuffed peppers, olives, pepperoni, kiftelutza (meatballs), and all sorts of other stuff. Then came the main course: mici, sausage, chicken skewers, and a bunch of other things that I didn't even catch. You could have fed the entire continent of Africa with our wedding dinner. For like a month.

What followed was a whole series of Romanian traditions that I knew nothing about. Like, my wife, who as you may recall is herself Romanian, did not even tell me about any of this stuff before it happened. We'd be eating and she'd be like, "Oh, we have to go to the dance!" and I'm like, "...dance?" because I have no idea what this means. But it turned out we just had to go up and jump around randomly while accompanied by Romanian folk music.

Next up: the ceremonial Removal of the Veil. The bride comes out and sits down and the godmother removes her veil and replaces it with a babushka, symbolizing the transition into decrepit cronehood that awaits.

However, the godmother and Em had other ideas...

Chris Pulliam, this one's for you.

We replaced the Ceremonial Dodgers Cap with a proper babushka, and then Emily had to sit for the Replacing of the Veil, where the youngest unmarried woman gets the veil put in her hair. Like me, she had no idea this was coming or even what anyone was doing as they were doing it. It's just like, "Sit here!" and then someone jams a veil on your head. In the background, you can see me and my mother-in-law dancing a traditional hora, which I guess is also part of this madcap veil ceremony business. At some point you got the idea that the people who made up Romanian wedding traditions were just throwing in stuff at random.

So then they tell me to sit in the Chair of the Veils, and I'm looking backwards to see whether someone is about to shank me again, when Grandma Negru strikes like a serpent from the front. This is the Traditional Strangulation of the Happy Couple. They tie this thick scarf-like thing around your necks, which is supposed to symbolize your togetherness, or perhaps how you will want to choke each other to death someday. Maybe both.

After that, it's another hora with the couple, and mom and grandma, followed by...

Carrying the bride over the threshold!

This was made comically difficult by the fact that you can't just carry her into the house, you have to actually carry her into the bedroom. But nobody could agree on which bedroom I was supposed to carry her to (something maybe people should have worked out before I had picked up my wife), so they're all yelling -- in Romanian -- "No, this room! No, that room!" and Io's frantically trying to translate for me as I stagger, Frankenstein-like, from one doorway to the other.

But eventually she was safely ensconced in a room, which brought with it the blessed ability for us to change out of our wedding clothes. Someone had bought us traditional Romanian shirts as gifts, so I changed into that. After that, we partied on late into the night, with music, wedding cake, champagne, &c.

By the end of it all, I was ready to pass out. The guests helped the family clean up, and then we all piled in our cars for the hour ride back to Bucharest. By the time we got back, Io and I were both pretty bedraggled.

Okay, maybe only I was bedraggled.