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!
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