Hooch!

Part two of my drunken, gushy travel journal entry about the time I visited Dracula and he made me eat cherries.

 

Before Snagov, the race across a quarter of the country from
Brasov to Bucharest,
our final destination for the day, had us all unhinged.  Gabriel’s
pre-revolution Dacia had the feel
of a car that wanted to catch on fire and was constantly thinking about
it.  The air conditioning was a dashboard wide vent, which Gabriel popped
open to allow a wall of road dust to wash in, the small of burning oil and
rubber fast on its tracks.  Once out of Brasov,
the main roads became blistered byways of the sort you’d expect to find in the
deserts of the Southwest, the closed-off sections of Route 66.  Life with
a Dacia was obviously
a labor of love.  Gabriel was ready for every stumble.  When the car
blew out a tire, he had it repaired in pit-stop time.

For brunch, we pulled off at  a dust-blown roadside
stop.  At night, the place was a strip bar.  By day, it was open-pit
barbecue serving breakfast and lunch.  The strippers – who all appeared to
be 15 years old and enslaved by cruel, violent masters – doubled as
waitresses.   These polluted girls seemed terminally confused by
their daytime roles – should they bring the dessert menu or should they offer a
blow job?

It’s thanks to Gabriel and the blow job waitresses that our
eyes were opened to Fanta’s regional flavor “Shokata.”  The much debated
Shokata gained worldwide renown for the “make your own commercial” campaign
launched by Fanta’s owner, Coke, around the same time.  Where Gabriel
argued Shokata was only Romanian, and based on a secret Romanian recipe, careful
research reveals it to be of Asian origin… Or is it Scandinavian?  Or
Israeli?  Coke’s not really talking.  Probably because the “Shokata”
flowers, pictured on the can, don’t really exist.  Here’s the truth – It’s
lemon Fanta.

Getting to the rotten lake in the center of Snagov wasn’t as
easy as it should have been.

The “lake resort town” begins as a tumble down industrial
district, then gives way to single family housing that’s oddly reminiscent of Albuquerque’s
older, poor neighborhoods.  No one in Romania
is capable of providing clear instructions, either.  You’d think they
could tell you the way to the huge lake in the middle of their community, but
it seemed that was too much to ask.  Gabriel said the locals were just
giving us a hard time out of spite.  The roads were dirt tracks, seemingly
built at random, and impossible to navigate.

In the countryside, the white trees are far more prevalent
than in the city.  Trees and posts are, traditionally, painted white in
the style you often see here in the US
to combat parasites  — from the ground to chest high.  In Romania’s
case, it’s not a question of pest control but decoration.  Ceausescu’s
wife thought it was pretty to paint all the trees white.  During
Ceausescu’s reign, the white doubled as street lighting.  Driving at
night, the only lights were the reflection of your headlights, and on
breakneck, unpredictable, unpainted roads, those trees must have saved many
lives.

The practicality of this custom was unintended,
though.  The true reason was to please the lord and master, and everyone
in Romania
was issued a number.  Every weekend, the odds and evens would trade off
and paint the trees in their community to keep the white spotless and
fresh.  It’s good to be dictator.

Snagov is, technically, a suburb of Bucharest.
It’s about 15-20 miles from the city.  But suburban sprawl is American
thinking, Snagov is a country getaway at its heart.  The houses are barely
kept up, yet the trees are carefully painted.

When we caught our first glimpse of water between the houses
and the trees, Gabriel slammed the car to a skidding halt, parked illegally,
and then ran down to the lakeshore.

The lake “shore” was actually a bog, ringing the lake.
A little hike along each side showed nothing but private and government
property, the largest of which was Ceausescu’s vacant and still
privately-guarded summer home, a sprawling estate that would put western
monarchs to shame.  Until the government decided how to divvy up
Ceausescu’s property, it all remained abandoned.  There was no rental
agency for boats.

We caught site of a small jetty on the island where three
motorboats huddled, then waded through the reeds to find the companion dock on
the shore – termite-ridden wood, sinking slowly into the mud.  The dock
had two wooden canoes tethered to it, one that had turned into driftwood and
sunk into the mud and the other full of water and breeding mosquitoes.

Gabriel asked to read the section in my Lonely Planet once again
and, armed with the guidebook, knocked on a door and hauled out the ancient
woman who answered, summing up our current situation.  She laughed, and
then we learned the truth.

“She says,” Gabriel translated, “That there are no more
rental boats.  Sometimes the locals will do it, but the parinte may
shoot.”

Parinte – it means parent, and a common name given to
priests or monks.  But the way she phrased it seemed to catch
Gabriel.  He cocked his head and asked for clarification.  After the
reply, he turned to us, “There is only one monk.  All the others – they
are dead.  We must call across and ask permission to visit the
island.  He is well armed.”

“Well armed?” I asked.

Gabriel nodded, looking a little unsure.  He looked
down at the Lonely Planet in his hands as if it were a book written by the
devil, then he handed it back to me.  I had put my hand out, fearing that
he was about to toss it into the lake.

We were all shocked that the woman meant we had to literally
call the monk. She walked us back down to the dock and began shouting:
“Parinte!”  Her voice echoed around the lake, but there was no
reply.  She took a breath and shouted again. After five minutes of
screaming, her voice cracked and she turned to Gabriel.

“He is sleeping,” Gabriel translated.  Then he began
shouting.

After each taking turns, we decided to call it a wash.
Just as we were leaving, the monk shouted from somewhere on the island.

“Oh!” Gabriel put an arm on my shoulder, “He has heard!”

The ancient lady left with smiles and waves and we stayed,
Gabriel’s little flock of sheep, watching the dock on the island.  A
portly man in black, surrounded by feral dogs, waddled out to his dock and
began working with one of the boats.

“Oh,” Gabriel muttered.

“What?” I asked.

“He is…how do you say…taking water…”

“He’s bailing out the goddamned boat.” Sherban muttered.

The monk finished bailing it out, leapt in and motored
across the lake.  He invited us to climb in and, taking water the entire
time, he hurried back to the island’s docks, worriedly looking back as the lake
water washed in.

“Many snakes!” Gabriel was shouting, one white knuckled hand
holding onto the seat and the other pointing at the lake water, which was
teeming with water moccasins.

At the island’s docks, we all scrabbled out, nearly hugging
each other, and followed the monk to dry land.

He raised six fingers and started talking.

Gabriel translated, “Six Euros each.”

“What?” Antony
barked, “How come he didn’t tell us that back at the docks.

“Six Euros or we go back on the water,” Gabriel shrugged.

We all paid, including Gabriel, more out of fear of the
black lake than anything else.  The monk warmed to us as soon as collected
the cash and showed us around the island.

The island was self-sufficient and, for most of the last few
hundred years, supported twenty to thirty monks.  It was large enough for
livestock, orchards, gardens and had it’s own water source – a thousand foot well,
just wide enough for a man to slip down, dug by a slave Vlad Tepes had captured
as a boy.  It took the slave 25 years to dig the well, working dawn to
dusk every day.  The parinte now lives alone, leaving the island once
every six months or so to get some mod-cons from the local store.  In the
mid-90’s, the government took away all funding, which left the monastery
dependent on tourist money and donations.  With tourists arriving every
six months, maybe four or five people a year, there wasn’t much hope there.

Locals brought in what they could – toaster ovens,
breadmakers, TV’s and the like.  All hand-me-down gifts, and a few items
liberated from Ceausescu’s empty palace which, we learned, is something like a
scene from Great Expectations – everything inside the sealed palace is frozen
in mid step from the days of the revolution.

With only one person to defend the island, the monk was
plagued by gypsy raiders.  They came to deface Dracula’s tomb – a small,
two room chapel – and steal food from the orchards and gardens.  The
latter they sold by the roadside.  Once, the monk ran out to throw stones
at them and was attacked.  Beating him, the gypsies sunk his motorboats
for good measure and took off.  Perhaps guilty about cutting the funding,
and knowing that this last defender of Dracula was a marked man, the Romanian
government supplied him with two pistols and a military grade assault
rifle.  Then they gave him a full license to kill.  Gypsies, locals,
ill-mannered tourists.  No questions asked.

He led us to the well, blessed by Dracula, and asked us each
to drink.  My English friends demurred, but I took a long drink of the
cool water.  In my travels, I’ve taken to drinking all blessed water,
childishly hoping it’ll cure my neuralgia.  The last batch I drank was
from Glastonbury, so here
was the test – Jesus versus Dracula.

Of course, nothing happened.

From the well to the chapel, we all squeezed into the foyer
as the monk situated himself behind a desk of postcards and knick-knacks,
fussing with his clothes and the chair and doing everything but changing hats
like in some old comedy routine.  Then he announced the price for picture
taking.

“Ten euros,” Gabriel said, “For each of us.”

“To take pictures?” I asked.

Gabriel nodded, then said, “Go over and read signs in
corner.  I am going to make this better.”

We read about the history of the chapel while Gabriel
embarked on a 15 minute shouting match with the monk.

Gabriel returned,  “No good.  He will not lower price.”
Then, to me, Gabriel presented a ten dollar bill with one third missing. “He
want to know – is this still good?”

I nodded, “Yeah, that’ll still be good.”

“He is very upset.  He says he has not seen a whole ten
dollar bill.”

“I have a ten dollar bill.” I replied.

Gabriel’s eyes widened as if I had just smacked him.
He grabbed me and hauled me over to the monk, babbling in Romanian.  Then
he turned, “You will trade ten dollar bills.  Yours for his broken one?”

“Sure.”  I handed a crisp, new bill to the monk and
stuffed the torn bill in my pocket.  It was destined for a bribe in Budapest
though, now, I wish I had kept it.

The monk looked at the bill, then smiled largely and swept
his hands to take in the chapel.

“He says all is okay now.”

“What is?”

“Pictures.  They are now paid for.”  Gabriel
smiled sweetly at the monk and shoved me away, “Go, go, hurry!”

The chapel is, literally, held together with tape and
bubblegum.  Butterfly bandages and electrical tape keep the murals
covering the walls and ceiling from caving in.  All of this comes from the
meager funds that gawkers like ourselves brought in.  Our six euros per
person and, to the less fortunate, 16 euros, helped do what little repair was
possible.  Even the scaffolding, erected so the monk could repair the
ceiling, was in need of repair.  Upon close infection, it looked like he
had hauled it out of the lake.

The chapel records the saga of Dracula’s family up to the
modern day.  The family is now dead or forgotten, but they were careful to
maintain and update the history of the chapel until about 1800 or so.
It’s like walking around inside one of those large family bibles.

Dracula is buried in the middle of the second room,
surrounded by everything you need to hold a full mass for a small family – pews
and an altar.

The Romanians all get a laugh out of the western image of
Dracula. The Dracula that we know and love is Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  You
can go visit the rooms Stoker took, a castle right along the main train
line.  He never left those rooms, cobbling together the Dracula legend
based on the stories from the hotel staff.

In fact, the blood-sucking, vampire, cursing God routine is
absent from the Dracula legend.  He was a devout man, and one of the only
leaders in the last thousand years to bring peace and prosperity to Romania.
The type of peace where you left your doors unlocked and valuables in plain
view without any worries. Dracula is a national hero, equivalent to George
Washington.  The Romanians have begun to cash in on the Vampire legend,
but, to them, it’s about as ridiculous as it would be for us to discover a 150
year old fiction novel claiming Washington was a killer werewolf.

Leaving the chapel, surrounded by wild dogs, the monk led us
to his wild cherry trees.  He did nothing to tend to them, their branches
exploding and weighed down by cherries, and they were the best I’ve ever
tasted.

“Blessed by Dracula!” Gabriel said, laughing.

The cherries were collected and put to good use.  The
only English word the monk knew – “Hooch!”

So a drunken hermit, armed to the teeth, machine-gunning
gypsy raiders and watching over the body of Dracula.  That right there is
the beauty and the eccentricity of Romania,
this holy man in black with his cherry wine and machine gun.

From that forested island of orchards and gardens and a tiny
chapel built by a horror movie icon to the diesel-choked insanity of Bucharest,
we left RomaniaSlovenia.
behind, slow train to