Transylvanian Diary (1)
A Halloween visit to vampire country
“We are in Transylvania; and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things.” So says the mysterious Count at the start of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula, and this quote often came to mind when my husband and I ventured into vampire country in 2018. We stayed at Hotel Castel Dracula on the ‘Borgo’ Pass (actually Bârgău in Hungarian), where I kept a diary, much like Jonathan Harker does in the novel. I’ve published a few extracts below, for those who are curious about visiting this beautiful region of Romania. Don’t forget to pack some garlic!
3/9/18 - Bistrița is a large, spreading urban centre with huge fibreglass apples all along the boulevards. As we leave, we get our first glimpse of the Carpathians, driving towards the Borgo Pass. We see Roma carry buckets of Chanterelle mushrooms and blackberries; they are also selling goulash cauldrons by the side of the road.
Hotel Castel Dracula is just as crazy as we suspected. There is a communist-era statue of Bram Stoker on the drive and, in our room, a wooden bench and a desk that look as if they have come from a church. There are lurid pictures of bats and a corpse hangs from a hook in the Reception area. Meanwhile, the surrounding countryside is stunning and has an Alpine feel about it. At the side of the hotel drive are some Dracula souvenir stalls along with sellers of local produce (e.g., honey with walnuts in it). Up the hill, a monastery [the Piatra Fântânele Monastery] is under construction and a gigantic cross can be seen beside it, which is lit up at night.
The hotel is comfortable but the bar is closed so we walk down the drive and go into a restaurant. The evening is suddenly cool, thanks to the mountain air, but we sit on the terrace anyway, which is decorated with flowers. We are tired from the long drive and look out over the Carpathians while we drink beer. There is a cockerel crowing in a neighbouring garden and a small dog, tied to a post, stands on its hind legs to see what’s happening down the road. Dinner in Hotel Castel Dracula’s restaurant consists of a platter of meat products including slanina [salt-cured cubes of pork fat]. I order a pork filet with fries, vegetables and rice, which is delicious (this cut of meat is often translated on menus as ‘pork scruff’ or ‘Gypsy scruff’). Richard orders sarmales [Romanian stuffed cabbage rolls].
4/9/18 - Cattle bells could be heard from our window this morning and the calls of a rooster. As we check out of Hotel Castel Dracula, a Spanish tour party arrives to see the crypt in the basement. A guide loudly sighs as she takes a Dracula cape from a hook and pulls it over her clothes (I can’t help noticing that she’s wearing denim dungarees underneath).
Before leaving the Borgo Pass, we pay a visit to the monastery on the hill where a nun hurries past us on her way up the drive. She wears a curious veil and black pillbox hat with a long, black skirt. As we drive towards the Bukovina, we begin to see more and more traditional Romanian wooden houses, some with folk art decorations on the exterior. There are lots of little structures with tin roofs in the gardens and drying racks in the fields, presumably for hay.
