Day 6 - Friday 8th October - Sighisoara
Official Itinerary says: "Following breakfast we drive a short distance to the centre of historic Sighisoara. We will have a brief tour of the medieval citadel and then you will be free to explore and buy souvenirs. Apart from posing for your picture outside the house where Vlad was born, you may want to visit the 13th century clock tower, which houses an interesting museum and affords fantastic views of the town, or the Church on the Hill, which was recently reopened after an extensive renovation programme. Alternatively explore the rambling German cemetery or take a walk around the walls and guild towers that surround the old town. There will also be an optional lunch at Vlad's birthplace. Leaving Sighisoara we will travel north to Praid.
A town at the foot of the Ghorgheni mountains, Praid has been a centre for salt mining since Roman times. The mines are still being worked today, but locals have developed alternative uses for the huge underground caverns hollowed out in previous centuries. These man-made underground halls have a unique microclimate, believed to be effective in treating respiratory problems, and were initially used to provide hospital facilities. Today, as well as offering health treatments, the caverns house a restaurant, chapel, billiard hall and children's playground. We will be taken by a slat mine bus 1250m underground for a tour, folklore entertainment and our evening meal in these unique surroundings (please note that alcohol is not allowed underground). After dinner we will be travelling a short distance to Hotel Danubius in the town of Sovata."
First lesson of the day: 'Sighasoara' is pronounced 'Sigh-a-shwar-rah', and not (for example) 'Ciggy-saurus', as me and KT have been calling it. Although that does produce a fantastic mental image.
I didn't win the limerick competition last night (I can't remember who did, but there were several attempts that were about asthma, since one of the few things that 'Impaler' rhymes with is 'inhaler'), but all of the entries got read out by Helen, and they were all pretty funny. We had a lot of fun, and everyone laughed at my attempt to rhyme Impaler with Polenta. Yay!
More about the room party later - first, I'd better backtrack a little and talk about what happened yesterday afternoon while I was too hungover to write notes on the coach. After Fagaras, we went to a little village up in the mountains called Viscri, where we had a fantastic peasant meal (as in 'made by' rather than 'made of'...) while sat outside in the garden with the sun shining down pleasantly on us. Viscri is a German village (there are several different languages spoken in Romania, depending on where abouts you are - apart from Romanian, the most prominent are German and Hungarian), and Nicolae describes it somewhat optimistically as a ghost town. There used to be about two hundred families living there, but now there are only about twenty-eight, so most of the houses are standing empty. Apart from farming, the main income for the village are the tourist coaches that come up there, so we all contribute to the economy by buying woollen goods from a couple of little stalls by the roadside. I get Jenny a blue and grey knitted hat, which I promptly wear myself for most of the rest of the holiday.
Apart from the few people we see, there are loads of animals about. In the garden while we're eating dinner there are two dogs, half a dozen chickens and a pig wandering around. Outside in the single street, horses, ducks, geese and turkeys run around loose. The whole place is beautiful and isolated and peaceful... but again there's that overlying and inescapable feeling of sadness that seems to hang around so many of these places. It's not technically a ghost town, but it's still got some of that feeling about it.
The meal is fantastic. They give us this homemade soup/stew stuff, which is so tasty, even if it is full of polenta (argh, polenta!). There are also several bottles of home-brewed plum brandy and this orange fruit wine, which is right tasty. Despite my hangover (or possibly because of it), I drink quite a lot of both, and feel very happy for the rest of the day.
We walk up to the fortified church and scramble about in the towers and the graveyard for a bit. A local tour guide shows us round, and Nicolae tries to get her to tell us a few stories about local suspicions - ghosts and vampires and such. He seems a little put out when she tells him that there aren't any stories of that type around that area. As mentioned, Nicolae appears to be very firm in his believes, and tells the guide that everywhere has ghosts and ghost stories, so this place must have them as well. I don't find out how the discussion continues, because I duck outside and go chill out in the very pretty German graveyard instead.
We're still running late, so it's evening by the time we drive up to Sighasoara for our stay at the Motel Dracula. The hotel itself is cheesy as you like, with tacky vampire paintings and big swords hanging from the walls. About five minutes before we arrive, Nicolae advises us of a 'small change of plan' - there isn't enough room at the hotel for all of us, so six people are going to have to be taken to a different hotel overnight. The offhand way that he tells us about something he's obviously known about himself for some time annoys quite a few people, and most of us think that he could have handled it a lot better. But anyway, the upshot is that all the people in the group who have rooms by themselves agree to share, so that everyone can fit in. Nicolae and Stephan the driver end up going by themselves to the other hotel.
The room party that night is in Rosie and Ali's room, because they've wound up with the biggest suite. And it is honestly a suite - big bedroom, bathroom (with bath!) and large sitting area, complete with leather chairs and a marble-topped table. Ace! This party is quite a bit quieter than the last, probably because most of us have been almost continuously drunk for the better part of a week now, and I guess it's beginning to take it's toll. Despite the relative quietness of the party, I am still as noisy as ever - when Ginger Dave comes downstairs, the first thing he says is, 'y'know, my room is on the next floor up, and all I could hear up there is Rakie'. Oops.
Helen reads out the limericks and announces the winners. I get into an argument with Darren (adorable gothic boy with very cool taste in clothes and an equally adorable girlfriend called Tara) (oh, and a bad habit of taking his shirt off in public all the time) after I boot him off the leather coach. At which point he steals my sock and runs away with it, and I have to chase after him and hit him till he gives it back. Honestly, why would anyone want my sock? That's just crazy. Then I throw bottlecaps at Ginger Dave, aiming for his glass of wine. My aim isn't great, but eventually I manage to get one in... and Dave gets mad at me and steals my own glass of wine, running off with it and yelling, 'You’re my wine now, Dave!' (which won't really make sense to anyone who hasn't seen the second series of 'League of Gentlemen', but never mind).
Although I do a lot of talking loudly and pushing people off chairs and throwing bottle caps at people, I'm feeling a bit down that evening. I’m just feeling the loneliness a little now, what with being away from Jacob and everything. I think I’m really missing the closeness and the almost constant contact I usually have with him, and I just need a hug or five at the moment. Unfortunately none of the group here seem to be particularly huggy people, which is a real shame. I turn to attention-seeking just to reaffirm that I do indeed exist.
Anyway, this morning (with hangovers intact) we headed into Sighasoara centre for a looky around. It’s another fabulous medieval town, with twisty streets and slanty houses and a massive clock tower in the main square. We go into the clock and look around the museum, taking secretive photos as we go (there’s a habit in Romania of charging ‘photo tax’ everywhere - usually it’s the equivalent of 50p or whatever and you don’t mind paying it, but here it was kinda exorbitant, especially for videos) (as a side note, I’m not sure what the obsession here is with taxing things - we also get taxed 7000 Lei for using a toilet later on in the day). After the clock tower we see the weapons museum and the torture museum, where KT gets herself put on a rack because our guide for the day, Michel, decides that she looks like a witch. As suggested, we also pose for photos outside the house where Vlad was born.
And then I accidentally let KT out of my sight for five minutes. Literally, five minutes, and she comes running back to me, saying that she’s found the coolest thing in the world… and it costs eight million Lei. That’s about a hundred and thirty quid, and you can see the alarm bells going off in my head straight away. Whatever it is, I’m willing to bet my ass that it’s going be a) massive, b) impractical or c) probably impossible to get home.
It turns out to be all three of these things. In an antique shop hidden amongst all the relatively harmless tat stores, she has found a chainmail vest. So, for my first point, chainmail weighs a ton - my guess would be that the whole thing weighs about ten pounds. The baggage limit for the plane back home, incidentally, is twenty pounds. And I get the feeling that if she tried to take it on as hand luggage they wouldn’t allow it (okay, so a pair of New Rocks might not count as an offensive weapon, but chainmail?). I tell her right there and then (in my oh-so-tactful way) that it’s a bloody stupid idea and she should just forget it.
Unfortunately, at this point you have to realise that there’s a fundamental difference between me and KT. I frequently fall in love with stupid, impractical items, but deep down I know damn well that they are stupid and impractical, and if someone with more common sense than me points that out then I usually let go of the idea eventually (mom will hopefully testify to this). But KT has no such common sense override. Once she wants something, that’s it, and no-one - not me, not anyone - can talk her out of this. By this point I am seriously wishing that she just hadn’t seen the bloody thing… but of course that’s just as futile as trying to talk KT out of buying it.
Anyway, the short and skinny of this story is that KT goes ahead and buys the goddamn thing, after a quick visit to a convenient cash machine, and I sulk grandly for approximately an hour or so.
(Note from Future Rakie: This all may sound like an overreaction, but at the time I was really mad about it. As you will see in later chapters though, most of my fears turned out to be relatively groundless, so I guess I can just shut up.)
We go to get some food (with me still sulking), but the first place we go to the waiter gives us some menus and then ignores us for about twenty minutes. So we leave and head back up to Vlad’s house, which now houses a restaurant. I run into Tubby Mark while KT’s in the bathroom, and blow off a bit of steam at him, which calms me down a little (sorry Mark). Then we go up to the restaurant and meet up with a bunch of the other guys - Mick the Younger, American Lawrence, Tim and Ernestine, and Jim and Jane - who are just sitting down for their meal, so we come join them. Of course, as soon as they hear about the chainmail they start enthusing about it (especially Mick), and I have an audience to air my grievances at, with the result that I quickly come out of my sulk. The guys ask KT if she will model it for them, but it’s kinda on the small size, so I offer to pull the thing on. It’s definitely a bit snug (I guess that the person who made it never considered it might be worn by someone with boobs), and it’s covered in seventy years of built-up ickiness which promptly ends up all over my face, arms and inconveniently white t-shirt.
Once we get the mail shirt off me, I order some lovely pork for lunch, and Tim, Jim and Mick the Younger all order steak tartar, which we think is kinda brave of them. Of course, it’s probably safer to eat that here than it would be back home, since it’s less likely to have been in contact with BSE or any of the bizillion chemicals that go into the British meat industry. I’ll let you know if any of them come down with food poisoning though (Note from Future Rakie: They don’t, so I can just shut up, again). We end up having another series of long and highly involved conversations, which seems to be the standard for this holiday. I guess it’s because all of the guys on the trip are pretty intelligent and also pretty opinionated… and also pretty drunk most of the time. Prime conditions indeed for long-winded and often deeply involved conversations. Even by our standards, this one really is long-winded - lunch takes us approximately two and a half hours. How very continental.
On the way back to the coach, I buy a watercolour picture of the clock tower for mom and dad, and two bottles of local brandy - one of plum, one of apple. Then, as we’re walking down the hill towards the coach my plastic bag snaps and all my souvenirs and stuff falls onto the floor. Although I manage to rescue the rest of my crap, the bottle of apple brandy has shattered and so I scoop up the broken pieces and deposit them in the nearest bin. At this point, everyone starts keeping their distance from me, because it turns out that the apple brandy STINKS. I’m shocked by how much it stinks, as are several of the other people who bought similar bottles of brandy. In fact, I now stink of the damn stuff as well because it’s all over my hands (and now all over my notebook as well, dammit). All the flies on the coach are currently circling around my head.
To occupy us on the coach this afternoon, we’ve got another challenge to do, set as usual by Disorganised Mick. His title officially changed this morning, incidentally, while he was attempting to organise a trip in horse-drawn carts for Sunday - when we asked how much it would cost each of us, he helpfully told us, ‘some’. Anyway, this challenge is to write a short story (yay!), of no more than 120 words, including twenty-eight specific words. I’m suspecting that this challenge will at some point be passed onto you guys reading this, so you might want to watch out for that one. So, this is what I’ve got so far (the words in capitals are the ones that were on the inclusion list):
"The VIRGINAL VAMPIRE BAT of DOOM sat at the KITCHEN TABLE and drank FAB SLIPPERY TOENAIL cocktails, watching the BORING FOOTBALL and CLENCHING his PUNGENT BUTTOCKS (which was his daily pelvic floor exercise). He wore a TOWEL as a CLOAK; his original AWKWARDLY destroyed by a WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION. He drank cocktails because to GORGE on BLOOD gave him AMNESIA… and was not to his TASTE."
And I drew a little picture as well, and wrote out the list of ingredients for a ‘Slippery Toenail’ cocktail. I know it’s hardly award winning, but I’m tired and my hands stink of apple brandy, so it’s the best I’m going to come up with.
From Sighasoara we’ve driven up to Lacul Ursus (‘Bear Lake’ - apparently it’s shaped like a bear’s head, although none of us can really see it) and stopped for a half hour toilet break. Unfortunately, Disorganised Mick has gone wandering off somewhere and we can’t find him. The disorganised bugger. At the moment I’m privately wondering how he ever managed to get thirty of us to even walk in the same direction, let alone get all of us on holiday safely…
Yay, we’ve eventually found him! Helen set off after him (since he’d conveniently turned his phone off) and found him talking to a bunch of random teenagers. We all give him a round of applause when he gets back on the coach… bless his disorganised little heart. So now we’re heading off towards the salt mines at Praid… which I’ll hopefully fill you in on tomorrow, since it’ll probably be quite late before we get back.
TO BE CONTINUED!