DAY 9 - MONDAY 11TH OCTOBER - MONASTERIES
Official Itinerary says: "We have a very full itinerary today. After breakfast, we start with a coach ride into the province of Moldavia, to visit the world famous painted monastery of Moldovita and then on to either Sucevita or Voronet. Founded in the 16th century these monasteries are decorated both inside and out with vibrant religious frescoes of "redemption and damnation" and are considered to be some of the "greatest artistic monuments in Europe".
After a stop for lunch we will continue by coach to Durau, a spa resort situated at the foot of the Ceahlau mountains on Lake Bicaz. Noted for its clean mountain air, the resort is famed for the treatment of a wide variety of complaints including "intellectual overexertion". Durau is also a centre for mountaineering and winter sports and the surrounding national park is internationally important for its rare plants and wildlife including the Carpathian stag, brown bear, wild boar and the lynx.
The fantastically shaped Ceahlau mountains (also known as the magic mountains), are a source of legend and are believed to be haunted by spirits and ghosts. Ancient Romanian tribes believed that these mountains were the home of their gods, and that climbing the peaks led to paradise. In more recent times, the landscape and local ruins inspired Alexandre Dumas to write several ghost stories. If time allows there may be an opportunity for a short walk in the area. Overnight and our evening meal will be at the Durau Hotel."
Hmmm... I'm still not sure if I had fun last night or not. It was a bit of a strange night all round, one way or another. Everyone looked absolutely stunning in their fancy togs, and yes, I felt completely upstaged, once again. I really have to start spending more on clothes and stuff, because I'm beginning to feel like an old bag lady compared to most of these guys. I'll have to post some photos of them, since it'd take far too long to describe everyone and what they were wearing.
(Note from Future Rakie: I've finally managed to get most of the photos up on my website - on the photo page – the photos of the log carts and the masked ball are on page 4... I think.)
A few highlights of the costumes that I will mention: Helen in her stunning rumpled fetish skirt and black leather top; Andrew in a scary purple leather mask that had a long furry tail running down the back of his head; Lisa in a dark red dress that won her the award for ‘Best Boobs on Tour 2004’; Blond Klif in a kilt; Ginger Dave in a white billowy shirt, tailed jacket, blue waistcoat, Vlad the Impaler style hat and his hair worn loose over his shoulders; Disorganised Mick in military jacket and scary bird mask; Stella in a black corset and wearing two huge braided pigtails of black hair attached on either side of her head; Rosie in what looked like a Halle Berry cast-off – black PVC with translucent black strips – and a piece of lace tied round her face as a mask. KT wore her waistcoat with silver skeletons on it that I'd thoughtfully (and not very expertly) made for her, and a long black cape. She looked really very cool in it all, although she obviously didn't believe me for a moment when I told her so.
I wore my charity-shop find – a black designer dress with blue stripes across the bodice that I found (brand new and with labels still attached) in a charity shop for twenty quid. It's beautiful and incredibly slimming and makes my boobs look great. I got lots of nice comments like, 'Wow, you have boobs! You should bring them out to play more often!'. I still don't look nearly as good as most of the other people there, but at least I don't look totally bad.
Dinner is a lot of fun. I'd decided to try and drink mostly Coke, since I was still feeling a little bit 'tired' from that bottle of wine at lunch, but there didn't seem to be any kind of supply of it behind the bar downstairs, so eventually I have to switch to wine. We all get a complimentary glass of plum brandy with our meal, although a lot of people don’t touch the scary vile stuff. So KT goes along and collects up all the undrunk glasses, and drinks them. I think she has about seven of them in the end, although she doesn't get mine – that one belongs to me.
After dinner there’s a competition where people have to stand up and recite a quote from their favourite book, then act out a scene from their favourite movie. Blond Klif gets up first and recites the speech from 'Dracula' that starts, 'Welcome to my house – enter freely and of your own will,' and then re-enacts a cool scene from 'Near Dark'. Jim, whose accent I'm still working on placing (Birmingham? Scotland? Northern Ireland?) quotes Hamlet and then gets his girlfriend Jane to help him out with a scene from 'Scream', using a mobile phone, a plastic mask and a dinner knife. J eventually wins with another scene from 'Dracula', playing the part of both Jonathan Harker and a mad old peasant woman (complete with napkin on his head and a mobile phone – "I ‘av a messuge for yu, Meester Harker... it says, 'Someone you know wants a date'."). He wins an odd candlestick thing, and the others all get Dracula mugs. Oooh.
Mucky Mick did want to enter the competition, and tries to convince some of the girls to help him recreate the scene in Dracula where Jonathan Harker gets molested by three vampire babes. I point out to him that he really needs a blonde one, a ginger one and a dark haired one, and no-one in the room at that time is actually blonde or ginger... apart from Klif and Dave respectively. Mick hastily retracts his competition entry at that point.
The vast amounts of plum brandy rapidly take they well-known effect on KT, and Tubby Mark eventually has to drag her off back to our room. Ginger Dave then initiates another Slo-Mo gun battle with me, which I promptly lose again. These fights are really great fun, incidentally, especially if you can get three or four people involved, but you have to be prepared for occasionally falling over and landing on your ass (actually, I'm quite good at that part – I’ve had a hell of a lot of practice at falling over). Despite all the people in the room, only me and Dave seem to want to get into these fights... shame that.
Anyway, the end of this fight must have been pretty cool to watch. We’ve both taken cover at either end of the dinner hall, and are hiding ourselves behind convenient stone pillars. I've got my back to one of these pillars and I've just switched to my invisible shotgun (in typical John Woo style, I've just emptied both my handguns and thrown them away). I wheel out round the pillar with a girly war-cry ('Yarrrrr... huh?') to discover that Ginger Dave is nowhere in sight (I actually accidentally shoot one of the innocent bystanders at this point – sorry Tim). Oh goddamn it, where has he gone? I have about half a second for my brain to go, 'ARGH YOU MORON HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!!' and spin round to find that yes, he is indeed right behind me, wearing the world's biggest, cheesiest shit-eating grin ever and holding his imaginary nickle-plated glock pointed right at my head. Fucksocks. Still grinning, he yells 'BANG!' and I hit the ground like the 150-pound sack of shit that I am. We get a round of applause as I'm helped back to my feet, although I'm still not best pleased. I've just fallen onto a stone floor wearing my best dress and bruised the hell out of my hip, after being shot by a grinning ginger so-and-so. Revenge must be mine.
Eventually, revenge is mine. About an hour or so later, Ginger Dave pushes away from the table to go get another drink. I'm sat opposite him and I jump up at the same moment, making a move like a gunslinger going for his (miraculously retrieved and reloaded) guns. Dave goes 'Argh!' and dives for cover. Tee hee hee. I fire off a few pretend rounds then dive for the floor behind the table before he can retaliate. Crawling quickly away, I realise that not only are stone floors very painful to land on, they are also not great fun to crawl on. Dave chases me round the table, but – hee hee hee – I’ve scampered away some distance from where he'd expected me to be. Yes! BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM! Vengeance is mine!! See how you like landing on your ass on a cold stone floor, boy!
So I may have lost several arguments and one gunfight, but at least I have retrieved some of my lost pride at last. We call it quits for the night and vow to have a rematch some time when the floor's not so bloody cold and hard.
After that fun-filled moment though, the night seems to slow down for me. I hit a real big quiet spot and just don't feel like chatting to anyone. Everyone's split off into pairs and threesomes to talk, and for one reason or another I can't seem to insinuate myself into any of the conversations. It's just one of those nights, I guess. Anyway, eventually I just have to call it a night and take myself off to bed.
When I get up to mine and KT's room, I find that KT is asleep in the bath. She's also thrown up in the sink, and she doesn't seem particularly inclined to move. To be honest, I'm not in great shape myself, so (in my usual kind and caring way) I throw a blanket over her and go to bed. About ten minutes later I get woken up by her shouting for me. I go back into the bathroom and find her complaining that the tap is dripping onto her head and making her hair cold and wet. I turn off the tap and suggest that she gets out of the bath and goes back to her bed, which may be a little bit further away but is at least dry and doesn't make your head cold. So with a marginal amount of struggle on both our parts, we get her out of the bath and into her bed, and then I finally get to sleep.
Something else that I don't realise at the time, but I'd managed to leave my bag downstairs in the dinner hall. And it's not just any bag, it's my BAG OF VAST IMPORTANCE that I've not let out of my sight for the entire holiday. It contains my money, cashcards, passport and tickets home... and I leave it on the back of my goddamn chair. For fuck's sake. I don't even realise it's missing until I wake up in the morning and have a panic attack because it's gone. Fortunately, after running around like a moron for about half an hour, I manage to glean the information from the people at breakfast that someone did in fact pick it up for me. The someone eventually turns out to be Stella, who is now officially my favourite person in the whole world ever, and I offer to buy her copious amounts of wine in return.
After all those epics, on to this morning. We're currently on the coach headed up towards a couple of monasteries, and then on to 'somewhere in the mountains' (thank you, Disorganised Mick) for the night. Everyone's feeling a little bit delicate (although obviously not that delicate, since Stella is busy passing around a bottle of lemon vodka) and it is really very cold today. It's not raining, but the winds have picked up and I'm very glad that we're not on the caleches today. Debs bought herself a large sheepskin blanket from one of the tat shops yesterday, and she's currently debating whether to get it down and wrap herself up in it. It's lovely and warm, but unfortunately it got damp yesterday and now smells a bit like an elderly male yak.
(Note from Future Rakie: The journal for today breaks off rather abruptly at this point. This is because, shortly after we visited the first monastery of the day, Past Rakie and Stella got immensely, incredibly drunk, and didn't manage to write a single thing after that point. So the rest of today will, once again, be related tomorrow!)
TO BE CONTINUED!