It would have been in March, 2001, or thereabouts, that I traveled from Vienna to Bucharest in the company of H, a colleague from the British Embassy. We were there to attend a meeting about migrant smuggling, being hosted by the Romanian government in the giant national palace built by the Communist-era dictator Ceaușescu. Now known as the Palace of Parliament, and said to be the largest government administration building in the world, I recall making a walk of at least fifteen minutes from the main entrance to the meeting room, passing through a seemingly endless labyrinth of gloomy hallways and unfinished rooms with unnecessarily high ceilings.
I don't recall whether I was to give a presentation or merely observe; I do recall there being uniformed representatives of border police from Romania and other former Soviet-bloc countries, and a large number of EU bureaucrats in attendance. Then, as now, migrants were being smuggled from South Asia, Afghanistan, Tran and Iraq through the former Soviet Union along the north shore of the Black Sea, into eastern Europe and on into the EU. The overarching theme was to discuss what Romania was doing to try to counter this, as part of the country's larger preparations to join the EU.
H and I had arrived in the late afternoon the day before the meeting. After ditching our bags at our hotel, made our way to Bucharest's Rahova flower market where, as the name implies, there are large numbers of flower vendors to be found. We found our way into a simple streetside watering hole where the drivers of flower delivery trucks would stop for a beer and a sandwich, deciding to forego the latter in favour of several glasses of the former. There, H told me about a monastery on an island in a lake about an hour outside Bucharest where Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula, is supposedly buried. We hatched a plan to go visit it.
H and I were staying an extra day and a night after the meeting in order to visit security staff at TAROM, the Romanian airline, and review passport inspection procedures. TAROM at that time had direct flights to Montreal, which would occasionally be used to smuggle people into Canada. Our return flight to Vienna was not until late on the 3rd day of our visit, meaning we'd have time to go in search of Dracula.
It was dark by the time we left the cafe at the flower market, but it was a warm evening and we decided to walk back to our hotel. We took a few wrong turns, those being the days before Google Maps, and ended up in a dubious looking industrial area with more stray dogs than streetlights. We wandered in through the open doors of an industrial bakery and, by showing our hotel keys and making the universally understood hand gestures of the hopelessly lost, wheedled out of some amused bakers directions and a couple hot loaves of bread (for we were famished by this point).
Finding our way onto a busy street leading in the direction of our hotel, we decided to step into a newly built establishment that had a neon sign that simply read "bar", in hopes of a beer and a proper bite to eat. This was a very serious mistake. Between us and the bar at the far end of the room all but one of the tables were unoccupied; at the one that was sat the roughest looking bunch of thugs and mobsters I've ever laid eyes on. As either H or I said something to the effect of, "Sorry gentlemen, we've made a mistake, sorry to disturb you", one of the mobsters stood up, smiled, gesticulated for us to come join them, and clapped his hands loudly. Immediately there came flowing down a spiral staircase, in an obscure corner of the room, a number of scantily clad young women. This was no bar, but a brothel, and it would not have been surprising if some of the women had been trafficked into the country by the same organizations that were the subject of the following day's conference. As the beckoning thug walked towards us, we backed out the door and walked away as briskly as we could, the lock in the door clicking loudly as it was turned after us. We made no further stops until we were safely back at our hotel.
On our final morning in Bucharest, we hired a taxi to take us in search of Dracula's grave. The driver spoke reasonably good English, having once been a teacher. It took about an hour to reach the lake in question. There was indeed a small island in the lake, on which we could see a small church-like structure standing. How we were to get there proved to be an unsolvable problem. There was at that time s small resort village along the lakeshore, consisting of simple hotels and restaurants that opened only during the summer season. It being March, they were all closed, and the village was nearly deserted. As we stood on the shore trying to think of a way to reach the island, an older man walked past, and the taxi driver explained what we wanted to do. The man told us to follow him to a nearby public telephone, from which he would call the army.
As it turned out, there was an army barrack not too far away. The man managed to get an officer on the phone, who agreed to bring us a boat to take us to the island for the equivalent of about US$40. About a half hour later, a jeep did indeed turn up with the officer in question, a half dozen soldiers, and a most unseaworthy-looking rowboat. Through our taxi driver-cum-interpreter we explained that we wanted to see if the boat floated before we would pay for our journey. The officer ordered his men to place the boat into the water and hop into it, which they did. As expected, there were several leaks and, although the officer assured us that his men could bale faster than the boat could fill, we nonetheless politely declined the voyage, and gave him $10 for his troubles.
On the return trip to Bucharest, H asked the driver to stop at the former estate of a Romanian prince whose young English wife had been killed during the Second World War, leaving him heartbroken. The driver had never heard of such a story, but drove us to a large park he thought was once a nobleman's estate. This turned out to be more fruitful than our quest for Dracula, for after some wandering we found in an inconspicuous grassy area a lone gravestone for the woman in question.
Our previously chatty and jocular taxi driver was unusually quiet as he returned us to his hotel. He gradually explained that he was embarrassed and upset that two foreigners knew more about his own country's history than did he, a history the dictator Ceaușescu tried to erase from collective memory and replace with his own delusional, paranoid fantasy world. Thank goodness a history cannot be so easily lost.
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