Dracula, 1989, funny foreigners and making Isabelle blush

Years ago, when I started to acquire a thirst for adventure, Moldova probably would have never factored into the equation. Even when I lived in Lviv just a few years ago, with Chişinău just down the road, I could hardly be bothered to visit. But I’m here now, and…

I’ll save my Moldovan reflections for later. For now, onto times past.

Brasov, the heart of Transylvania

This was the last of my three stops in Transylvania before moving onto the capital. The highlights and lowlights include:

• visiting Bran Castle, some 30 kilometres outside the city, where Dracula (or Vlad the Impaler) once lived. This was highly anticlimactic, though I didn’t expect much.
• a superb café that I spent way too much time in.
• referencing my last posting on language, and hardly being bothered to speak Romanian, this is why. I learnt ‘pofta buna’, which I thought meant hello, and was repeatedly saying it upon entering cafes and bars, only to be met by perplexed smirks. Far from meaning ‘good day’, it actually means ‘have a good meal’. See, why bother if you’re just going to get it wrong?
• mistranslated menu highlight: in a restaurant that tried to rip me off by giving me ‘complimentary’ local liquor, one of the fish specialties was ‘fried crap in hot sauce’. Uh, no thanks.
• despite my raging atheism (as Orwell put it in Down and Out in Paris and London, you could say that I’m a ‘disembittered atheist’), I love the sound of church bells ding-donging away at all hours. I find them soothing, comforting and very relaxing.

Anyway, onto the whingeing.

The joys of travelling solo. Or, why do people want to drag along the 'poor' solo traveller?

I don’t want to wax lyrical here about the highs and lows of travelling on one’s own. It’s definitely my preferred mode of travel, though that’s not to say that I haven’t had some pleasurable experiences with friends in the past. When not travelling alone, two is my maximum: any more than that is way too many for my liking.

This is a topic I may explore in greater depth at a later time. But for now, I fancy a rant about some of the numbskulls and twits I’ve encountered thus far. And yes, I do realize how bad this sounds, and yes, I’ll readily admit that I can be a nuisance whilst travelling. But that’s why I prefer to do it alone, the more so when I hear couples arguing incessantly about every piddly little thing. And that’s just when I’m around, usually in hostels.

But here are some examples of what just drives me up the wall. In most cases, it’s people’s audacity that astounds me most:

• the Irish couple who spotted me alighting from the train in Brasov. They approached me (must have been the rucksack, because otherwise I blend in as looking very Romanian) and asked if I knew of anywhere to stay. I told them I did, and that I would be heading there in about 30 minutes. I wanted to grab a bite to eat and have a coffee beforehand, as I knew the hostel was a bit of trek and I was famished. The following dialogue ensued:

Irish Guy: Wouldn’t it be better to go to the hostel now and then relax with lunch and a cuppa?

Me: Perhaps, but I’m very hungry and want to eat now.

IG: Let’s go to the hostel first, and then eat.

Me: I can tell you where the place is if you want to go there now, but I’m going to eat something first.

Irish Girl: Come on, let’s go now, and eat after.

Me: (starting to get agitated and snappy) I’m eating now. Would you like the address and I can meet you there?

Let me nip this in the bud. This exchange went on for another few minutes, and I then started to ignore them as I walked in the direction of the café. They actually followed me up the stairs pleading with me to go to the hostel now. After snapping back with a ‘look, I’m going to eat, join me if you want, otherwise, go to the hostel yourself!’ they finally got the hint and left me to my own devices. Best of all, I never gave them the address to the hostel and so never saw them again.

Idiots.

• the two German guys at the hostel. After they overheard me asking at the front desk for train times to Bucharest, they invited themselves along. When I told them I was taking the 11.15 train, they tried to persuade me to take a later one. Honestly – the beauty of travelling by myself is that I can go whenever the hell I like. I’m not about to start compromising with strangers (I’m terribly anti-social, need I remind you, when staying in hostels) over train times when I don’t even want them travelling with me. I find myself having to make excuses and be secretive. In this case, once they ‘agreed’ on the 11.15 train, I told them I was then taking an even earlier train, and just to keep the subterfuge going, I did indeed leave well earlier, spending an extra hour or so at the train station to prevent them tagging along. I grabbed a good vantage point from the café from where I could see them entering the station. Once they had arrived, I surreptitiously followed them to see which carriage they entered, making sure to take a seat in the one furthest from that one. The lengths to which some people go to, honestly.

• this isn’t a rant, more an observation: foreigners are funny creatures. I often wonder about the seemingly random use of English words and phrases interspersed in their dialogue. The aforementioned Germans, for example, who spoke little English. The hostel in which we were staying offered a free drink (beer/soda) for every night one stayed. On the morning we were leaving, I was hanging out in the lounge where one of the guys (Hans) was waiting for his friend (Franz) to take care of the bill.

Scene: Franz walks into the lounge, whereupon he spots Hans drinking a Fanta.

Franz, excitedly, pointing at Hans: Ach, eine muss schott, plunken, bakerei verboten ausgana, ah, FREE DRINK, fussball fier funf, acht, neun!

Hans: Ach, eine, muss schott, nein FREE DRINK, drei [Romanian] lei, verboten ausfahrt, etc.

Earlier, in the room, where they were packing, a similar scene:

Franz: Ach, eine muss schott, plunken, bakerei verboten ausgana, ah, HAVE A LOOK AROUND, fussball fier funf, acht, neun!

Hans: Ach, eine, muss schott, I HAVE LOOKED AROUND, drei [Romanian] lei, verboten ausfahrt, etc.

I don’t get this at all. But I find it highly amusing. Like all foreign humour in general. I’ll never forget the scene, from when I was working at a newsagent’s in Edinburgh, of the two French guys who walked in, each picking up a Mars bar or something similar, and acting out a scene from Star Wars.

‘Ah, me Darth Vader, you Luke Skywalker’. And then they dueled with their ‘light-sabres’.

Funny foreigners.

• the two naïve American girls at the same hostel, who were so in love with these German guys (neither of whom was even remotely good-looking – the guys that is. The girls were hot little tramps, but that’s besides the point).
  

Kristen (real name): Oh my God, those guys are like, so cute.

Lauren (not real name): Oh God, aren’t they, and those accents, oh my God!

On the morning they were leaving, they came down to the reception looking very disheveled, with their rucksacks packed in a seemingly haphazard way, clothes astray, Lonely Planet hanging out of an unzipped compartment. They had definitely manufactured the unkempt look.

Kristen: Dude, you totally look the part, you look like you just woke up and threw everything together.

Lauren: Oh my God, don’t I?! And so do you, the perfect amount of mess, oh my God, we are such cool travellers.

Kristen: I can’t even believe we’re in Eastern Europe, this is so cool!

Lauren: Dude, your guidebook is just at the right angle, looks like it's about to fall out, I just hope it actually doesn't.

Kristen: Don't worry, it's secure.

I was cringing inside. How damn pretentious can you get. I would never wish anything on anyone, but a part of me was just crying out for these girls to get in some sort of minor trouble. In fact, had I not had a train to catch, I was sorely tempted to follow them and start some mischief.

• Lastly: French couple at the train station, who had stayed at the same hostel in Sighisoara a couple of nights before, recognizing me, just before I bought my train ticket to Bucharest, telling me ‘no, no, come tomorrow with us, you cannot go by yourself to there’. As cute as the girl was, I said no thanks and left as planned. Hiding from the German guys of course.

There you go, all you need to know about Brasov – you won’t find anything like that in a guidebook.

Wait, is that bird shit on my shirt?

Bucharest – the unbearable weight of history

This was arguably the last of the great 1989 cold war cities – those that really experienced a sea change in that monumental year - in my pantheon of places to visit in Central and Eastern Europe. From my earliest teenage years, 1989 has always held a firm grip in my imagination. I had been living in Germany for only a few weeks in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came crashing down, and despite being clear on the other side of the country, I could easily sense the importance and significance of what was happening. As the news reels rolled and similar scenes were played out across Europe, images and ideas lodged in my mind. At long last, I feel like I can finally put a ‘face’ to all these ‘names’.

In few other cities have I felt such a palpable sense of history as I did when I walked down those wide Bucharestian boulevards just a few days ago. Bizarrely, parts of the city seemed so familiar, solely from the television screens and photographs I had seen. University Square, scene of so much of the bloodshed and mayhem, had finally come to life, the reality replacing the imaginary.

I’ll say more about this later, when I can provide images as well.

My good pal Dr Wasabi Islam was kind enough to put me in touch with a friend/acquiantance/colleague of his who was a gracious host for the 2 or so days that I spent in Bucharest. Upon meeting Mihaela, I was immediately thrown into one of those potentially awkward situations that are difficult to extract yourself from. It's very innocent, yet still potentially sticky if it goes too far.

She had been delivering a lecture at an academic institute and had promised to introduce me to some 'young and old intellectuals'. Whilst waiting for her to wrap up, I waited in the lobby while people milled about around me. She then joined us, introducing me in quick succession to about 6 or 7 people as a teacher of Eastern Europe history in London. Before I had a chance to correct her, I was faced with a cavalcade of questions.

'Ah, so you teach about Romanian history in London?'

'Interesting, I did not know that students in London learnt about our history?'

'Tell me, what do your textbooks say about Nicolae Bălcescu?'

This last question stumped me. I couldn't keep up the charade any longer and had to weasel out of it by saying we used such lousy textbooks that they neglected Romania's finest patriots.

(for the record, he was a leader of the 1848 Wallachian revolution and yes, I had to look that up.)

Once the barrage had finished, I could relax a bit.

A rendezvous with the ne plus ultra of French cinema

Imagine my surprise upon arrival to see posters flyered about town advertising the appearance of French cinematic screen legend Isabelle Huppert, the star of one of my favourite

films, the massively underrated Amateur (directed by Hal Hartley). I watched this film just by chance with some of my oldest and dearest friends Sarah and Drew and it just blew us away with its absurdity and hilarity. An utterly bizarre, preposterous film. It's been a long time since I've seen it, but I'll attempt to succinctly summarise the plot: Man (Martin Donovan) wakes up in the street, suffering from amnesia. He wanders the streets (Paris? Amsterdam? London?) and then meets Isabelle Huppert, who takes him in and takes care of him. It turns out that she is a former nun who has quit the convent because she's a nymphomaniac. That prompted one of the all-time greatest exchanges in cinematic history.

Martin Donovan is lying in the bath.

Isabelle: 'I'm a nymphomaniac, but I'm also a virgin.'

Martin: 'How can you be a nymphomaniac but never have had sex?'

Isabelle: [looking away wistfully, blowing cigarette smoke] 'I'm choosy.'

That killed me.

Anyway, turns out that the other key character is a porn star who Martin has somehow wronged. Now she wants revenge and isn't quite ready to forgive Martin even if he can't seem to remember what he had done to her. Isabelle is wary of porn star's stories since Martin seems like such a kind, gentle soul. And of course, there are gangsters pressurising porn star to get whatever it is they want out of Martin.

That's really the gist of it. I can't recommend the film enough, it's filled with bizarre one-liners and idiosyncratic characters.

But I digress.

So, Isabelle was in town for the opening of a Henri-Cartier Bresson photo exhibition - over 120 of her images from over the years in all were on display. It was somewhat of a lavish event. The French ambassador was there, along with some other dignitaries and a few famous faces from Romanian cinema, including the country's top up-and-coming director and one of the biggest actresses. The French embassy had also laid out an impressive spread of canapes and wines.

I'm no expert on French cinema, but Amateur is definitely not one of Isabelle's plum roles. She's better known for her quite steamy and sexually unrestrained roles in La Pianiste (directed by Michael Haneke of The White Ribbon and Hidden fame, who had also been in Bucharest just a few days be fore for the opening of his film retrospective) and Ma Mere. If you're unfamiliar with the storylines, take a look.

Isabelle then milled about the crowd, taking in each of her photographs, eager paparazzi in tow snapping away. I waited around, biding my time for the right moment to sneak in and blurt out what was on my mind:

'Isabelle, you were brilliant in Amateur, that's one of my favourite films.'

And she blushed! I made Isabelle Huppert blush! This had to be one of the proudest moments of my life!

'Oh no, oh dear, that is not one of my good films.'

'No, it is, you were terrific in it, my friends and I love that film.'

'No, no, I'm so embarrassed by that film, please, it's not my best.'

'Okay, perhaps not, but I still like it the best.'

I wasn't going to admit that I liked her in Ma Mere - that would have been even more awkward.

After Isabelle had given her schpiel and thanked the crowd, and before my amusing encounter, the ambassador invited the 'guests' to enjoy the mini-feast that had been set up. About 1/3 of the ravenous crowd then made a bee-line for the tables. I refrained from joining the stampede, as famished as I was, and instead let the vultures devour their wares. It was less an offering of hors d'oeuvres than an hors de combat.

I took my leave shortly after, content that I had exchanged a few words with such a charming and stunning beauty. She looks absolutely amazing for her age and I was certainly swooning at her feet. I'll have some close-ups to share later, but for now this will have to suffice.

Isabelle charming the crowd