theatre of the absurd: Romania, part V - Sighisoara (iii) - Casa Vlad Dracul and the statue of Vlad Tepes

Flipside of the graveyard

I was rereading some of my older entries, from continental #4 no less, and I really did write a lot more - and better - back then. The posts I published gave a fairly good picture of my trip, the destinations I went to, what I did there and how my journey made me feel, along with all the other little stuff that happened to me on the way. I don't think I do that nearly often enough now, and I shall attempt to counter that. It's not that easy though, as I was a different person three years ago. The thoughts I had and the words I used to express my feelings were completely different. The things I noticed were completely different, too. Also it doesn't help that my Sighisoara pictures are non-linear.

My favourite Banca Transilvania

This entry is fairly straightforward, though. We spent the entire day in Sighisoara citadel, and went to the main attraction that had drawn me to this lovely village in the first place: the house where the (in)famous Vlad Tepes had been born. Lital demurred, saying that she didn't want to enter - I didn't blame her, as Vlad Tepes and the part of history he belongs to is somewhat niche, and you'd have to be a rather hardcore history fan of his to want to pay the entrance fee to go in. 5 lei though, so fairly affordable, though I have to say - it was two rooms, and basically redesigned to be an immensely campy horror house complete with a fake corpse in the coffin which jumps up at you suddenly, as well as a gigantic fake tarantula which descends upon you as you enter, which I did not appreciate. I do not like people trying to scare me. I'm not sorry I visited, but they really need to lose the tacky Halloween decorations and scare gimmicks. They ought to have realised that people are there for the history and for Vlad Tepes, not for cheap playground scares and bad decorations that look like hand me downs from Poundland, and detract from the whole experience. Anyway, I didn't want to be scared, so after screaming my head off (much to the amusement of the hot bartender/ticket guy who looked to be my age, along with his girlfriends) I waited till there was a family who also wanted to visit. The bartender suggested, rather nicely, that I go in with them, which was what I planned. The family was very nice, and I was amused to see that the teenage daughters disliked the tarantula and fake corpse just as much as I did, and made their father go first.

Casa Vlad Dracul, the house of the son of the dragon, as well as his father

The hot ticket guy/bartender, who was around my age

The guy masquerading as a fake corpse

The rather well-finished wall painting

Anyway, I came back down and found Lital, and the first thing I said to her was that she made the right choice of not going there, but that I didn't regret it - it was something I had to do. She said she'd gotten a funny feeling about the place (being a tourist trap) but that she knew that I wanted to go there for the history, so she figured that I would go anyway. She really does know me quite well. Anyway, here's the tripadvisor page for Casa Vlad Dracul and the reviews there say it all.

Afterwards me and Lital strolled slowly to one of the main squares, where there was a German-speaking tour group standing in front of a large bronze statue. I whooped with delight as I realised that it was the Impaler himself, and rushed forward to take pictures. "Hey look, it's your husband," deadpanned Lital. As I was busy taking photos, one of the middle-aged men in the tour group snuck behind me and grabbed my shoulders suddenly with a loud whoop. I shrieked my head off, the second time in a hour that day, and the entire tour group fell about laughing. I chatted with them a bit, after I'd stopped screaming, and found that they were from Austria. Later, me and Lital walked to the bottom of the citadel, and we raised our heads up, and saw the Austrians, who waved to us.

The statue of the son of the dragon

I always say that I'll return to places I really liked, but then I rarely do. I think this'll be the case for Sighisoara, which really is quite out of the way - but who can say? We'll see what life brings.