Originally posted on Monday, July 14, 2014
This morning, I had spent 34 years nearly obsessed wtih a variety of castles throughout the world, yet had never set foot in one. As the night closes in around me while I write this, I have now explored two. Not just any two, but two of the most infamous residences in all of western history.The morning began with nine people trying to get ready using only a single bathroom, yet that would prove the most easily overcome of the challenges we would face. The route back to our meeting place provided by Gregory Peck proved quite useless, and his distance estimation fell short of the actual distance by around half. Five kilometers and an hour of walking later, we made it to the bus. Fortunately the other crew had passed us in their taxis, spotting us and expecting our tardiness, which lessened the bruising. Nevertheless, once packed on board we watched the city of Brasov slide away and the Carpathians come to the fore. The weather was indeterminate, raining then sweltering, windy then blazing, creating an immense fog cloud which we watched envelop the craggy peaks. Communities would appear and disappear, some being commerical but by far most being agrarian. The high peaked homes embraced this role to the point of garages overflowing with hay for livestock. A continual reappropriation weaved throughout the landscape, cement edifices bearing the hallmark of Soviet construction lie in stoic ruin, their walls in no danger of collapsing yet still empty they remain.Bran castle is both huge and petite, sprawling yet compact. It stands over the surrounding countryside like a conqueror, just as intended. Our bus parked and we were given free run to explore. The base of the castle is a sea of souvenirs, tchotchkis, and as my mother would say, “Rubber Tomahawks”. Plenty of time for that afterwards, the castle beckons. This workshop has given me some remarkable new friends with whom I do wish to stay in contact with, yet this moment was something special to me, and as such I got ahead of the others and worked my way through in a solitary awe. The castle is a beautiful assymetrical creature, winding and doubling back onto itself so often as to quickly become disorienting, possibly an intentional design to confuse any attacker unlucky enough to scale its sheer walls. Its interior had been decorated quite tastefully for the most part, the furniture placed into the original locales, the rooms restored for their original intent. A child’s nursery with a child size alcove filled with soft comforters and a scaled down fireplace to ensure warmth inside a structure never designed for comfort. An armory with a variety of gothic plate, halberds, zweihanders, and other machinations of death. Cannonades still in place ready to rain death upon any attacking force. Archery slits with built in seating for comfortable murder, accomodating both left and right handed defenders. The castle is a mishmosh of what a castle is supposed to be, and what it could be. The usual design of courtyard and keep was reduced draastically, emphasizing verticality due to the rugged hillside of its perch.I descended a spiral staircase. The stairs twisted away from me in a clockwise fashion, and I recalled the necessity of such direction stairs to impede ascending attackers and enhance retreating defenders. I let my hand slide against the central pillar of the staircase and but for a moment let myself feel what it could have been like, the emotional impact nearly overwhelming me. Blinking away tears of disbelief that I should ever find myself in such a place, I descended. As I did, a gust of wind blew through me. Castles are notoriously drafty, this is well known, but I had no idea how it would feel. I write the word “drafty” and no doubt you imagine something comparable to the wind leaking between cracks and crevices in a house. This is not what is meant here. The draft is a wind, every bit the wind which you feel on a hillside, on the deck of a ship, in an unprotected field, yet that power is channeled into a corridor in a fashion which defies comprehension. Perhaps the castle was only doing its part in recreating what I had already imagined, or perhaps the castle is only a pile of bircks and rocks, I don’t know which is easier to believe.A medical emergency. An older woman slipped on the timeworn steps leading into the courtyard, and very obviously and very painfully broke her ankle. The tours continued around her as she lie there, her foot bent in a wholly unnatural fashion, her face a blank expression more of annoyance or embarassment than of pain or panic. I tried not to gawk, but when the paramedics arrived, I found myself appraising their gear and methods with a detachment. An inflatable splint, pressurized using a wooden handled manual pump whose needle needed to be connected via a length of surgical tubing. A piece of kit performing a modern necessity with a 19th century approach, perhaps a microcosm of the nation in which I was a guest.Despite it all, I eventually had to leave the castle. I bought the requisite souveniers for my loved ones, items I had preselected before even arriving; postcards, a dress for my daughter, a top for my wife, and a few other items.We then piled onto the bus and headed for our next stop, the Poienari Fortress of Vlad Tepes. A three hour bus ride dumped us at the foot of a terrifying ascent. 1,480 steps are required to see this hideout, which in its heyday was only big enough for the occupant and a small bodyguard of 5-7 garrisoned within. After the excruciating ascent, the fortress lie in ruins and there was little to see. Yet still, the locale nearly radiated with a sense of dread, a strange moodiness which applied to every collpased brick, every worn rock surface, every remaining few stairs. If this was a place of anything but evil, it was difficult to tell.The descent was far more manageable, but by the end our legs were shaking for us all. The day was a triathlon unlike any other. We climbed onto the bus and collapsed in turn. The driver set out to return us to Brasov, but quickly the language barrier alone could not hide the truth; he was lost. He drove with his cell phone strapped to his ear, answering calls casually while flying along the doglegged road built by a fascist madman who knew nothing of human safety or comfort. The driver had to stop no less than five times for directions from nearby pedestrians, and it was nearly five hours later when we pulled back into Brasov.A rather pleasantly unpleasant dinner followed, yet we still needed to somehow traverse the 5km back to our temporary lodging. None of us were capable of making such a journey, and so there we were; nine people, 7 women and 2 men, all American save one Briton, trying to flag a taxi cab past 11pm in Brasov Romania.When one is traveling, one is faced with a series of odd challenges. They come one after the other, and each one can stop you dead in your tracks. A single hailstone could pierce your radiator miles from anything resembling aid. For us that night it was how to get back on legs made of taffy. Even if we COULD get a taxi, we had little idea where to direct them except for the tourist map provided by the hostel (dated 2007). Eventually Erik managed to flag down a taxi and hold it while the remainder attempted to run on their gooey lower extremities. The first cab filled up. The second cab filled up. I was the last one left. Neither cab driver wanted 5 in their miniscule european cabs, so Jill was kind enough to hop out and let the cabs go so she and I could flag down a third. Only then did we realize we had no idea how to get there.
Fortunately, Jill found one of the hostel maps tucked in her bag, and we managed to flag a driver after a few minutes. It took a hefty amount of effort to not pass out right then and there, but we persvered and have arrived at our hostel. Amazingly, there was no wait for the shower, so I rinsed myself off, lay back on the bed whose comfort is more reminiscent of a taught fishing net than a mattress, and wrote this entry.
