POSTSCRIPT

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As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve visited Transylvania twice. The first time was a private trip; the second to record material for a Japanese television network. There was a gap of several years between the two trips, and I think those years saw some very decisive change for the Romanian people. It was during this time that the dictator Ceausescu was overthrown. My second trip made me aware of the changes that’d occurred in Romania.

The first time I wanted to go to Transylvania, the taxi driver in Bucharest insisted he couldn’t go outside the city, so my lovely guide had to negotiate with him and tell him I’d pay extra. Somehow we made it there, but the second time the public broadcasting company was true to form and we had a college student who could speak Japanese as our guide. Renting a van, we were able to travel about as we pleased.

At any rate, NHK was doing a travel series that went all over the world, and this episode was about the Transylvanian warlord who was the basis for Dracula, Vlad Tepes. As the author of more vampire novels in Japan than anyone, I was singled out for the assignment. To be perfectly honest, the second time I wasn’t all that enthused about going because the first trip hadn’t left me with a very good impression.

Even in the capital city of Bucharest there had been very little color. Needless to say, there was no neon, and the people’s clothes were black or white. Occasionally there was a little red and blue mixed in.

After I got tired of Romanian cuisine, we did some checking and found a Chinese restaurant. I was delighted to go there, and I saw there were lots of items on the menu. It was in English, so I could basically understand it. I told a man who looked like the manager, “I want this, and this, and this.” Saying nothing, he pointed to two items on the menu. Apparently he meant, “This is all we have.” Well, it was better than nothing.

I told the people at the national travel bureau that I wanted to go to Transylvania, but the middle-aged woman at the counter coldly told me that taxis wouldn’t go outside the city, as I mentioned earlier. Apparently a second, kinder middle-aged woman pitied me, and if she hadn’t got a taxi for me, I probably wouldn’t have made it out there. The interpreter I requested was beautiful and friendly, and the taxi driver was also a cheerful fellow. On straight stretches of highway, he’d get the car up to a hundred miles per hour and take his hands off the wheel to surprise us (my wife was with me). Over two days, our lovely guide showed us Bran Castle, Targoviste, and Transylvania’s Castle Dracula (The same castle where Tepes’s wife throws herself from the battlements in Coppola’s film Bram Stoker’s Dracula).

So, having seen the major sites, my general feeling was, “Oh, not again.” Of course, by nature I dislike traveling, and that may have played a large part in it, too. However, I accepted the offer and flew from Narita to Paris, then from Paris to Bucharest.

The rest of the story will have to wait until the next volume . . .

Hideyuki Kikuchi

November 18, 2009

while watching Bram Stoker’s Dracula