Whether you’ve been my friend and done
life with me over the years, or you’ve recently met me, or you don’t
even know me except through these blogs you’ve been reading, I think
one safe thing you could say about my life and its stories, is that I
always find myself in odd/interesting/funny (you get the point, the
adjectives could go on & on…) situations. I feel the need to
share my latest funny story with you, which was about our trip to
Dracula’s Castle…
It was just another day in Romania, an
off day, as a matter of fact, when we decided to go and visit
Dracula’s Castle. “How cool,” we all thought! So we hired a
private bus to pick us up and drive us there, returning late that
evening. Our contact had told us it was about an hour and a half
away-not bad at all. So we packed lunches and we’re off.
The drive up to the Castle was
gorgeous! I don’t think I’ve ever seen pine trees so tall, fog
settling so thick among the mountains, or views that beautiful. I was
thoroughly enjoying our drive up. Our driver even stopped at one
point to allow us to get out and take some photos.
When we arrived at the top of the
mountain to a place called Dracula’s Castle Hotel, we all got out to
find the receptionist. After searching for several minutes, we found
it. We wanted to find out when tours of the castle were. (Okay, so
here’s where it gets interesting). In very broken English, the woman
told us it would cost 2 LEI (which is about $0.75). Not bad for a
tour, we thought. So we paid and then were told to follow the lady to
what we thought was the bus. We started down a winding staircase,
when I started to realize, this didn’t look like the way to a bus…
Pretty soon we were in a dark hallway
and I couldn’t see anything. All of sudden the women lights a candle
and I thought, “Oh shoot, I don’t have a good feeling about
this…” I turned to Jeanne and told her I wasn’t going any
further, you’re going to have to push me. Hannah had already gone in
front of me and I had lost her, so Jeanne grabbed my hand and
we walked on. (Little interjection…I had just put Skittles in my
mouth…that will come into play in a minute.)
So we walked on, in complete darkness,
into a dark room. On the way to the room, someone (who I thought was
Hannah, just playing a joke on me) grabbed my leg…suddenly I
realized we were in a haunted house-something I NEVER wanted to be
in. We all finally made it into a room, the women blew out her candle
and turned on the light. We were in a room with a coffin. “Oh my
gosh, what the heck are we doing here?!” I immediately thought. All
of a sudden the women looks at us and then flings open the coffin
lid, DRACULA jumps out! I scream, and in the process start choking on
my Skittles, while slamming Kristen into the wall behind me, while
also still holding onto Jeanne’s hand!
Then the lights go off. I keep yelling
and hear Dracula laughing and getting closer. Jeanne and I both
buried our heads into each others shoulders (and poor Kristen, I was
trying to push my way to the back of the wall, thus crushing her in
the process). Now, Leisa was a trooper and starts yelling, “I’m
swinging, oh, I hit him, I got ’em.” Then then lights go back on
and the women flips the coffin lid open one more time-this time I
don’t look, but nothing was in there. I immediately start laughing,
my throat in pain from choking & screaming. We all look at each
other and on each one of our faces was written, “what the heck just
happened?”
Then the lights went off again and we
were told to walk back out the way we came in. I couldn’t see
anything [again] and since my senses were a little heightened, I
didn’t want to walk first. I threatened the lady if she didn’t turn
the light on I was going to get my headlamp out…ya, that’s right, I
had my headlamp in my purse. Always be prepared…I believe that now
more than ever.
We made it out of Dracula’s little fun
house (mind you, it was super cheesy, and most of my team was not as
scared as I was-they would want you to know that). Once we were out
of there, we realized there was no bus, no grand tour, nothing. We
found out that we pretty much had seen everything that was there. It
was not Dracula’s actual Castle, (his castle was 6 hours in the other
direction), but it was rumored that he had stayed at that hotel. We
all died laughing when we realized this. So we decided to take a few
photos anyway, and then we were on our way. So even though the day
didn’t go at all how we thought it would, we all took away some
pretty amazing memories from the day. Even as I write this, I’m still
laughing over the whole day…
