Before Snagov, the race across a quarter of the country from Brasov to Bucharest, our final destination for the day, had us all unhinged.  Gabriel's pre-revolution Dacia had the feel of a car that wanted to catch on fire and was constantly thinking about it.  The air conditioning was a dashboard wide vent, which Gabriel popped open to allow a wall of road dust to wash in, the small of burning oil and rubber fast on its tracks.  Once out of Brasov, the main roads became blistered byways of the sort you'd expect to find in the deserts of the Southwest, the closed-off sections of Route 66.  Life with a Dacia was obviously a labor of love.  Gabriel was ready for every stumble.  When the car blew out a tire, he had it repaired in pit-stop time. 

For brunch, we pulled off at  a dust-blown roadside stop.  At night, the place was a strip bar.  By day, it was open-pit barbecue serving breakfast and lunch.  The strippers - who all appeared to be 15 years old and enslaved by cruel, violent masters - doubled as waitresses.   These polluted girls seemed terminally confused by their daytime roles - should they bring the dessert menu or should they offer a blow job?

It's thanks to Gabriel and the blow job waitresses that our eyes were opened to Fanta's regional flavor "Shokata."  The much debated Shokata gained worldwide renown for the "make your own commercial" campaign launched by Fanta's owner, Coke, around the same time.  Where Gabriel argued Shokata was only Romanian, and based on a secret Romanian recipe, careful research reveals it to be of Asian origin... Or is it Scandinavian?  Or Israeli?  Coke's not really talking.  Probably because the "Shokata" flowers, pictured on the can, don't really exist.  Here's the truth - It's lemon Fanta. 

Getting to the rotten lake in the center of Snagov wasn't as easy as it should have been. 

The "lake resort town" begins as a tumble down industrial district, then gives way to single family housing that's oddly reminiscent of Albuquerque's older, poor neighborhoods.  No one in Romania is capable of providing clear instructions, either.  You'd think they could tell you the way to the huge lake in the middle of their community, but it seemed that was too much to ask.  Gabriel said the locals were just giving us a hard time out of spite.  The roads were dirt tracks, seemingly built at random, and impossible to navigate.

In the countryside, the white trees are far more prevalent than in the city.  Trees and posts are, traditionally, painted white in the style you often see here in the US to combat parasites  -- from the ground to chest high.  In Romania's case, it's not a question of pest control but decoration.  Ceausescu's wife thought it was pretty to paint all the trees white.  During Ceausescu's reign, the white doubled as street lighting.  Driving at night, the only lights were the reflection of your headlights, and on breakneck, unpredictable, unpainted roads, those trees must have saved many lives.

The practicality of this custom was unintended, though.  The true reason was to please the lord and master, and everyone in Romania was issued a number.  Every weekend, the odds and evens would trade off and paint the trees in their community to keep the white spotless and fresh.  It's good to be dictator.

Snagov is, technically, a suburb of Bucharest.  It's about 15-20 miles from the city.  But suburban sprawl is American thinking, Snagov is a country getaway at its heart.  The houses are barely kept up, yet the trees are carefully painted. 

When we caught our first glimpse of water between the houses and the trees, Gabriel slammed the car to a skidding halt, parked illegally, and then ran down to the lakeshore.

The lake "shore" was actually a bog, ringing the lake.  A little hike along each side showed nothing but private and government property, the largest of which was Ceausescu's vacant and still privately-guarded summer home, a sprawling estate that would put western monarchs to shame.  Until the government decided how to divvy up Ceausescu's property, it all remained abandoned.  There was no rental agency for boats.

We caught site of a small jetty on the island where three motorboats huddled, then waded through the reeds to find the companion dock on the shore - termite-ridden wood, sinking slowly into the mud.  The dock had two wooden canoes tethered to it, one that had turned into driftwood and sunk into the mud and the other full of water and breeding mosquitoes.

Gabriel asked to read the section in my Lonely Planet once again and, armed with the guidebook, knocked on a door and hauled out the ancient woman who answered, summing up our current situation.  She laughed, and then we learned the truth.

"She says," Gabriel translated, "That there are no more rental boats.  Sometimes the locals will do it, but the parinte may shoot." 

Parinte - it means parent, and a common name given to priests or monks.  But the way she phrased it seemed to catch Gabriel.  He cocked his head and asked for clarification.  After the reply, he turned to us, "There is only one monk.  All the others - they are dead.  We must call across and ask permission to visit the island.  He is well armed."

"Well armed?" I asked.

Gabriel nodded, looking a little unsure.  He looked down at the Lonely Planet in his hands as if it were a book written by the devil, then he handed it back to me.  I had put my hand out, fearing that he was about to toss it into the lake.

We were all shocked that the woman meant we had to literally call the monk. She walked us back down to the dock and began shouting:  "Parinte!"  Her voice echoed around the lake, but there was no reply.  She took a breath and shouted again. After five minutes of screaming, her voice cracked and she turned to Gabriel.

"He is sleeping," Gabriel translated.  Then he began shouting.

After each taking turns, we decided to call it a wash.  Just as we were leaving, the monk shouted from somewhere on the island.

"Oh!" Gabriel put an arm on my shoulder, "He has heard!"

The ancient lady left with smiles and waves and we stayed, Gabriel's little flock of sheep, watching the dock on the island.  A portly man in black, surrounded by feral dogs, waddled out to his dock and began working with one of the boats.

"Oh," Gabriel muttered.

"What?" I asked.

"He is...how do you say...taking water..."

"He's bailing out the goddamned boat." Sherban muttered.

The monk finished bailing it out, leapt in and motored across the lake.  He invited us to climb in and, taking water the entire time, he hurried back to the island's docks, worriedly looking back as the lake water washed in.

"Many snakes!" Gabriel was shouting, one white knuckled hand holding onto the seat and the other pointing at the lake water, which was teeming with water moccasins. 

At the island's docks, we all scrabbled out, nearly hugging each other, and followed the monk to dry land.

He raised six fingers and started talking.

Gabriel translated, "Six Euros each." 

"What?" Antony barked, "How come he didn't tell us that back at the docks. 

"Six Euros or we go back on the water," Gabriel shrugged.

We all paid, including Gabriel, more out of fear of the black lake than anything else.  The monk warmed to us as soon as collected the cash and showed us around the island. 

The island was self-sufficient and, for most of the last few hundred years, supported twenty to thirty monks.  It was large enough for livestock, orchards, gardens and had it's own water source - a thousand foot well, just wide enough for a man to slip down, dug by a slave Vlad Tepes had captured as a boy.  It took the slave 25 years to dig the well, working dawn to dusk every day.  The parinte now lives alone, leaving the island once every six months or so to get some mod-cons from the local store.  In the mid-90's, the government took away all funding, which left the monastery dependent on tourist money and donations.  With tourists arriving every six months, maybe four or five people a year, there wasn't much hope there.

Locals brought in what they could - toaster ovens, breadmakers, TV's and the like.  All hand-me-down gifts, and a few items liberated from Ceausescu's empty palace which, we learned, is something like a scene from Great Expectations - everything inside the sealed palace is frozen in mid step from the days of the revolution.

With only one person to defend the island, the monk was plagued by gypsy raiders.  They came to deface Dracula's tomb - a small, two room chapel - and steal food from the orchards and gardens.  The latter they sold by the roadside.  Once, the monk ran out to throw stones at them and was attacked.  Beating him, the gypsies sunk his motorboats for good measure and took off.  Perhaps guilty about cutting the funding, and knowing that this last defender of Dracula was a marked man, the Romanian government supplied him with two pistols and a military grade assault rifle.  Then they gave him a full license to kill.  Gypsies, locals, ill-mannered tourists.  No questions asked. 

He led us to the well, blessed by Dracula, and asked us each to drink.  My English friends demurred, but I took a long drink of the cool water.  In my travels, I've taken to drinking all blessed water, childishly hoping it'll cure my neuralgia.  The last batch I drank was from Glastonbury, so here was the test - Jesus versus Dracula. 

Of course, nothing happened.

From the well to the chapel, we all squeezed into the foyer as the monk situated himself behind a desk of postcards and knick-knacks, fussing with his clothes and the chair and doing everything but changing hats like in some old comedy routine.  Then he announced the price for picture taking.

"Ten euros," Gabriel said, "For each of us."

"To take pictures?" I asked. 

Gabriel nodded, then said, "Go over and read signs in corner.  I am going to make this better."

We read about the history of the chapel while Gabriel embarked on a 15 minute shouting match with the monk.

Gabriel returned,  "No good.  He will not lower price."  Then, to me, Gabriel presented a ten dollar bill with one third missing. "He want to know - is this still good?"

I nodded, "Yeah, that'll still be good."

"He is very upset.  He says he has not seen a whole ten dollar bill."

"I have a ten dollar bill." I replied.

Gabriel's eyes widened as if I had just smacked him.  He grabbed me and hauled me over to the monk, babbling in Romanian.  Then he turned, "You will trade ten dollar bills.  Yours for his broken one?"

"Sure."  I handed a crisp, new bill to the monk and stuffed the torn bill in my pocket.  It was destined for a bribe in Budapest though, now, I wish I had kept it.

The monk looked at the bill, then smiled largely and swept his hands to take in the chapel.

"He says all is okay now."

"What is?"

"Pictures.  They are now paid for."  Gabriel smiled sweetly at the monk and shoved me away, "Go, go, hurry!"

The chapel is, literally, held together with tape and bubblegum.  Butterfly bandages and electrical tape keep the murals covering the walls and ceiling from caving in.  All of this comes from the meager funds that gawkers like ourselves brought in.  Our six euros per person and, to the less fortunate, 16 euros, helped do what little repair was possible.  Even the scaffolding, erected so the monk could repair the ceiling, was in need of repair.  Upon close infection, it looked like he had hauled it out of the lake.

The chapel records the saga of Dracula's family up to the modern day.  The family is now dead or forgotten, but they were careful to maintain and update the history of the chapel until about 1800 or so.  It's like walking around inside one of those large family bibles.

Dracula is buried in the middle of the second room, surrounded by everything you need to hold a full mass for a small family - pews and an altar. 

The Romanians all get a laugh out of the western image of Dracula. The Dracula that we know and love is Bram Stoker's Dracula.  You can go visit the rooms Stoker took, a castle right along the main train line.  He never left those rooms, cobbling together the Dracula legend based on the stories from the hotel staff. 

In fact, the blood-sucking, vampire, cursing God routine is absent from the Dracula legend.  He was a devout man, and one of the only leaders in the last thousand years to bring peace and prosperity to Romania.  The type of peace where you left your doors unlocked and valuables in plain view without any worries. Dracula is a national hero, equivalent to George Washington.  The Romanians have begun to cash in on the Vampire legend, but, to them, it's about as ridiculous as it would be for us to discover a 150 year old fiction novel claiming Washington was a killer werewolf.

Leaving the chapel, surrounded by wild dogs, the monk led us to his wild cherry trees.  He did nothing to tend to them, their branches exploding and weighed down by cherries, and they were the best I've ever tasted. 

"Blessed by Dracula!" Gabriel said, laughing.

The cherries were collected and put to good use.  The only English word the monk knew - "Hooch!"

So a drunken hermit, armed to the teeth, machine-gunning gypsy raiders and watching over the body of Dracula.  That right there is the beauty and the eccentricity of Romania, this holy man in black with his cherry wine and machine gun.

From that forested island of orchards and gardens and a tiny chapel built by a horror movie icon to the diesel-choked insanity of Bucharest, we left RomaniaSlovenia. behind, slow train to