The most horror on Halloween did not come from the Vampires

Brasov Romania was one of the few places here allowed to keep its soul during the worker's revolution. It is surrounded by the Silver mountains with some of the best skiing in Europe, and the very best hiking. In the fall there are clusters of cloud like oranges, and yellows, with flecks of red and even purple that frame the Hollywood style BRASOV sign that sits high above the city where the peaks get snowy. The center retains its Gothic roots, wide cobblestone streets, church spires that reach into the sky with menacing points and weaponlike barbs. The locals are hearty people who wear simple clothing and often have blue eyes, they cross themselves thrice each time they pass a church walking or in an auto. It is a scrap of what this nation has been and precious because so much was needlessly destroyed. Such as it was in Bucharest which was raped repeatedly by the previous Dictators in favor of blocks of unadorned housing, which now is filled with rubbish and a plague of stray dogs who follow you about, with grimy fur, scars from battle, and the wary eyes of the feral. Romania is a place of invasion, and the people are non confrontational but passively independant and cynical.

This is Transylvania. A place of wolves and supersitious peasants that fear Vampires. It also has fingers of modernity, flashing lights, and Kentucky Fried Chicken and young people who want to add you as Facebook friends who also consider Vlad Tepes to be a national hero. Vlad of course being the historical basis for Count Dracula. Vlad the Impaler, the Prince and three times King of Wallachia and the bane of Sultan Mehmed and his Turkish armies and would be Moorish crusanders with their eyes on Rome after the fall of Constantinople. Romanians speak with pride of the defensive war they fought against a reboudtable and bottomless enemy, considering it a service to all of Europe. Prince Vlad was obviously very valorous and ruthless, and even young people speak wistfully of how his simple system of justice (you were impaled for any offense. Any offense.) made life simple and peaceful. One of the stories is that Vlad would place a cup made of gold in the city square for each year he was King and no one ever dared to steal it, though it was not guarded.

Brasov was not the seat of Dracula's power, but he doubtless crossed through here often. Nearby Bran castle is likewise not any place he ever lived, though may have been a prisoner there briefly. The castle was Bram Stoker's inspiration for the castle where Jonathan Harker encountered perfect evil. Bram Stoker's Dracula had the seductive combination of wild and refined, a savage predator dressed in a Gentleman's trappings and a honeyed tongue. An unnatural addition to the very top of the food chain armed with the confidence and conceit of old money. Unlike today's vampires who guess they want your blood, but are more interested in your girlfriend and whatever sexual fetish. Eternal beautiful teenagers with feelings who act more like eternal humans with tortured uncertainty and insecurities. Not Vlad and not his literary alter ego. Brasov and Bran seem to reluctantly embrace this legacy if only for tourist dollars. However their ambivalance is obvious, Dracula is a demonization of a hero, people coming to celebrate a legend that went sideways and turned a considered courageous defender into a monster who sucks blood, changes form, and cannot hardly be stopped. It is a matter of perspective. I did not see anyone dressed as a vampire, and I suppose expected for there to be barrels of free plastic fangs.

Halloween simply is not as big a deal to Europeans, and I suppose in the Romanian mountains Vampires are not thing to make light of. There were parties however, and a good time was easy to find. The biggest partiers were the guests, after a walk through the city, seeing a few parties where the respective bar staffs painted things on their face in mascara and considered it a costume, I returned to the Hostel where people were making a night of it. One thing about Brasov and Romania in general is the fantastic affordability of things which are half the price of most places in Western Europe. An entire large pizza is 3 euro (15 Lei) if you get all the toppings, and two liters of beer are 2 Euro. We were well appointed with strong drink and the residents of the full hostel had all found their way to the basement common room, where chips and mulled wine were provided. I flitted around the room and met and conversed with nearly everyone, Fer from Mexico City who used to be a financier and now was a good humored and foul mouthed relgion Teacher who very much appreciated the female from. In my room I had befriended two cousins from Vancouver called Casey and Brooke, and three more friends from the Charlottetown, the oldest Canadian was 21. There were several American students from Georgia who were studying in Italy, a group of English ladies in their mid twenties who took a long weekend and were enormous fans of Edward Cullen from the Twilight series, a sweating and wisecracking Aussie named Dave who danced and danced and amused himself and the others endlessly with his antics. The Hostel was largely not cliquish, but for two American girls and their gaggle of five admirers constantly jockeying for position and awkwardly materializing immediately if someone outside the circle engaged one of "their" girls in any conversation whatsoever. There are always always douchebags.

It was a fun, typical party. I found it very surprising when the fight broke out.

Brooke looks a lot like Miley Cyrus more on the good side, and she is out of the country for the first time with her older and more travel savvy cousin. She was also obliterated. What happened next is a matter of great speculation. Whether her intent was theft, or being drunk, or being a dumb kid, Brooke picked up a cell phone that wasn't hers and put it in her pocket. She also had been wandering the hostel and put on a coat that belonged to someone else from a room that was not hers. The phone belonged to one of the clique girls who called when Brooke was standing near her and it rang from her pocket. Which is when all of hell broke loose. I was upstairs and I could hear people screaming, I ignored it. An American girl named Jess, the friend of the person who's phone had been taken, had gone ballistic. Earlier Jess had told me her dream job was to be an editor, not copy editing, but correcting grammar... if that tells you anything.

I didn't realize what was going on until the fight moved upstairs as one of the English girls was escorting a shaking and hysterical Brooke upstairs, which raised Jess' ire on that whole group. Anyone showing Brooke any mercy was immediately an enemy, who seemed completely unaware that her militancy and self righteousnes was actually making her come off worse than the person who was caught red handed with someone else's phone in her pocket of a coat that also was not hers. When the fight moved upstairs I was filled in on the argument. The receptionist had not acted decisively so Jess had called the police (heh) and was keening about how Brooke would be in Romanian jail. Brooke alternated between pleading that she didn't mean to, and apologies, to screaching rage filled insults that were answered in kind. Bitch. Ho. Fuck you. Bitch. Don't take my shit you bitch.

Ultimately the owner of the hostel appeared and Brooke would be out. Which meant her cousin who had been in bed for about two hours and was now wearily backing her travelmate only to be shouted down by the poison filled American girl who was only backed at this point by her knobbish groupies including a wussy looking Kiwi guy who insisted she was a reasonable person because he had known her two days. There was no engaging Jess in any dialogue, you were with her or an idiot. Brooke didn't help by shouting things at her and otherwise giving her a steady stream of things to respond to. It nearly came to blows about four times over the whole 2 hour event. It ended in my room, where Brooke was packing and Jess was insisting she see all of her stuff to make sure she hadn't taken anything else, but mostly it was to humiliate a sobbing 18 year old. It was bullying and there was no stopping her short of physically moving her, the hostel owner stood by passively and shrugged when I told him get these two apart. The best I could get out of him was the assurance that the two girls wouldn't be thrown onto the freezing street at 3am, they would be put up for the night at staff housing and referred to another nearby hostel the next day. Jess was a vicious person, and very much the stereotype of the ugly American.
When it was all over this nauseating girl was on the phone looking for validation and to gloat. I was gratified to see her tear up when an annoyed friend called her out for phoning at such a crazy hour and not leaping immediately to her point of view. And later that night when I was finally going to bed she was standing outside of my door talking to the man who's jacket had been taken. It was the same spiel, how she wouldn't let people get away things like that, and that's the problem with the world is people let folks get away with it, and blah blah and completely unaware that enjoyment of the domination of the weaker is much worse than simple petty theft and much more emblematic of problems in the world...especially from an American perspective. I stuck my head out the door.

"Hey." She looked at me. "It's four in the fucking morning." Her face crinkled, and she laughably tried to stare me down with a dirty look. "If you want to gloat on your victory over a drunk 18 year old, do it downstairs...we've heard you talk enough." I shut the door and she responded with something inane. Needing the last word. I saw her form linger behind the curtain over the window on our door for a moment and leave. The story she will tell will be of her defense of a friend and what is morally right but to those who saw it, she had belied her base instinct of savoring too much an opportunity to dominate someone else. Jess was the worst person I have met so far on this trip, I am sad she is from where I am from.

There were no good guys in our spontaneous and free Halloween dramahorror. Initially I found it kind of entertaining until it got out of hand, and now I am brooding on it two days later. I should have been more forceful in stopping it, likely I was the only person there who could have. Jess' groupies couldn't physically intimidate me, and though I probably couldn't have shut her up I could have done more to shield the girl she was bullying, whether that girl was guilty or not.