31 July 2021 

It is Saturday and the sun is shining so brightly that I think I am back in Texas again.  Well, except for the things growing in the garden and the nearly jungle like growth appearing everywhere except for what is dead due to the heat.  Yesterday on the drive into Bucharest, we saw field after field of corn - yes, "high as an elephant's eye".  My corn, however, got a very late start for several reasons.  It is not the usual corn.  It is popcorn!  I had success growing it some time ago and hope that it will grow this year as well.  I keep trying because I discovered that it is ever so much better than the kernels that I buy and pop on my stovetop.  How is it better?  It is more tender and eating a bite of it does not risk breaking a tooth.

I sat a while on the patio near the strawberry pyramid.  It was cool and pleasant even in this heat.  There is a lot to do there in order to make it a place where I can go to sit in that swing while I am watering the raised beds and a few other places that need my attention.  I have managed to rescue a lot of the basil seeds I planted from places where the snails and slugs would devour them.  The tomatoes are lush, green and blooming with a green tomato showing here and there through the plentiful leaves.  

I have just read a copy of my Autobiography written in 1951 for my high school English teacher.  She took a red pencil to it thus demonstrating to me a few lessons in grammar that I remember still.  Here is a link to it:

https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:901f17ba-e500-41d4-9be7-8e167f8f4ead

Reading it I am aware that it sets my memory straight!  Some details re remembered better than others!

And here is another story.  This time from the past.  Adventures that can no longer be had.  Things change.   But this memorable trip can no longer be had.  Walking across a bridge is not the same.

Looking for Dracula

Sunday, August 19, 2001

 

We had a busy Saturday morning shopping.  The Chinese grocery is still where it was last spring when we bought most of the rice flour that they had in stock.   I tried making my own by putting the grains of rice in the coffee grinder.   It turns out great for cream of rice cereal for breakfast, but the cheese sticks were a little more crunchy than usual. I told Eugeniu that they were a little too grainy and that we needed to go to the Chinese grocery now that the new radiator is installed and that car seems to be ready for use again.  There we found that the plastic bags of plain rice flour had holes in them, so we bought the only one that seemed to be intact. Fortunately, they seemed to have a huge new supply of sweet rice flour, which works very well as a substitute for wheat flour.  We also bought some coconut milk and a few of their small plates with blue flowers around the edges.

 

It was still early so we took a new route toward our house thinking we would take a walk at Herastrau Park.  On the way, we saw a new furniture store, a complex really.  It was the one that had moved from Bucharest Mall and they did have the furniture we liked even though we already bought a sofa from Bellona.  We stopped to see the store since it is a new thing in Bucharest.  It took a long time, but we could not buy a thing because they did not take credit cards and their bank machine was broken.  By the time we had explored the whole store, we were hungry so we went home, postponing our visit to the park.  It was mid-day and very hot.

 

Later, on the way to the park for a cooler evening walk, we went to the Zambaccian Museum. It is a small museum that I have wanted to see for a long time and we supposed that it might be closed so late on Saturday evening.  It was not and we were able not only to see its fine paintings, but also to buy three books at bargain prices.   There were two books of paintings by Romanian artists, Vasile Grigore and Ion Tuculescu, and a book about the collections in the National Museum of Art that opened just last year in the former Royal Palace.  Vasile Grigore was a classmate of Eugeniu’s so it gave him a special pleasure to have a book of his paintings.  Krikor Zambaccian was a rich businessman born to an Armenian family who lived in Constanta.  He personally knew Matisse, Dufy, Derain and Bonnard as well as important artists and collectors in Romania.

 

After that, sitting with a cool “apa minerale” on the little island in Lake Herastrau seemed just right.  There were boats full of people cruising around the lake, rowboats, small sailboats, paddleboats and a few crew boats on the lake for practice.  We walked to where Eugeniu’s crew used to bring the boats out of the shed to go into the lake for practice.

 

Today we set out for Snagov, intending to eventually find Dracula, with ice chest full of cool water and a picnic lunch.  We had some ideas about sitting in the park by Lake Snagov and taking the boat to the small island where the Snagov Monastery is being renovated.  It is said that the head of Vlad Tepes is buried there, but the nun who took us into the church said that his entire body is buried there.  I stepped over his grave several times looking around under the platforms and beams that support the artists who are restoring the frescoes.  It was not so easy, though, to get there.  No one seemed to know exactly how to find the boat that we could take to get to the island, but someone said you could drive around the lake and go across a bridge.  So we gave up our parking place and loaded the car with the chest and the folding chairs. This Park is oh so different than when we took a bus to get there and had to walk such a long way from the bus stop.  Once at the place for the boat to take us there it was only to find that the boat to the monastery on the island in the middle of Snagov Lake was broken and wasn’t running at that time. In the meantime, we observed that the railway workers union had improved the park a lot.  It was hot and we were not inclined to just loll around wasting away the afternoon.  We followed the directions to turn left and go around the lake to get to the road that would take us to the monastery.  At one point Eugeniu asked a young man and he told us we had two choices, suggesting another monastery farther to the East.  We drove on toward the little island where we might find Dracula’s grave, at least the one in which his head is supposed to be buried. The best part of the drive was when the road was lined with tall poplars on either side.  It seemed just like a road should be, so lovely and cool and so identifiable. When we finally caught a boat at another park to ride across to the island with the monastery, we found ourselves back on the other side of the lake right back where we had been before.  I thought we would stop at Snagov Monastery Island on the way back, but the boat went chugging past the island with the church spires clearly visible and people standing on the dock waiting.   We got off and found the car again.  I refused to enter the Turkish public toilet for reasons anyone might suspect who has ever seen one.  We did not give up even though we had already explored another park which had two nice restaurants.  El Captain was new and modern and had a ship theme and Vanatorul was state-owned.  It has not been modernized, only privatized.  Three parks and one boat ride later we were no closer to our goal.

 

We backtracked to the main highway and then went down the same road to the place where the Gypsies had circled their three covered wagons to cook their lunch.  The right turn did not seem to point us in the direction of the communications tower we saw that marked the location of the monastery, but a couple sitting by the road in front of their fence told us to follow the road and take the right turn ahead.  We wound around until we crossed a bridge, keeping the tower in sight. The pavement ran out just as we saw a roughly painted sign indicating that the monastery was to the right down a narrow rocky path.   We parked the car and a young boy escorted us down the path that ended at a small dock in the reeds at the edge of the lake.  There was a small wooden boat with water in it beside the pier at the bottom of the path. I said that I would not go in that one, but the young man who escorted us down who was the path called out, “Tatiana” to someone on the island who was near the monastery.

 

While Tatiana was rowing us across to a small dock, Eugeniu gave me his jeans and said that he was going to take a bath. We were not even one-fourth of the way across when I heard a splash behind me.  He swam the distance with no trouble though I was sure that it was too far for comfort.  Tatiana told us that there was a wedding in process in the church tower, but that when it was over, we could go into the church.  While we were waiting, we discovered the other dock and saw the very boat that we had expected to take us to the island with the monastery.  Normally it would have, but they were in a hurry to keep the appointment with the wedding party so we had been thrust back upon the dock near where the car was parked.  Never mind that we had paid the big boat for the trip to Snagov Monastery, we had had a nice boat ride and a great view of the lake.  I had no doubt that we ended up with the best of all possible worlds by getting to arrive by rowboat with Tatiana and walk through the flock of turkeys under the plum trees so full of ripe purple fruit.  Inside the church, we saw that the scaffolding covered most everything, but the nun told us a lot about its history and she said that this church with the grave of Vlad the Impaler, the one the world knows as Dracula, has a rich history that extends at least back to the days when the Dacians held it as a refuge against the enemies of those days, the Romans. Mircea cel Batrin, a ruler during the conquest of the Ottomans, sent mud to Istanbul instead of gold and started a war that lasted thirty years.  Vlad, the Impaler, built a defense wall, a prison, a retreat tunnel and a belfry that is still there.  The bridge that he built is no longer there.

 

The exterior of the church looks almost new, but the brickwork is the original.  In front of the church there are two columns in the wall that are twisted yet are of brick, an amazing work of art.  The arches have four rows of bricks with each one more recessed than the one before it.   The nun told us that the church is built on the foundation of a much older wooden church which preceded the building of this one in the 14th century.  She had not had much formal education but she had learned to read Cyrillic and is reading the old manuscripts.

 

We enjoyed our ride in the boat with Tatiana and our drive back to Bucharest was interrupted only when we stopped to purchase fresh tomatoes from a roadside stand in Saftica. I could tell they were from the garden of the woman selling them because they had such a delicious aroma.