It was late afternoon on a Romanian highway whose name or number I don't remember. June 2003. Tired and beaten down, I was pontificating about some Bela Lugosi film---the relative merits of The Death Kiss perhaps, or maybe the fact that I've never seen a good reason why Murder By Television needs to exist---when Mike interrupted me. He pointed ahead to some kind of structure. Some interruption on the otherwise natural and unending landscape. But what was it? An obelisk? A tower?
     The uncivilized driving of Romanians with cars, the truly uncountable number of potholes in their roads, the endless smoke pumping out of their truck tailpipes. For hours and hours since early morn we had been beset with these and other woes. But the air now cleared. Things changed. Because the monument that lay ahead when we first spotted it bore a special fascination, one similar to Stonehenge when I first spotted it growing ever larger and larger on the British countryside.
     But unlike Stonehenge, it was no hieroglyph to decode. The monument revealed its own meaning with a town name etched vertically in its stone. We had finally arrived. It was "Lugoj."
     This was true despite my own better judgment, being trip navigator and often uncertain if I was even holding our map right-side-up. Mike and I were simultaneously surprised and relieved. Quizzical, too. Why were we here? What meaning did this place hold, hidden or not?
     Long having thought about Lugos before arriving, I guess I'd constructed my own vision of what it would be like. Because, of course, to me it was Lugos, despite the final change of letter in the town name to a "j" after it became a part of Romania at the end of the Great War.
     Even if we hadn't won a war, it still felt like a victory for us to have made it this far. And it was an "us." For behind the wheel of our embattled little Dacia was Michael Lee, music professor, world traveler, raconteur, and horror film historian. Our shared hush over seeing that magical town name at long last was the culmination of our campaign, but it may also have been a chance for both of us to inwardly ask, What the hell we were doing in this place?
     But why not? Why not indeed. After all, it had just taken me some eighteen hours of real time in airplanes and airports to get to the airport in Bucharest. And there were those nine hours of time changes, too, but who'd care to count? This was Romania, the cauldron where Vlad the Impaler, Bram Stoker, and Bela Lugosi all boiled into the Dracula we know and love.
     From the first moment on Romanian soil, I felt exhausted, a condition that lasted for the whole of the trip and was generally exacerbated by long car drives and cans and cans of Ursus beer slurped in between downing the Pinot Noir. Those of us seeking Bela Lugosi in Transylvania certainly needed strong drink.
     In a sense, our trip started before it began, of course, because we had both been lifelong Lugosi buffs in our respective terrain in the United States. I think Mike was probably in Eugene, Oregon, back when he first nabbed a copy of The World of Bela Lugosi, a newsletter that I edited way back in the 1980s. By the 1990s, our paths collided at the University of Oklahoma. And at the new millennium, we were in Romania---me for the first time, Mike on his third trip.
     We had commandeered our vehicle from a Bucharest office that once was an arm of the Communist party and, during the nineties, had--quite logically---converted to renting four-cylinder cars. The gritty charm of Bucharest had its fair share of big-city noise, but even at more calm moments the office personnel discussion was impossible for me to decipher.
     All the checks were made: passports, credit cards, dental records. Everything in order, so they claimed, but with our car key in hand a final ha-ha was brewing. Mechanics jabbered a good deal of jibber before we finally understood that they were apologizing endlessly for not having a new and fresh car deodorizer for us, pine-tree shaped or otherwise. We allayed their worries, claiming we'd be just fine without it. But would we? Too difficult to say at such an early stage.
     Without committing on that or any other point, Mike and I entered the overcrowded and often merciless streets of Bucharest. About five clearly wrong turns landed us on the right highway to our first destination, the age-old city of Curtea de Arges. Checking into a Communist-era hotel (decorated with a simple but truly effective concrete block motif), we entered a local drinkery to plot strategy. They knew not of Jameson or Bushmill whiskey, let alone Jim Beam or Jack Daniels. This was remote. This was real. This was Romania.
     Let's see. The bottles, the pretzels, the camera. And, of course, a weatherworn copy of Bram Stoker. Not a new edition, but one showing plenty of spine cracks. All of this was crucial to the hike. The first stop on our way would be the best evidence yet that I'd turned thirty, a number less kind than often reported.
     Sweat seemed to pour off our brow on the steep trail that slowly, ever so slowly, revealed Vlad the Impaler's mountain stronghold. Two hours or three to get to the top? I couldn't say, since we were far too busy huffing and puffing to watch our watches. The Devil Age catching up with us. But, finally, through the trees it showed itself to us.
     1981 Famous Monsters of Filmland flashback: I was one of the kids who paid Captain Company and Admiral Ackerman for the famed Dracula soil pendant, a coffin-shaped piece of plastic jewelry filled with dirt from the very castle I now bore witness to (which it really did contain, right? I mean, it came with a Certificate of Authenticity! The castle, which was not made of plastic, was a sight to behold.
     Of course, an extremist spoilsport would probably want to throw cold water on the magic of such a moment, claiming Bram Stoker and Vlad the Impaler have little or nothing to do with each other. This area of debate is a deep pit to fall into, with its pendulum swinging wide from 1970s assessments that Vlad was indeed Stoker's Dracula to 1990s revisionist edicts that Stoker scarcely knew who Vlad was.
     After a few more years pass, the dust and ashes will settle and illustrate that Vlad and Transylvania and Wallachia were certainly a few of the many influences on Stoker's creation. In the meantime, what's probably more important is the conflation of Vlad and Stoker in the popular mind of Western culture, the result bearing a face that is usually Bela Lugosi's. And, hell, we were standing in front of Castle Dracula.
     Anyhow, before even leaving U.S. soil, I'd fancifully considered our camping out at Vlad's castle, but quality camping gear was not easily found after dark by two strangers in Curtea de Arges. Just as well, since our eventual arrival at the castle was met not by a ghostly vision of Vlad (dash it all), but by some young Romanian campers. After "soaking in" the place, I soon soaked in some of the local, home-brewed palinka given me by one of the campers. This was the drink (aka slivovitz) Jonathan Harker retrieved under the seat of Dracula's coach as he approached the castle. It's also the drink advertised at the inn Renfield visits in Browning's 1931 Dracula. And its biting flavor at the stronghold made the crumbling old walls seem all the more dramatic and stark.
     This was the crossroads of real and surreal, fiction and nonfiction. This was where vampires lived in the Western world centuries after Vlad the Impaler lived in his Wallachian kingdom. And according to legend, it was where his bride committed suicide, hurling herself down the steep mountainside into the Arges River below. Looking down, I couldn't help but think of bumps. Not on the road, this time, but on the mountain. It is steep, but not that steep. She must have bounced against it several times before hitting water.
     Conquered thusly by our tourism, Mike and I forged down the mountain and into the Dacia. We soon found our way to Targoviste and the remains of Vlad's royal palace. Majestic and beautiful. Fill in any profundities and platitudes you like here. Then we drove to Szigisoara, Vlad's hometown. Though he was Prince of Wallachia, he was indeed born in Transylvania. And the aging city walls of Szigisoara still stand, with cobblestone roads taking us directly to his family's house.
     The place of his birth is currently a restaurant, complete with a gaudy Dracula banner hanging down over its centuries-old wall. Pinot Noir uncorked, Mike ate chicken; I had veal. The service was poor but the tomatoes ripe. How would Vlad have approached this meal? Ice cream or sorbet to end? Imponderables behind us, we warmed up the car again and hit the highway. Keep on the move. Vlad is Vlad, but Lugos is Lugosi. That was the key.
     Our touring around Romania took us through other Bela Lugosi sites, of course, priming us for Lugos right along with the Ursus beer. Neither of us a smoker, we both inhaled more than our fair share of the free fumes of Deva. The poor industrial city is in many ways as much the home of Bela Lugosi as Lugoj itself.
     I gave thought briefly to dialing up the old Deva historian I had written to in the 1980s, but even correspondence had been a challenge. A phone call, even if he were still alive, would likely have been insurmountable. Mastering the Romanian words for "yes," "bathroom," and "More tomatoes with all speed" had been difficult enough.
     After all, this still wasn't our town, our scene. Meeting unemployed young toughs chain-smoking in between breathing toxic factory air was not the purpose of the pilgrimage. Keep moving; chart the rumble.
     We did stop briefly at the Olt River, the source of Lugosi's occasional pseudonym during his Hungarian film years. Curious choice, in that what we saw of its waters was none too attractive, much less so than many other rivers we crossed. Eye of the beholder, maybe, but there's no doubt that as long as the Olt runs, its true position is deep in Romania and not Hungary, pre-1918 boundaries or otherwise.
     Filming its waters slowly churning forward, it also hit me that Lugosi the actor did something rather common in disavowing his own given name for stage names. But he did something unique in that both of his adopted names---Lugosi and Olt---were named after places. Geography. Topoi, perhaps. I packed the camera and ran toward Mike and the car.
     That was when, for the next several hours, the jitters set in. The shakes. Phrenology could be reborn as a legitimate science given all the bumps we encountered on the drive to Lugoj. And we had no advance knowledge of whether the town had a spa, a car park, or even roads without potholes. Not yet.
     The final kilometers into town after the "Lugoj" monument were smoother. Calmer. Anticipation grew watching the tall trees flanking either side of the road pass by. The first few houses emerged. Outskirts. Outliers. The folk. But it took several minutes to get into what looked like the gathering of a real populace. And so we parked, ostensibly to get our bearings but probably more just to get over the bumps.
     But was it a sensible place to park? Whom to ask? The pizza parlor and pub were first to catch our eyes. Consumables seemed in order, and order we did. Wisely, Mike mustered the Romanian phrase for "Bring us the coldest beer you have." We had arrived.
     Bela Lugosi fans are, of course, crazy, which I can say because I have shared the insanity firsthand for many years. And yet can any be so mad as us two, making a pilgrimage not merely to Universal Studios or even Holy Cross cemetery, where Lugosi is buried (where we've also been), but to a town he himself never revisited after leaving it at such an early age? The blood of Attila must flow through our veins. The mind wonders or wanders or both.
     Regardless, we were where we were. Physical wanderlust had ceased, and thoughts of blending into the background of this village dissipated rapidly. Mike thought our feet cymbal-shod. And we had a couple of days to bop around town.
     Venturing farther into town, I heard distant echoes of old 1970s Lugosi biographies in my mind. Intangible and seemingly intelligent phrases passed through the windmills of my mind. That Lugos, according to one biographer, had not markedly changed since Lugosi himself trod down the same roads. Since the time when it was Lugos, not Lugoj.
     That's hardly true, of course. Coca-Cola, Calvin Klein, and Steven Spielberg are better-known names than Bela Lugosi's about this town. Western culture, absent Dracula, abounded. Beautiful belly buttons of Lugos women bustled across the sidewalks, fashions none-too-different than in most U.S. towns.
     Changes since the 1970s when that bio was published? Perhaps. But along with the remaining 19th century buildings there stand some 1950s and 1960s apartment buildings, 100% Ceaucescu-approved. Concrete and, well, more concrete. Hardly evocative, and certainly not of Bela Lugosi.
     Most similar to Bela's day is the river that rolls through the middle of town with far more elegance than what we saw of the Olt. We stood for some time on one of the two bridges that led across it. Thinking and strategizing.
     How best to spend the time? Mad scientist and library scientist merged when we came to grips with the research ahead. The local museum, local library, local university, local cemeteries (relatives anyone?): all these places and more had to be dealt with in between beers. The beauty of the town aside, experiencing Lugos meant recapturing Lugosi.
     At the same high school Bela attended (though it's been physically moved a little farther down the same block), we were invited into a "history laboratory." Bela Lugosi's name (including his family name, Blasko) was enunciated as paintings on the classroom wall looked down at us. One of the faces was of Vlad the Impaler, Romanian national hero.
     Of the school officials, only one of whom had any notion of Universal Studio's Bela "Dracula" Lugosi, we met our newfound friend Gaidos, local historian and photography expert. Gaidos had all the architectural records and supporting historical photographs of the town predating even Bela Lugosi's birth.
     He also brought forth the work of a Romanian/Hungarian historian who had done the earliest Lugosi research of anyone in the city of Lugos. The work solidified new news of 1882. Bela was born on Kirschengasse Street, despite prior reports. Straight from the original city documents and architectural records.
     Number Six Kirschengasse, to be precise. The house still stands, rather simple in architecture. It's now a kind of Lugos-equivalent to a convenience store without gas pumps. Inside it, Mike and I grabbed sodas. His was a Fanta Green Apple; mine a Fanta Orange. The candy bar selection in Bela's old front room also caused a lengthy gander.
     His work also made clear why there’s been the debate about whether Lugosi's father Istvan was a banker or baker or both. He was both, though a baker by trade and as a day-to-day living. His role in the Lugoser Volksbank/Lugosi Nep Bank was a secondary one, serving in the "People's bank" in the same way as many other local businessmen did to take part in its cooperative makeup.
     That's the tip of an iceberg to the piles of material that Gaidos and pals offered, which collectively give a real face to Bela's days in Lugos far beyond what we've ever heard or known before: family information, family-friend information, as well as cultural insight into the truly German-accented part of Lugos in which Bela was born and grew up. More stuff for more books.
     The wine, women, and song of Lugos had been, finally, the most welcoming of any Romanian city. These were the streets of Lugosi's youth, changed by time and a people who hadn't forgotten him because they never knew him. Little of him remained, but we were okay with that, perhaps because of what of him we brought with us.
     Beautiful by day and night, Lugos was actually difficult to leave. In some ways, it seems hard to understand why Bela himself left. But depart we did, as Transylvania beckoned.
     Though the Carpathians in the rain are truly an imposing sight, most of Transylvania is beautiful—hardly frightening, even at night. The Borgo Pass was striking, though scarcely fit for a Universal film set. The Hotel Castle Dracula also bid us welcome for one night's stay, built around vampire kitsch that its workers (and most of Romania) do not understand or appreciate. And, of course, the Dracula Theme Park, mentioned in major news outlets like USA Today, has yet to even break ground.
     Bistritz. Problem. Lost. The Corona de Aur, wildly modernized and expanded since Jonathan Harker's day, served up chicken paprika, to be sure. But the ongoing difficulty of maps and bad road signage was a head-scratcher yet again.
     A day or two later, maybe three, in the grand scheme of things, our Dacia spent hours lost in the area seemingly adjacent to Snagov Lake. This was our final stop. Dead Dracula country. Vlad's grave, at least according to some. But maps still weren't on my side, and the muddy dirt roads weren't on Mike's. One of them even led to a barbed wire fence with an armed Romanian soldier stationed behind it. Stoic but adept, he was an attentive fellow. Eyes trained directly on us.
     Our rapid course correction transformed back into the ongoing search for the lake shoreline. Finally, someone else. A Romanian police officer blocked our then current choice of road, suggesting that there wasn't any way to get to Snagov Island. The ferry that had once delivered people to it was no longer in operation.
     But we couldn't leave anything undone, untried. Tatiana, a hearty old Romanian woman, was the only hope. Of course---Tatiana! We stumbled across her, thanks to a gaggle of teenage Romanian boys who were waiting by the lake for the likes of us. They shouted over to the island and got Tatiana's attention. She slowly rowed across the Snagov waters to pick us up.
     Eyeballing both our rented car and present company, Mike elected to stay behind with the teens, who asked him incessantly about the size of women's breasts in the United States. Tatiana and I forged onward in the small canoe, with the small island growing ever larger at each row of the oars.
     A sense of mold in the air pervaded the island, compounded by its overgrown grass. Shrubbery unleashed. This was the atmosphere walking up to the Snagov Monastery, allegedly the final resting place of Vlad the Impaler.
     A cross, not necessarily indicated as being for my mother's sake, was given me by a nun before I entered the small area purported to be his grave. I draped its chain over my neck and moved ahead alone. The outdoor island humidity had evaporated in the cool interior of this place. A serene and mysterious place, and one---like most places in Romania---in which the mood is mediated always by a fee for photography. And the postcards are extra.
     The Snagov episode ended the trip, unless of course you count two days of roulette in Bucharest casinos waiting on the plane to deliver us hence. Game over. Back home. Geography. Topoi perhaps.
     During the hours and hours of making my way back to U.S. soil, I considered making time on the plane pass by pulling out the Bram Stoker novel and a Vlad biography. But the urge passed as quickly as it came. In-flight movies seemed to make more sense. For two weeks I had lived among the undead. By comparison to Romania, pages in books seemed as lifeless as leaves fallen from a tree.