Hotel Dracula 1

Shivering, I sit in a chair and try to type our experiences of the past few days into the computer. The wind whistles through the cracks in the broken window at an outside temperature of 12 degrees. The view of the Danube that we have from up here is rather depressing in the cold. I look at my thermometer, which is doing its job next to me on a wobbly potest. “16 degrees is just not enough. I’m going to get sick here. My fingers are clammy and stiff and I feel like my feet are freezing off,” I moan. “What should we do?” asks Tanja and says: “We should at least take a day’s rest.” “Yes, of course, but if I don’t write now, my work will pile up ad infinitum. We’ve experienced too much to put off the documentation any longer,” I continue to complain about my situation. “Look at that shed. How are you supposed to get in the mood to write? Not even a shower can warm my body. Because we’re the only guests in the whole hotel, they’ve just turned off the hot water,” I lament to myself, feeling sorry for myself. “I can understand that. They can’t heat an entire hotel just for the two of us.” “I can understand that too, but I don’t want to. Dracula would really enjoy himself here. This is a place where only bloodless ghosts feel at home, not living creatures. “Huuuiiiiii!”, howls in from under the room door slit. “You see. That was a comment from some stupid house ghost,” I say, whereupon we suddenly start laughing about the creepy situation. “Imagine you were here alone,” I think aloud. “I wouldn’t be here alone.” “But what if you were?” “I don’t want to dwell on that thought,” muses Tanja, who is sitting listlessly in the chair and has thrown a fleece jacket over her feet to protect herself from the cold. By now I’m kneeling in front of our bed and have laid my upper body on the sheets. As if I were on a stretching bench, I remain in this strange position for many minutes. “What are you actually doing? Are you trying to torture yourself?” wonders Tanja. “I don’t know? I’ve been thinking for a while that my knees are suffering. But I don’t know what to do. I’m too tired to decide anything. I can’t write here though. I’m not a polar bear. He might feel comfortable in a place like this. So I can’t understand Mother Earth. Is this great writing space supposed to be here in the Hotel Dracula? That doesn’t exist, does it?” “She wasn’t talking about great, but about a good place that’s different from what you imagine,” Tanja muses. “Well, this hotel is certainly the exact opposite of what I had in mind,” I reply, standing up with stiff limbs. “You know what? I’m going to go to that pale figure at reception and ask if there’s another room. The north side is a disaster. Not a single ray of sunlight shines in here all day. We urgently need sunlight,” I say firmly, muster my remaining energy and set off. “Huuuiiiiii!” whistles the eerie wind as I leave the room. “You should lock up behind me,” I call over my shoulder, then the long, deserted and unlit corridor welcomes me. “Huuuiiiiii! Huuuiiiiii!” howls from every nook and cranny, making my hair stand on end. It creaks and groans from shadowy corners, which is why I hurry to get to the elevator. But I quickly decide to do without the old elevator. “Who knows when this thing will stop,” I whisper and run down the stairs. Hundreds of dead flies lie on the ground. None of the staff bother to sweep the insects away. Bird droppings stick to the railings and the strong wind has pushed open one of the dirty windows. My whole body shudders and I am glad not to have been strangled or sucked dry by Dracula’s assistants when I reach reception. “Hello, no one there?” I call out. It rustles behind a door. Moscow, London, New York and Tokyo, I read on the four clocks hanging in the reception hall. They are witnesses to a once better time for the hotel. “Hellooo! Isn’t anyone there!” I call out again to draw attention to myself. There is another rustle in the next room. In the meantime, I notice that the clocks in Moscow and Tokyo have stopped. Their batteries apparently ran out a long time ago. My gaze follows the red patterned carpet and lingers on the plastic flowers on the reception desk as the door opens and the receptionist comes out wrapped in a thick scarf. With a somewhat sad smile, she asks for my wishes in Romanian. I notice the deep circles under her eyes and suddenly feel sorry for her. She must be ill and perhaps can’t afford a doctor, I think to myself. She also has a terrible job. Hanging around here alone all day and late into the night is certainly no picnic. In a somewhat friendlier mood, I ask her if there is another room. I am immediately given a key for a room on the south side. I can also use sign language to make her understand that I need to take a shower. “Eight o’clock tomorrow,” I think I understand. In a better mood, I set off again to get to the second floor through the dark corridors and the uncleaned stairwell. While Tanja moves into our room, I make myself a place by the window. The sun really does cast its warming light in, which makes the whole thing look a lot friendlier. Above all, it is really pleasantly warm behind the window. It doesn’t take long for me to get into the mood and my brain starts to warm up. Word by word, sentence by sentence, I write myself back into the stories we have experienced, which is why I don’t notice how time passes. Only when evening approaches and the sun withdraws its pleasantly warming light do I wake up from my concentration. “My feet are freezing again,” I say to Tanja, who is engrossed in a book about two boys who crossed Russia by bike. I gaze thoughtfully out of the window and watch the large flock of birds stretching across the horizon like a dark flag. In the last light of day, he settles down in the tall trees next to the unconventional-looking church towers. There is a lot of excited chirping, which makes you think the birds are fighting over the best places to spend the night.

“We should go out for something to eat soon. I’m ravenous,” Tanja interrupts my thoughts, yawning. “Okay, just finish writing Rocky’s story.” “Don’t make it too long or I’ll end up eating you.” “Not a bad idea,” I reply with a grin, remembering the conversation with Rocky. “So, you have to drink schnapps to get really far on your bikes,” he says at a late hour. “One bottle of schnapps per 1000 kilometers and very little water”… “Come on, stop for today. You’ve written enough,” demands Tanja. “Okay, you’re right,” I reply, closing the Itronix to get ready for the exit.

A little later, we stumble through the absolutely dark corridors of the hotel. “Should have brought the flashlight,” Tanja whispers, feeling the stairs with her foot to avoid tripping. “We can manage like this now,” I reply quietly and offer her my hand. “Huuuiiiiii! Huuuiiiiii!” moans and whistles in the broken walls. Even though we have already experienced a lot on our travels, this shed is only for the hardy. “My God, that can really scare you. Your stupid stories about Dracula don’t exactly put me at ease,” whispers Tanja as we sneak past an open window. A breeze blows at our backs. “Ööööchch,” it groans as the window frame slowly closes, only to swing open again immediately. “They’re crazy to accommodate guests here. That can’t be the case. Someone in the hotel has to switch on the lights. They know we’re here. Is it supposed to be an extra scary thing to have to feel your way through pitch-black hotel corridors? Harry Potter would have a field day here,’ I curse quietly so as not to draw too much attention to us. “But Harry Potter is a fairy tale and this hotel is reality,” I hear Tanja’s murmured reply. “So much the worse. I’m not surprised that the Count Dracula story is set in Romania,” I whisper back, bumping my elbow against a post in the same breath. “But now I’ve had enough of this. We’re checking out tomorrow. We’re leaving this inhospitable house,” I decide as we quietly scurry past the large, unoccupied reception desk. “Hello! Uh, we’re going out to eat!” I call into a corridor from which a faint light shimmers. The blonde, pale-faced woman with large circles under her eyes appears. “Okay,” she replies, smiling at us. We leave the unlit forecourt of the hotel behind us. “Don’t fall into the hole Schnupsi!” Tanja warns me. A manhole cover is missing in the middle of the sidewalk. We hurry past it. An icy cold wind blows through the streets. The temperature should be around five, maybe six degrees. The people we meet are dressed in thick jackets. A Sinti comes up to us and asks for the time. Then he wants a cigarette. Walking even faster, we reach the Max restaurant where we also dined yesterday. As the whole town only gets hot water from a power station for heating from November onwards, it is also cold at Max. Dressed in an undershirt, a functional shirt and two fleece jackets, we sit there and are still freezing. The news flickers into the dining room on a television. The spokeswoman reports unusually heavy snowfall in the Carpathians. Snow clearing vehicles are in operation day and night. I have to grab the first glass of beer with a napkin so as not to torture my cold hands even more. We only get warm after the delicious flatbread and a hot meal.

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