Mihai Soneriu, his coat draped cloak-like over his shoulders and sporting a trim goatee that would befit a count, looks disturbingly like Dracula. Sitting in a bar in Transylvania's medieval citadel of Sighisoara, he gazes intently at a visitor as shadows from the low, vaulted ceilings play eerily across his face. Legend has it that Vlad the Impaler, on whom Bram Stoker based his famous Dracula novel, was born in 1431 in this squat building. Soneriu is president of the local chapter of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, and he's talking about the economic woes of his town, where the average wage is $50 to $60 a month and many of the men are jobless. But he's upbeat, because a massive theme park in honor of the vampire count is planned nearby. "They expect a million tourists to come every year," exults Soneriu, a local radio and television reporter. "It's perhaps the only opportunity for the prosperity of this town."
But not all his neighbors are exulting. While the theme park will certainly boost the local economy and raise funds for the crumbling citadel's restoration, many of the town's 37,000 inhabitants fear that their gem will be overrun by bloodthirsty tourists more interested in the vampire myth than in actual history.
Dracula Park, as it will be called, will sprawl across 130 hectares of land that's now a nature preserve, just over 5 kilometers outside Sighisoara. It's the brainchild of Romanian Tourism Minister Dan Matei-Agathon. He wants to exploit Sighisoara's connection with Dracula to raise Romania's profile among Western tourists, believing that the town, listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, is an untapped gold mine.
The $31.6 million park, set to begin construction next spring and end two years later, will include a Horror Castle, a "vampirology" institute, craft shops, hotels, a model village, roller-coaster rides, a golf course, and a 10,000-seat amphitheater. A modern cable car will link the theme park with the fortress town. Within four years, the Minister says, a series of new highways will make Sighisoara more accessible. He is also drumming up interest among tour operators.
Unusual for Romania, the project is a private-public partnership, with the state providing the infrastructure, the local municipality offering the land, worth $21 million, and private investors building the park rides, attractions, hotels, and restaurants. So far, no deals have been signed, as officials finalize financial details and a vote in Parliament to approve the project is awaited. Some as-yet-undetermined percentage of the $27 million annual revenues expected from the park will be used to restore Sighisoara's monuments. "This town is the best example of a medieval citadel in Romania, if not Europe, so we must preserve it," says Mayor Dorin Danesan.
So far, though, an acute shortage of state money has stalled restoration efforts. The Culture Ministry's heritage section says that decay in Sighisoara is acute. Buildings suffer from damp, exacerbated by a leaky and decrepit sewage system. Parts of the citadel's 14th century fortifications have collapsed. If nothing is done, Sighisoara will reach a state of "total degradation" in 50 years, reckons the Tourism Ministry. Last year, the Culture Ministry gave Sighisoara $67,500, and this year, the town received $71,700 for projects that include restoration of the Church on the Hill, the citadel's fortifications, and the Blacksmith's Tower.
But those sums don't come close to what is needed. Work on the church, to be completed soon, was largely enabled by $2.5 million from the Munich-based Messerschmidt Foundation. That group helps restore Germanic monuments throughout Europe--and it was Saxon Germans who settled in Sighisoara in the 12th century. Messerschmidt also raised $1.5 million to restore the 13th century Stag House in the citadel's center, with work on the four-year project finishing soon. The Germans will house a learning center there to pass on its restoration knowhow for future projects.
COBBLED STREETS. A flurry of other restoration activity has also taken place over the summer, with companies and private individuals sprucing up their premises outside and inside the fortress walls. But take a walk along the sloping cobbled streets away from the citadel's main artery, and the musty smell of damp wafts from the crumbling burgher houses. Alexandru Mironov, secretary general of Romania's commission for UNESCO, estimates tens of millions of dollars more are needed to restore the town.
Ioan Pascu, a local medieval archeologist, laments the hodgepodge nature of restoration efforts. "Someone changes the windows, someone else the doors, and another person the color of the house," he says. "Step by step, we'll end up with a different town." He believes the town hall needs to set up a restoration office to coordinate efforts, something for which it has no plans.
At least restoration creates some jobs--and Dracula Park, the mayor hopes, will create up to 3,000 more. Apart from tourism, the town's main industry is textiles, with 20 factories employing about 4,000. "It's mostly women working in the textile factories," explains Danesan. "We have to help men get a job here."
Still, the project is proving to be a double-edged sword, with many welcoming the commercial opportunities but knowing they will trade their quiet sanctuary for tourist mayhem. Tourist numbers in Sighisoara have swelled to 100,000 over the decade since Nicolae Ceausescu's brutal regime ended, but the prospect of a tenfold increase leaves many of the town's 37,000 inhabitants angry and afraid that living costs will spiral, says Dorothy Tarrant, head of Veritas, a Romanian foundation that works with the poor.
Hans Bruno Frohlich, the Lutheran priest who leads a congregation of 520 Transylvanian Saxons, has another fear: "Dracula is a bad omen. This park will be aimed at a group of people that can't be good for the town." As a taste of things to come, he cites an annual three-day medieval-arts festival in the citadel that this summer turned nasty. Over 30,000 rowdy youngsters attended, including a cadre of Satanists.
Then there are environmental concerns. The park is to be built on a plateau clearing dotted with more than 100 knotted oaks and thick grassland. "These trees were around before Christopher Columbus discovered America," points out Alexandru Gota, a dentist, journalist, and local environmentalist. "It's also the habitat of four rare species of flowers, wolves, stags, and eagles. Building a park here will ruin the whole ecosystem." The land has been a nature reserve since 1993, although the mayor insists this is not true--a denial that arouses Gota's suspicions. He says the process of planning the park was secretive and rushed. Indeed, Dracula Park was first announced this spring, with Sighisoara selected from five possible sites in July, and building set to start just eight months later.
The Tarnava Mare Environmental Partnership, a local group dedicated to restoring the Tarnava Mare River watershed, fears that if a million tourists do come, the vast majority will do so during four summer months, with up to 3,300 cars pumping out 8.3 tons of carbon dioxide per day. Crowds will also pollute the local water supply and produce an estimated 21 tons of garbage daily, which the local waste-management system won't be able to handle, says partnership Vice-President Dumitru Benone Mehedin.
GARLIC LORE. Others worry about the falsification of history. Vlad the Impaler, despite his penchant for putting sharp stakes through criminals, was no vampire. What's more, while the vampire myth is wildly popular in the West, the Romanians are relative newcomers to it, following the novel's first translation locally a decade ago. If the Tourism Minister expects half of Dracula Park's million visitors to be Romanians, the cult will have to catch on quickly.
Yet in a Sighisoara classroom, there are signs that a generation of vampire connoisseurs is being born. A group of 13-year-olds is learning restaurant English, preparing for the tourist influx. As they decipher a menu, the word "garlic" stumps them until the teacher translates. "That's what you sling around your neck to ward off vampires," calls out one boy to his nodding classmates. Teacher Laura Nechita smiles wryly, saddened by the Dracula obsession that is warping her town. Yet she doubts the theme park will ever come to fruition. "I've never seen anything done in Romania," she says. While Bucharest aims to prove her wrong, many locals pray she is right.
Prague-based Andress travels frequently to Transylvania.
Edited by Harry Maurer
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