Newsletter with vampires and goats
by morton_h, the blogger
Romania.
Not a place you might think of as a possible tourist destination. People mostly associate poverty, Ceaucescu stalinism, thieving Romas and whatnot clichee about this country. And vampires, if we must have them.
Let's start by saying that all this exists and existed, including vampires believe it or not. It is available as well as the meatball-eating, clapping-football-hatted Danes in camping suits and their little cute ugly duckling and mermaid country where the happiest of all people live. But do we like to see ourselves like that, and is this how we really are? Are we just meatballs and we are really the happiest of all? Only to the extent that we have acquired and identified ourselves with the cliché. It's about self-image and reality. As a traveller I ask any myself about the same in relation to the people and the culture that I meet. As a traveler I have the opportunity to confirm my prejudices. I also have the opportunity to have them ruled out.
I have stood in front of the monster parliament, Ceausescu's Palace, where he the 21st of december 1989 makes his last speech to the one compulsory acquired million Romanians in the square. He emerges on the balcony as the figure who fits his self-understanding: the Father of the Nation. He starts his speech, but at some point what happens is due to his self understanding unpredictable and incomprehensible. It starts slowly and then grows. Eventually the sound of the people - that is the million people that symbolically were to represent the whole nation that day - is drowning his speech with their annoying 'boooh!'. The cameras were on of course, and they documented how he simply does not know what to do. People from this moment no longer live up to their national father's image of the obedient and devoted children. All he - and his wife, the national Lady Macbeth - can do for several minutes is to shout 'Shut up! Shut up!' repeatedly. Interestingly enough the boohing starts, when he in the beginning thanks the organizers of this 'great event of celebration of the revolution'. The whole event is organized and instructed, and people knows it.
Four days after he and his wife wound up in the village of Targoviste in the hands of a lynchmob forming a kind of self proclaimed military court martial. Not very charming, nor particularly useful for posterity. He should have been put on trial and pumped for information. He should have had the opportunity to pull his entire reign of sycophants and wannabes inside and outside Romania with him. Have we seen this before? There is a rush to get the dictator out of the way because he has too many compromized informations about those that lo and behold immediately thereafter infiltrate and seize power. Although the dictator has been shrouded in black adders of the court and though all those who have spoken against him has long since been liquidated (dictator's syndrome), he's still got too many stories to tell when he is caught in a hook. This is also true of his 'good friends' outside his own country. Many inside and outside are silently clapping their hands and breathing a sigh of relief when the lynch mob does its dirty job. It could have been them.
It should be said that he dared to go against the Sovjet line in his time and actually protested against the invasion of Czechoslovakia and therefore refused to send troops to the crushing of the rebellion in 68, which in fact made him really popular in the West. At a state visit to Denmark, he even Elephant order from the Queen as a kind of reward for that! And the monarch of Denmark is said to be absolutely un-political.
Listen to, what one of the godfathers of communism, Friedrich Engels, had to say about the Romanians in january 1848:
At the time of the fall of Ceausescu, most Romanians were happy to get rid of 42 years of communism, the secret police Securitate, the Russian presence, the paranoid and repressive regime. 25 years after it is reported, however, that 60% of Romanians would vote for Ceausescu if he arose from the grave and stood for election. It gets curiouser. But we actually saw the same with the Russians after the fall of the wall. There was a great wave of Stalin revivalisme. We saw it in East Germany. People longed back for the safety of the collectivized society where no one was really unemployed. Others were, however, disillusioned that the West, they had idolized and longed for, now turned out to have its, shall we say, flipside. Capitalism was not paradise on earth. Illusion in the East, illusion in the West.
It cannot be denyed, though, that the times of Ceausescu were not like in the stalinist period, where Romanians were experimented with like animals. Neither can it be denied that there was a hidden hand in taking him out, that did not have the best of interest for the Romanians. The western anti-Ceausescu-propaganda and the extreme demonization that usually leads up the taking out of any dictator in the world was due to the fact, that Romania was the only country in Europe, that was without national debt. Surprise! The dictator had paid out the debt in order to advance his country. Debt is enslavment, which is the only condition of a country that is permitted by the cartel of central banks running the world. Be they Jewish, Jesuit, Vatican og Venetian owned or owned by others. In the post-Babylonian concept finansial debt is the chain on the foot on individuals as well nations. So when Ceausescu freed his country from debt he committed 'a sin' to Mammon, the god of the owners of the central banks. Since then, Romania has of course fallen into great debt and the claws of the EU. No surprise!
Romanians are now somewhat divided in their oppinion of what is happening right now in Ukraine. Their old hatred of the Russians from the communist era are still in them. Ceaucescu's distancing Russians can explain some of it. Romanians are not Russians, they are not even Slavs. Rather, they are an ancient culture that at one time was occupied by the Roman Empire. And, as shall later learn, a very old and unique culture in itself. You hear can hear the similarty in the language. I just taught myself to count to one hundred in Romanian, and it's almost like counting on Roman - Italian: unu, doi, trei, patru (as quattro), cinci, sase (as sei / sextus), etc... you can almost read the inscriptions on walls and buildings and street signs. Endins on words can be 'ul' and not 'o', a lake is called lagul and not lago. A dragon is called dracul. But we shall arrive at that layer of history by going gradially backwards.
So the Romanians are not likely to stick with the Russians when those are now being attacked by NATO, the Pentagon and the EU. They have become members of the EU, and so far they seem to be happy with it. So far. They have not yet seen how the EU can only give with one hand and then take everything and more with the other, for the time has not come for them yet. They close in on themselves at the moment. They should know something about it since their neighbours to the south is Greece, and their border on the Black Sea is Ukraine, both countries having experienced and are experiencing the EU and the Global System of Central Banks financial terrorism.
The EU strategy has for some time been supporting for example. agriculture and industry in southern Europe, since it was here the industrialists spotted the cheapest labour force at that time. Then came enlargement to the east, and then the industrialists moved their support to the east accompanied with their sweet talk about helping the poor developing countries to regain their position as true Europeans and healing the wounds of WW2 and the cold war [violins here ... pathetic melodramatic clichees, insence, Hollywood tears and wind machines]
A few years later they started to slaughter and plunder the South of Europe. The Treaty of Rome was not signed in Rome for nothing - on empty papers, but that's another story. Spain currently has an unemployment rate of 25% and a youth unemployment at 50%, and the resistance is brewing right now here. The Romanians have slept in the class and have allowed themselves to be fooled into the scheme. Romania is mostly an agricultural country and obviously hopes to benefit from EU support for agriculture. They do not fully understand that their country does not have the same value for the EU, like the fat, black soil in Ukraine, along with its other rich resources now being attacked and looted. But the country has enough of land. When driving in the arduous train from Bucharest to the coastal city of Constanta on the Black Sea and further north to Tulcea south of the Danube Delta, my destination, you drive through a landscape of endless fields. Fascinating in its own way. Not as elsewhere, for example in Denmark, where the landscape is subdivided by small stamps, not even as a Danish manor land where the fields stretch all the way to the nearest woods. The fields in Romania extend until your eyes meet the horizon! This was the state farms under communism, and therefore there was no room for or need boundaries and divisions. The Mongols must have loved Romania, by the beard of Djengis Khan, here was enough room for horses!
You can still meet the farmer and his horse-drawn carriage on the road. Middle Ages and modernity live side by side. This is certainly not a tourist advertising, but you can hire a taxi for 100 lei and run 50 km. A 340 km taxi ride from Bucharest to Uzlina would have cost 600 lei, the train ride cost 68 lei. How far can you go for that in your country? As a Skandinave you are a rich man in this country. And you meet virtually only nice people. A normal urban taxi ride costs about the price of a small ice cone! You almost need to give good tips to avoid being a little embarrassed. A meal with several dishes and all included costs max 80 lei in the hottest neighborhood in Bucharest, the Old Town. What they lack in hyper-trendiness, they have solidity and tradition.
For Bucharest is neither Berlin and Paris fancy. But once the city was in fact called 'Little Paris'. In between certain ugly ravages of Ceaucescu modernism you can still find the old. It may seem overdue and defaulted as Prague and Budapest before coming into money. Between the renovated palace like buildings of banks, government and military, there are a multitude of small and large magnificent 1800 century buildings with facades shelled and smogged and rusty metal grilles. There is a certain nostalgia and bygone grandeur of the streets. Aesthetics of decade.
Take as a comparison for a walk in your own hood and the surrounding area and see how concrete modernism swept through here. Is there something to brag about? See the dreary socialist social housing. See the endless suburbs of Copenhagen with military compounds for the working class in endless rows. See the destruction of villages. See bungalow and townhouse neighborhoods with their sich hedge-conformity and total lack of imagination. If Ceaucescu had been a Dane, he had set it going. Denmark had its own culture Ceaucescues. I have a hard time seeing the qualitative and aesthetic difference between thes ugly products of the very same time and what tourists call Ceaucescu style in Romania.
The man they called vampire
We jump back in history. In the building of the old princely court, Curtea Veche, there is another form of restored decading aesthetics. It is the oldest complex in the city and only the basement complex is well preserved after fires and earthquakes. Above the entrance to the basement we find a statue of a remarkable figure in Romanian history from a time when the name Romania was not in use, the previous owner of the site, you might say. The land around Bucharest was called Valachia and its ruler in the 1400s named Vlad (prince) Tepes. He was also known as Vlad Dracul, because he, as his father was a member of the knightly order of the Dragon. By twisted detours, he ended up as a novel and film form figure known as Count Dracula. And not without reason, for the name 'Tepes', in English is 'The Impaler'. He simply placed his defeated enemies heads on poles. From here we've got Bram Stoker's plot with poles, blood and basements, but from here the similarities also end.
Vlad saw as a young prince that the country was in decline. He saw trade, craft and agricultural stagnation, the country had fallen into the hands of the socalled boyars, gentry men who with Turkish backing had shorn land and possessions to themselves and just sucked the blood - to keep the lingo - out of the country for their own favor and without giving anything back. His response was to mobilize, then tilt them off balance and in most cases execute them. No nonsense. And no nonsense either, when the Turks during Mehmet II later claimed the country by requiring that they must pay tribute. Tribute was equal to submission and admission that Valachia was part of the Ottoman Empire.
Vlad refused, and when the Turks arrived with their vizier and 2000 men to collect the tribute, they were all thrown in prison. The winter went on, and when the Turks then arrived with a punitive expedition of 20,000 men, they were met with the frightening sight of the heads of the 2000 men on poles along the road. The heads had over-wintered on poles! Quite a few soliers deserted already then. Shortly after the army got trapped in a narrow passage. And where have we heard of this tactics before? It was the same as the Germanians used in year 9 BC, when they obliterated three invading Roman legions in the forest of Teotoburg when these were about to make permanent inroads to the hitherto unconquered Northern Europe. The story was known to posterity, and the Valachians were allied with the Germanians, who of course knew their own history. They could also talk about how their Danish allies stopped the Roman state's successors, the Church of Rome and the French imperialists at the the fortified wall of Dannevirke at the southern border of Denmark, and later stopped the Franks and Britons for almost 400 years by turning into: Vikings scaring the shit out of the enemies. Not by heads on poles but by stealth attacks in boats by early dawn. Viking-ism was never about just looting and hoarding. It was a deliberate tacktics to deal with the Empire of the time before it stroke back. And a revenge of the mass killing of Saxons performed by the christian emperor Charlemagne.
Sultan Mehmet was furious of the defeat, but there was nothing to do. Mehmet by the way was otherwise not the least afraid to put heads on poles himself. Could it be an idea, I ask, to give politicians a tourist trip to the Libyan desert to the Fellujah Province in Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Homs in Syria. Give them a nice tour with the neofascists and neonazis of Ukraine so they can see exactly how their embecile decisions have led to misery and genocide, and give them a social event with the perfidious scoundrels, that EU-citzens pay money to support.
Vlad is famous for his nightly attack on the Ottoman army. This army was over-mighty and undefeatable for its mere size, but also for its well trained and well equipped soldiers. Vlad knew, that he could not defeat them the normal way, so he used psychological warfare in a unheard manner. The men with the loudes voices were summoned and placed on the hillsides close to the Ottomans. They brought flocks of goats and horses. At a given signal the men started to shout with loud and weird voices while pinching the animals so they would make a concert from Hell. And horses with haystacks on fire were send back and fourth on the hills. This scared the shit out of the enimy before the attack began. Armies were never attacked in the night.
So he was no mr. nice guy, that man Dracul. But we must also understand that he was a heroic figure among peoples of his time and well into the future. Both the Greeks and Hungarians have, so to say, a certain understanding of his exploits. It was no trivial matter as local prince to sit up against the then most powerful Empire and even successfully. Later he was betrayed by his own brother, Radu the Handsome, who had made a deal with the Turks and became a kind of new boyar, a Balkan prince John, the usurper from Robin Hood. Vlad now spent 12 years in Hungarian prison. Not so much because the Hungarians were enemies, but also because the papal power was beginning to fear his efficiency and contempt of Empires, and because the Hungarian king by his own wars could no longer afford to turn against them, so he made a privy agreement with the Catholics in order to appease them. After the prison Vlad was released and made a brief comeback. He died in a raid in an unknown place in Southern Romania or Bulgaria, and his grave is today unknown. Or is it?
He was said to be burried in a monastery outside Bucharest, but when they opened the grave, there was no one in there. Huhuuh... more stuff to legens of vampires arisen from their graves. The right place is more likely to be the Comana Monestary near Giorghu at the Bulgarian border. It was build by Vlad as a fortification, and excarvations in the 70'ties revealed a grave with a beheaded body. Thus the irony of destiny may have put his head on a pole just as he did to his enemies.
Today we can see his bust at the ruins of the Old Princely Palace. Note the great sweeping mustache. The rest we leave to Bram Stoker and Bela Lugosi, who played the vampire in the film version from 1931. 'Hai hamm Drac - culaa. Well - camm...' (theatrical Hollywood-Hungarian-Transylvanian supposed accented with slightly lisping drooling).
The hidden chapter in European history
But how come, that we speak about Romania, the new Rome? How come, that we were told, that these people were 'romanized' and that the language is a twisted version of what the Romans spoke? The Romans occupying only part of the country as we know it today for about 160 years. But other places like Britany, Egypt, Palestine they were for 400-800 years without leaving such traces in the language. Also we must understand, that Roman soldiers did not speak latin, which is an artificial language but what people called 'the language of idiots' or vulgar latin. Something is not right in history writing - which may not come as a surprise for readers of this blog or with similar interests as the persona identifying himself as morton_h the blogger.
The Romanians were taught a false story about themselves in the school. Like the Romanians being descendants of the Romans. Like that all the prisoners of the Roman Empire being set free, if they promised the Emperor Trajan to help take down Dacia, as it was called then. Only recently a more genuine story seems to have exploded in media and probably only due to the internet. But it has been known by certain people, or else it would not have been reconstructed, like the venerated poets of the country (Eminescu, he paid with his life for his knowledge), like historians. Maybe scool children asked themselves: 'Why call a place Romania and their own place for Italy? Did all the Romans just move here, and was Italy an empty place?' And it gets even more weird when it is claimed, that the Romans totally removed the language of the area and the people, they never conquered and occupied. They held only 14% of Dacia. That is not how it works with languages. Even when the British tried to destroy the Welsh language by firing all school teachers of Wales and forbidding Welsh being spoken and written, they did not succeed. A forbidden language will be spoken in secret.
In the 19th century there was a nationalistic return-to-Dacia movement i Romania. This was prevented by the Transylvanian School of thinkers, primarily greek intellectuals instructed by the Jesuits serving the influence of the Catholic church. These people falsified the history of Dacia for ideological reasons.
The Roman Empire over time included 67 countries with 270 different ethnicities speaking the same amount of languages or dialects. So why would just one place learn their language perfectly? You probably have guessed it by now: because it was the original language of the socalled Romanians or Dacians! Not the other way around. This has for a long time been one of the secrets of history for the reason, that it has been deliberately obscured.
We must stop regarding Roman Empire as a country or an extension of a country. It was an organisation, a meta-structure forced upon a number of countries. It was more like multi-national corporations of today forcing their marketing and world view, their products, their infamous trade aggrements, their corruption and greed, their lobbyism, their administration and management, their bought armies and arranged wars for profit. It started with Babylon, expanded with Rome and ended up with the British Empire and USA being run by bankers and intelligence agencies.
The Romans had an enourmous veneration for the Dacians. Or the Thracians, one famous group of tribes praised by Herodot. Or the Barbarians, which did not mean what we believe today: brutal and primitive. It simply meant a culture, where men grew beards unlike the Romans. Or the Geetes (goats - also with beards) as called by the Greek.You can see these proud figures on the pillar of Trajan, who fought their king Decebel in his wars. It is like a giant cartoon strip spiralling its way around the monument. They do not look like people who lost a war and forgot their language.
And they didn't, for the land of the Dacian was huge and consisted of many tribes. When they were united under the rule of King Burebista or the most venerated Queen Tomyris (who even defeated the mighty army of king Cyrus of Persia!) it extended from Ukraine to the Black Sea to Serbia to Macedonia. It was huge! The Dacians held the remaining part as Dacii Liberi, the unconquered non-occupied Dacia as opposed to Dacia Romană, a province of Rome - pro-vince meaning 'won for' Rome by force.
The Dacian language simply gave birth the vulgar latin out of which latin as we know it was created. So history is told upside down, not surprisingly by those who considered themselves the victorious and had the means to force their history onto the world, however backwards it was. And this gives us a problem, since we have been presented with history based upon falsified history based upon falsified history ... Rome is supposedly founded by settlers from Troy and Aeniad, son in law of king Pryam of Troy at 753 BC.
That these people in no way were primitive was noted by Greek and Byzantine historians. They were famous for their artwork and technology of mining and smelting gold.
This building knowledge - tech-nology - and the plenitude of gold as result of it would be one of the reasons for the Romans for wanting to possess parts of Dacia. The Romans were technology thieves. They stole their famous water technology seen in the aquaducts from the people they later extinguished, the Etruscans. A contemporary parallel would be the nowaday Empire diciding to destroy Libya - Ceasar: 'In my opinion, by the way, Carthage should be destroyed' - and steal their gold reserves and their famous water technology, The Man Made Project. It is exactly the same.
Rome was partying for three months after the battle against the Dacians. The brought hundreds of tons of gold and silver back. The Roman population did not have to pay tax for a whole year to pay for the giant army (remember: all tax is originally a war tax). So there was a lot of gold. In the Rosea Mountains the mines are 400 kilometres long! And they still contain gold, but some foreign company is just mining there, it doesn't pay anything to the Romanians and the area is totally poisoned with cyanide lakes. So who are these people, and how did they get this unheard priviledge. One thing is for sure: it has everything to do with the taking out of Ceausescu and the empoverishment taking place after that.
There is a clear parallel to what happened i Libya, in Afghanistan, in Syria, in Iraq and in Ukraine. And with Serbia. It is the same hidden hand that never tells what it doing and why. It is the hand of banking cartels and thieves. These places you will suddenly see coups, revolutions, civil war and in the midst of chaos the robbery will take place. The huge Libyan and Ukranian gold reserves disappeared. The rare earth and the opium is taken out of Afghanistan. The oil and the water is taken from the Libyans. The oilproduction is shut down i Iraq and billions of dollars disappeared together with all the treasures from the National Museum. The same with the ressources of Romania. The old trees from the National Parks are being cut down and taken out to end up as wooden briquettes in stowes in Austria. Who are being bribed for that? Scumbags in suits are running this world.
I seems like history repeats itself, although historians claim that such rubbish cannot be conceived. Well, doesn't it? It seems so. Could a reason for this be, that reality when suppressed is bound to repeat itself? Psychologists may confirm this. When you lie to yourself or others, one day sooner or later the lie will jump in your face forcing you to revisit and revise it. A serial killer not being caught will do it again and again leaving more and more tracks in order to be caught. History is pointing backwards saying: look here for what you didn't see. If we do not fully know ourselves and where we came from, history has a peculiar way of pulling us back.
And Trajan, the Iberian Roman emperor, when coming to Thracia says: 'I return to the home of my ancestors'. He knew it and had it written down and carved in a giant pillar. But Rome did not destroy Dacia/Thracia. They only destroyed its history for the aftermath. It is now returning for two purposes: to enrich us with a true story and to hold us accoutable for not telling this story for a long time.
A creature that commonly is found in Dacian mythological art is the the dragon-wolf. There are two connections to what we have examinated above. One is the the Order of the Dragon, that Vlad Tepes and his father attended. And remember, that Rome aka the Vatican arranged for his imprisonment in Hungary. The other is the wolf that gave birth to Romulus and Remus, who were told to be the founders of Rome. Interesting mythological way of telling history without revealing the whole cultural story.
And how old is this culture, one may ask. A specific selection of artifacts gives the answer: the Tartaria Tablets from the Vincea-Turdas Danube culture with figures and letters. They could not be carbon dated due to archeologist having burned them in order to read the them and thus destroying their dateability. But some bones, however, were found with them, and they were dated to being 7.500 years old. This means, that Dacian writings are older than the Sumerian.
You can follow this hidden track here:
Dacians - unsettling truths
The Thracians, a hidden history
Lad os starte med at sige, at alt dette fandtes og findes, inklusive vampyrer, believe it or not. Men det findes lige så vel som den frikadelleædende, klaphattende dansker i campinghabit og hans lille nuttede ællinge- og havfrueland hvor verdens lykkeligste mennesker bor. Er det sådan, vi egentlig er, og kan vi over hovedet lide at se os selv sådan? Kalder vi os selv for klapfrikadeller og er vi egentlig verdens lykkeligste? Kun i det omfang, vi har købt og identificeret os med klichéen. Det handler om selvforståelse og virkelighed. Som rejsende spørger jeg helst mig selv om det samme i forhold til de mennesker og den kultur, jeg møder. Som rejsende har jeg mulighed for at få bekræftet mine eventuelle fordomme. Jeg har også mulighed for at få dem afkræftet.
Jeg har stået foran parlamentet, Ceaucescu-paladset, hvor han i 1989 holdt sin berømte sidste tale til den tvangsindkaldte million rumænere på pladsen. Han træder frem på balkonen som den skikkelse, der passer til hans selvforståelse: landsfaderen. Han starter på sin flommede, klichéefyldte tale, de forudsigelige hyldestråb fra forreste række bryder ud i de forudsigelige 30 sekunder, han fortsætter, men på et tidspunkt sker det for hans selvforståelse uforudsligelige og ubegribelige. Det starter langsomt, og så tager det til. Til sidst overdøver folkets - altså den million, der symbolsk repræsenterer folket den dag - deres irriterende og dødbringende buen af landsfaderen. Det er klart filmdokumenteret, hvordan han simpelthen ikke aner, hvad han skal stille op. Folket lever fra dette øjeblik ikke længere op til landsfaderens billede om de lydige og hengivne børn. Alt, hvad han kan finde på, er at råbe 'Ti stille! Ti stille!' i lang tid. Konen hyler også med i baggrunden. Endelig får han ørenlyd og lover lønforhøjelse til de lavestlønnede. Måske han oven i købet improviserer det som en bestikkende formildelse, hvem ved? Eller også var det kommet ham for øre, at der var noget i gære, der krævede en lille julegave d. 21 december.
Fire dage efter bliver han og hans kone likvideret i landsbyen Targoviste af en lynchmob, en folkemilitær standret. Ikke særligt charmerende. Heller ikke særlig nyttigt for eftertiden. Han burde være stillet for en egentlig domstol og pumpet for oplysninger. I stedet fik han en temmelig tvivlsom kup-militærdomstol oven i købet på falske anklager. Han burde have haft lejlighed til at hive hele sit regimente af røvslikkere og wannabes med sig. Har vi set det før? Man skynder sig at skaffe diktatoren af vejen, fordi han har alt for mange kompromiterende oplysninger om de eksrøvslikkere, der straks herefter overtager magten. Fx forsvarsministeren, der var loyal indtil ganske kort tid før, hvor han vejrede vindens blæsen. Selvom diktatoren har været indhyllet i hofsnoge og selvom alle dem, der har sagt ham imod for længst er likvideret (diktator-syndromet), så har han stadig alt for mange historier at fortælle, når han er fanget i en krog. Det gælder også om hans 'gode venner' udenfor sit eget land. Mange indenfor og udenfor klapper stille i hænderne og ånder lettet op, når lynchhoben gør sit beskidte job. Det kunne ha været dem, men nu får de en ny runde. De finder hurtigt et nyt sæt tøj i garderoben.
Vi springer tilbage i historien. I bygningen for det gamle fyrstehof, Curtea Veche, er der en anden form forrestaureres forfaldsæstetik. Det er det ældste bygningskompleks i byen og kun kælderkomplekset er velbevaret efter brande og jordskælv. Ovenfor indgangen til kælderen finder vi en statue af en bemærkelsesværdig skikkelse i rumænsk historie fra en tid, hvor navnet Rumænien ikke var i brug, den tidligere ejer af stedet, kan man sige. Landet omkring Bucharest hed Valachia og dets hersker i 1400-tallet hed Vlad (prins) Tepech. Han var også kendt under navnet Vlad Dracul, fordi han som sin far var medlem af en ridderorden, Dragens Orden. Af twistede omveje er han endt som en roman- og filmskikkelse kendt under navnet Grev Dracula. Og ikke helt uden grund, for navnet 'Tepech', på engelsk 'The Impaler', kan på dansk bedst oversættes med 'Pælestikkeren'. Han placerede simpelthen sine overvundne fjenders hoveder på pæle. Så ku' de lære det! Herfra har Bram Stokers sit plot med pæle og kældre, men også herfra holder lighederne op.
Vlad så som ung prins, at landet var i forfald. Handel, håndværk og landbrug var stagneret, landet var havnet i hænderne på 'boyarerne', lavadelsmænd, der med bla. tyrkisk rygdækning havde raget land og besiddelser til sig og blot blodsugede - for nu at blive i sproget - landet til eget favør. Hans svar var at moblilisere og herefter vippe dem af pinden og i de fleste tilfælde henrette dem. Ikke så meget pjat. Heller ikke så meget pjat, da tyrkerne under Mehmet II senere gjorde krav på landet ved at forlange, at der skulle betales tribut. Tribut var lig underkastelse og indrømmelse af, at Valachiet var en del af det Ottomanske Imperium. Vlad nægtede, og da tyrkerne ankom med gesandter og 2.000 mand blev de smidt i fængsel. Tyrkerne sendte en straffeekspedition på 20.000 mand, men på vejen fra Bulgarien til Valachia blev de mødt af det makabre syn af de 2.000 gesandters hoveder på pæle. En del desserterede allerede ved synet. Resten blev fanget og omkom i en snæver passage undervejs. Og hvor har vi hørt om denne taktik før? Det var den samme, som germanerne brugte i år 9 f.Kr., da de nedslagtede tre invaderende romerske legioner i Theotoburg-skoven, der skulle gøre endeligt indhug på Nordeuropa. Historien var kendt for eftertiden, og valachierne var allierede med germanerne, der kendte deres egen historie. De kunne også fortælle om, hvordan deres danske allierede stoppede romerstatens arvtagere, romerkirken og de franske imperialister ved Dannevirke, og senere stoppede frankerne og briterne ved at blive til: vikinger.
Hoveder på pæle, krigens grimhed og rædsel. Som regel ganske ukendt af dem, der bestiller arbejdet. Tag og send en stak danske ministre på turisttur til en libyske ørken, til Felluja-provinsen i Irak, til Afghanistan, til Homs i Syrien. Giv dem en hyggelig rundtur i Ukraine, så de kan se, hvad deres tåbelige beslutninger har affødt af elendighed og folkemord, og hvilke perfide slyngler de danske skatteydere betaler penge til. Lad dem opleve på egen krop, hvad de i deres korrupte, embecile bekvemmelighed har været med til at beslutte på danskernes bekostning. Og lad danskerne vide nøjagtig, hvad der forgår, så de kan forstå, at de er fuldt medskyldige, så længe de ikke siger fra.
Så han var altså ingen flink fyr, mr. Dracul. Men vi må også forstå, at var en helteskikkelse hos flere folkeslag i sin tid og langt ind i eftertiden. Både grækerne og ungarerne har, om man så må sige, en vis forståelse for hans bedrifter. Det var ingen bagatel som lokal fyrste at sætte sig op mod datidens førende Imperium og oven i købet med succes. Senere blev han bagstukket af sin egen bror, Radu den Smukke, der som en anden prins John i røverhistorien om Robin Hood havde lavet en deal med tyrkerne og blev en ny boyar, en usurpator.
Vlad søgte hjælp hos Matthias Corvinus, den ungarske konge og tidligere allierede. I sted for hjælp fik han 12 år i ungarsk fængsel. Ikke så meget fordi ungarerne var hans fjender, men fordi også Pavemagten var begyndt at frygte hans effektivitet og foragt for Imperier, og fordi den ungarske konge efter egne krige ikke havde råd til at sætte sig op mod dem. Så han lavede en lokumsaftale med katolikkerne for at formilde dem, da Vlad søgte tilflugt. Efter fængslet blev Vlad frigivet og gjorde et kortvarigt comeback. Han døde i december 1476, 45 år gammel, på et togt et uvist sted i Sydrumænien eller Bulgarien, og hans gravsted er i dag ukendt.
Det var blevet hævdet, at han var begravet i en grav uden titel i et kloster udenfor Bucharest. Men da man åbnede graven var den tom. Uhuuh... mere stof til legender om vampyrer, der står op af graven. Det rigtige sted er snarere Comana-klostret nær Giorghiu på grænsen til Bulgarien. Klostret blev bygget af Vlad som et befæstet kloster, og udgravninger i 70'erne fandt et skelet uden hoved. Med skæbnens ironi kan Vlad, Pælestikkeren, have endt sine dage med sit hoved på en pæl.
I dag kan vi se en buste af denne grumme men facinerende skikkelse ved ruinerne af fyrstepaladset. Bemærk det flot svungne overskæg. Hugtænderne overlader vi til Bram Stoker og Bela Lugosi, der spillede vampyren i filmatiseringen fra 1931. 'Hai hamm Drac-culaa. Vell-camm...' (teatralsk ungarsk-transylvansk accent med let læspende savlen).
[læs resten i den engelske udvidede version]
[scroll for at læse på dansk]
Let's start by saying that all this exists and existed, including vampires believe it or not. It is available as well as the meatball-eating, clapping-football-hatted Danes in camping suits and their little cute ugly duckling and mermaid country where the happiest of all people live. But do we like to see ourselves like that, and is this how we really are? Are we just meatballs and we are really the happiest of all? Only to the extent that we have acquired and identified ourselves with the cliché. It's about self-image and reality. As a traveller I ask any myself about the same in relation to the people and the culture that I meet. As a traveler I have the opportunity to confirm my prejudices. I also have the opportunity to have them ruled out.
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| Doubt and disbelief in his eyes? Click for the speech on video |
Four days after he and his wife wound up in the village of Targoviste in the hands of a lynchmob forming a kind of self proclaimed military court martial. Not very charming, nor particularly useful for posterity. He should have been put on trial and pumped for information. He should have had the opportunity to pull his entire reign of sycophants and wannabes inside and outside Romania with him. Have we seen this before? There is a rush to get the dictator out of the way because he has too many compromized informations about those that lo and behold immediately thereafter infiltrate and seize power. Although the dictator has been shrouded in black adders of the court and though all those who have spoken against him has long since been liquidated (dictator's syndrome), he's still got too many stories to tell when he is caught in a hook. This is also true of his 'good friends' outside his own country. Many inside and outside are silently clapping their hands and breathing a sigh of relief when the lynch mob does its dirty job. It could have been them.
The future is decided by the way you deal with the past in the present. A nation and its people can heal itself or lay the ground for repeating its own past 2.0.
It should be said that he dared to go against the Sovjet line in his time and actually protested against the invasion of Czechoslovakia and therefore refused to send troops to the crushing of the rebellion in 68, which in fact made him really popular in the West. At a state visit to Denmark, he even Elephant order from the Queen as a kind of reward for that! And the monarch of Denmark is said to be absolutely un-political.
Listen to, what one of the godfathers of communism, Friedrich Engels, had to say about the Romanians in january 1848:
Romanians are a nation without history bound to disappear in the revolution storm. They are fanatical supporters of counter revolution and will remain like that, until their extermination or disappearance of their nation characteristics. As their resistance in general represents by itself a protest against a great historical revolution, their disappearance from the surface of the Earth will be a step forward.That sort of sums up what the Bolsjevik view on generally human beings and especially peasant culture was. And we know from the maniphestos of Engels and Marx, that they regarded peasants as undeveloped being not worthy to participate in their fine revolution, whereas workers in the industrial age were perfect tool. The peasants of Russia under Stalin were deprived of everything and starved to death. Peasants have strong independant feelings and will not easily obey a master. Also the peasants and shepheards of Romania.
At the time of the fall of Ceausescu, most Romanians were happy to get rid of 42 years of communism, the secret police Securitate, the Russian presence, the paranoid and repressive regime. 25 years after it is reported, however, that 60% of Romanians would vote for Ceausescu if he arose from the grave and stood for election. It gets curiouser. But we actually saw the same with the Russians after the fall of the wall. There was a great wave of Stalin revivalisme. We saw it in East Germany. People longed back for the safety of the collectivized society where no one was really unemployed. Others were, however, disillusioned that the West, they had idolized and longed for, now turned out to have its, shall we say, flipside. Capitalism was not paradise on earth. Illusion in the East, illusion in the West.
It cannot be denyed, though, that the times of Ceausescu were not like in the stalinist period, where Romanians were experimented with like animals. Neither can it be denied that there was a hidden hand in taking him out, that did not have the best of interest for the Romanians. The western anti-Ceausescu-propaganda and the extreme demonization that usually leads up the taking out of any dictator in the world was due to the fact, that Romania was the only country in Europe, that was without national debt. Surprise! The dictator had paid out the debt in order to advance his country. Debt is enslavment, which is the only condition of a country that is permitted by the cartel of central banks running the world. Be they Jewish, Jesuit, Vatican og Venetian owned or owned by others. In the post-Babylonian concept finansial debt is the chain on the foot on individuals as well nations. So when Ceausescu freed his country from debt he committed 'a sin' to Mammon, the god of the owners of the central banks. Since then, Romania has of course fallen into great debt and the claws of the EU. No surprise!
Romanians are now somewhat divided in their oppinion of what is happening right now in Ukraine. Their old hatred of the Russians from the communist era are still in them. Ceaucescu's distancing Russians can explain some of it. Romanians are not Russians, they are not even Slavs. Rather, they are an ancient culture that at one time was occupied by the Roman Empire. And, as shall later learn, a very old and unique culture in itself. You hear can hear the similarty in the language. I just taught myself to count to one hundred in Romanian, and it's almost like counting on Roman - Italian: unu, doi, trei, patru (as quattro), cinci, sase (as sei / sextus), etc... you can almost read the inscriptions on walls and buildings and street signs. Endins on words can be 'ul' and not 'o', a lake is called lagul and not lago. A dragon is called dracul. But we shall arrive at that layer of history by going gradially backwards.
So the Romanians are not likely to stick with the Russians when those are now being attacked by NATO, the Pentagon and the EU. They have become members of the EU, and so far they seem to be happy with it. So far. They have not yet seen how the EU can only give with one hand and then take everything and more with the other, for the time has not come for them yet. They close in on themselves at the moment. They should know something about it since their neighbours to the south is Greece, and their border on the Black Sea is Ukraine, both countries having experienced and are experiencing the EU and the Global System of Central Banks financial terrorism.
The EU strategy has for some time been supporting for example. agriculture and industry in southern Europe, since it was here the industrialists spotted the cheapest labour force at that time. Then came enlargement to the east, and then the industrialists moved their support to the east accompanied with their sweet talk about helping the poor developing countries to regain their position as true Europeans and healing the wounds of WW2 and the cold war [violins here ... pathetic melodramatic clichees, insence, Hollywood tears and wind machines]
A few years later they started to slaughter and plunder the South of Europe. The Treaty of Rome was not signed in Rome for nothing - on empty papers, but that's another story. Spain currently has an unemployment rate of 25% and a youth unemployment at 50%, and the resistance is brewing right now here. The Romanians have slept in the class and have allowed themselves to be fooled into the scheme. Romania is mostly an agricultural country and obviously hopes to benefit from EU support for agriculture. They do not fully understand that their country does not have the same value for the EU, like the fat, black soil in Ukraine, along with its other rich resources now being attacked and looted. But the country has enough of land. When driving in the arduous train from Bucharest to the coastal city of Constanta on the Black Sea and further north to Tulcea south of the Danube Delta, my destination, you drive through a landscape of endless fields. Fascinating in its own way. Not as elsewhere, for example in Denmark, where the landscape is subdivided by small stamps, not even as a Danish manor land where the fields stretch all the way to the nearest woods. The fields in Romania extend until your eyes meet the horizon! This was the state farms under communism, and therefore there was no room for or need boundaries and divisions. The Mongols must have loved Romania, by the beard of Djengis Khan, here was enough room for horses!
You can still meet the farmer and his horse-drawn carriage on the road. Middle Ages and modernity live side by side. This is certainly not a tourist advertising, but you can hire a taxi for 100 lei and run 50 km. A 340 km taxi ride from Bucharest to Uzlina would have cost 600 lei, the train ride cost 68 lei. How far can you go for that in your country? As a Skandinave you are a rich man in this country. And you meet virtually only nice people. A normal urban taxi ride costs about the price of a small ice cone! You almost need to give good tips to avoid being a little embarrassed. A meal with several dishes and all included costs max 80 lei in the hottest neighborhood in Bucharest, the Old Town. What they lack in hyper-trendiness, they have solidity and tradition.For Bucharest is neither Berlin and Paris fancy. But once the city was in fact called 'Little Paris'. In between certain ugly ravages of Ceaucescu modernism you can still find the old. It may seem overdue and defaulted as Prague and Budapest before coming into money. Between the renovated palace like buildings of banks, government and military, there are a multitude of small and large magnificent 1800 century buildings with facades shelled and smogged and rusty metal grilles. There is a certain nostalgia and bygone grandeur of the streets. Aesthetics of decade.
Take as a comparison for a walk in your own hood and the surrounding area and see how concrete modernism swept through here. Is there something to brag about? See the dreary socialist social housing. See the endless suburbs of Copenhagen with military compounds for the working class in endless rows. See the destruction of villages. See bungalow and townhouse neighborhoods with their sich hedge-conformity and total lack of imagination. If Ceaucescu had been a Dane, he had set it going. Denmark had its own culture Ceaucescues. I have a hard time seeing the qualitative and aesthetic difference between thes ugly products of the very same time and what tourists call Ceaucescu style in Romania.
The man they called vampire
We jump back in history. In the building of the old princely court, Curtea Veche, there is another form of restored decading aesthetics. It is the oldest complex in the city and only the basement complex is well preserved after fires and earthquakes. Above the entrance to the basement we find a statue of a remarkable figure in Romanian history from a time when the name Romania was not in use, the previous owner of the site, you might say. The land around Bucharest was called Valachia and its ruler in the 1400s named Vlad (prince) Tepes. He was also known as Vlad Dracul, because he, as his father was a member of the knightly order of the Dragon. By twisted detours, he ended up as a novel and film form figure known as Count Dracula. And not without reason, for the name 'Tepes', in English is 'The Impaler'. He simply placed his defeated enemies heads on poles. From here we've got Bram Stoker's plot with poles, blood and basements, but from here the similarities also end.
Vlad saw as a young prince that the country was in decline. He saw trade, craft and agricultural stagnation, the country had fallen into the hands of the socalled boyars, gentry men who with Turkish backing had shorn land and possessions to themselves and just sucked the blood - to keep the lingo - out of the country for their own favor and without giving anything back. His response was to mobilize, then tilt them off balance and in most cases execute them. No nonsense. And no nonsense either, when the Turks during Mehmet II later claimed the country by requiring that they must pay tribute. Tribute was equal to submission and admission that Valachia was part of the Ottoman Empire.  |
| The dungeons of the Old Princely Court |
Sultan Mehmet was furious of the defeat, but there was nothing to do. Mehmet by the way was otherwise not the least afraid to put heads on poles himself. Could it be an idea, I ask, to give politicians a tourist trip to the Libyan desert to the Fellujah Province in Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Homs in Syria. Give them a nice tour with the neofascists and neonazis of Ukraine so they can see exactly how their embecile decisions have led to misery and genocide, and give them a social event with the perfidious scoundrels, that EU-citzens pay money to support.
Vlad is famous for his nightly attack on the Ottoman army. This army was over-mighty and undefeatable for its mere size, but also for its well trained and well equipped soldiers. Vlad knew, that he could not defeat them the normal way, so he used psychological warfare in a unheard manner. The men with the loudes voices were summoned and placed on the hillsides close to the Ottomans. They brought flocks of goats and horses. At a given signal the men started to shout with loud and weird voices while pinching the animals so they would make a concert from Hell. And horses with haystacks on fire were send back and fourth on the hills. This scared the shit out of the enimy before the attack began. Armies were never attacked in the night.
So he was no mr. nice guy, that man Dracul. But we must also understand that he was a heroic figure among peoples of his time and well into the future. Both the Greeks and Hungarians have, so to say, a certain understanding of his exploits. It was no trivial matter as local prince to sit up against the then most powerful Empire and even successfully. Later he was betrayed by his own brother, Radu the Handsome, who had made a deal with the Turks and became a kind of new boyar, a Balkan prince John, the usurper from Robin Hood. Vlad now spent 12 years in Hungarian prison. Not so much because the Hungarians were enemies, but also because the papal power was beginning to fear his efficiency and contempt of Empires, and because the Hungarian king by his own wars could no longer afford to turn against them, so he made a privy agreement with the Catholics in order to appease them. After the prison Vlad was released and made a brief comeback. He died in a raid in an unknown place in Southern Romania or Bulgaria, and his grave is today unknown. Or is it?
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| Half shadow, half light |
Today we can see his bust at the ruins of the Old Princely Palace. Note the great sweeping mustache. The rest we leave to Bram Stoker and Bela Lugosi, who played the vampire in the film version from 1931. 'Hai hamm Drac - culaa. Well - camm...' (theatrical Hollywood-Hungarian-Transylvanian supposed accented with slightly lisping drooling).
The hidden chapter in European history
But how come, that we speak about Romania, the new Rome? How come, that we were told, that these people were 'romanized' and that the language is a twisted version of what the Romans spoke? The Romans occupying only part of the country as we know it today for about 160 years. But other places like Britany, Egypt, Palestine they were for 400-800 years without leaving such traces in the language. Also we must understand, that Roman soldiers did not speak latin, which is an artificial language but what people called 'the language of idiots' or vulgar latin. Something is not right in history writing - which may not come as a surprise for readers of this blog or with similar interests as the persona identifying himself as morton_h the blogger.
The Romanians were taught a false story about themselves in the school. Like the Romanians being descendants of the Romans. Like that all the prisoners of the Roman Empire being set free, if they promised the Emperor Trajan to help take down Dacia, as it was called then. Only recently a more genuine story seems to have exploded in media and probably only due to the internet. But it has been known by certain people, or else it would not have been reconstructed, like the venerated poets of the country (Eminescu, he paid with his life for his knowledge), like historians. Maybe scool children asked themselves: 'Why call a place Romania and their own place for Italy? Did all the Romans just move here, and was Italy an empty place?' And it gets even more weird when it is claimed, that the Romans totally removed the language of the area and the people, they never conquered and occupied. They held only 14% of Dacia. That is not how it works with languages. Even when the British tried to destroy the Welsh language by firing all school teachers of Wales and forbidding Welsh being spoken and written, they did not succeed. A forbidden language will be spoken in secret.
In the 19th century there was a nationalistic return-to-Dacia movement i Romania. This was prevented by the Transylvanian School of thinkers, primarily greek intellectuals instructed by the Jesuits serving the influence of the Catholic church. These people falsified the history of Dacia for ideological reasons.
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| Recent paleo-genetic research shows the extension of the Dacian peoples. No wonder why 'the Empire of Envy' both venerated and feared them. |
We must stop regarding Roman Empire as a country or an extension of a country. It was an organisation, a meta-structure forced upon a number of countries. It was more like multi-national corporations of today forcing their marketing and world view, their products, their infamous trade aggrements, their corruption and greed, their lobbyism, their administration and management, their bought armies and arranged wars for profit. It started with Babylon, expanded with Rome and ended up with the British Empire and USA being run by bankers and intelligence agencies.
And they didn't, for the land of the Dacian was huge and consisted of many tribes. When they were united under the rule of King Burebista or the most venerated Queen Tomyris (who even defeated the mighty army of king Cyrus of Persia!) it extended from Ukraine to the Black Sea to Serbia to Macedonia. It was huge! The Dacians held the remaining part as Dacii Liberi, the unconquered non-occupied Dacia as opposed to Dacia Romană, a province of Rome - pro-vince meaning 'won for' Rome by force.
The Dacian language simply gave birth the vulgar latin out of which latin as we know it was created. So history is told upside down, not surprisingly by those who considered themselves the victorious and had the means to force their history onto the world, however backwards it was. And this gives us a problem, since we have been presented with history based upon falsified history based upon falsified history ... Rome is supposedly founded by settlers from Troy and Aeniad, son in law of king Pryam of Troy at 753 BC.
That these people in no way were primitive was noted by Greek and Byzantine historians. They were famous for their artwork and technology of mining and smelting gold.
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| Barbarians with long beards made this piece. |
Rome was partying for three months after the battle against the Dacians. The brought hundreds of tons of gold and silver back. The Roman population did not have to pay tax for a whole year to pay for the giant army (remember: all tax is originally a war tax). So there was a lot of gold. In the Rosea Mountains the mines are 400 kilometres long! And they still contain gold, but some foreign company is just mining there, it doesn't pay anything to the Romanians and the area is totally poisoned with cyanide lakes. So who are these people, and how did they get this unheard priviledge. One thing is for sure: it has everything to do with the taking out of Ceausescu and the empoverishment taking place after that.
There is a clear parallel to what happened i Libya, in Afghanistan, in Syria, in Iraq and in Ukraine. And with Serbia. It is the same hidden hand that never tells what it doing and why. It is the hand of banking cartels and thieves. These places you will suddenly see coups, revolutions, civil war and in the midst of chaos the robbery will take place. The huge Libyan and Ukranian gold reserves disappeared. The rare earth and the opium is taken out of Afghanistan. The oil and the water is taken from the Libyans. The oilproduction is shut down i Iraq and billions of dollars disappeared together with all the treasures from the National Museum. The same with the ressources of Romania. The old trees from the National Parks are being cut down and taken out to end up as wooden briquettes in stowes in Austria. Who are being bribed for that? Scumbags in suits are running this world.
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| Tarabostes, a Phrygian/Dacian warrior with cap and beard. |
And Trajan, the Iberian Roman emperor, when coming to Thracia says: 'I return to the home of my ancestors'. He knew it and had it written down and carved in a giant pillar. But Rome did not destroy Dacia/Thracia. They only destroyed its history for the aftermath. It is now returning for two purposes: to enrich us with a true story and to hold us accoutable for not telling this story for a long time.
And how old is this culture, one may ask. A specific selection of artifacts gives the answer: the Tartaria Tablets from the Vincea-Turdas Danube culture with figures and letters. They could not be carbon dated due to archeologist having burned them in order to read the them and thus destroying their dateability. But some bones, however, were found with them, and they were dated to being 7.500 years old. This means, that Dacian writings are older than the Sumerian.
You can follow this hidden track here:
Dacians - unsettling truths
The Thracians, a hidden history
Vampyrer fra Rumænien
Rumænien, Romania. Ikke et sted, du måske tænker på som et muligt turistmål. De fleste associerer fattigdom, Ceaucescu-stalisnisme, tyvagtige romaer, upålidelige balkanesere, whatever clichée om landet og dets indbyggere. Og vampyrer, hvis vi også skal have dem med.Lad os starte med at sige, at alt dette fandtes og findes, inklusive vampyrer, believe it or not. Men det findes lige så vel som den frikadelleædende, klaphattende dansker i campinghabit og hans lille nuttede ællinge- og havfrueland hvor verdens lykkeligste mennesker bor. Er det sådan, vi egentlig er, og kan vi over hovedet lide at se os selv sådan? Kalder vi os selv for klapfrikadeller og er vi egentlig verdens lykkeligste? Kun i det omfang, vi har købt og identificeret os med klichéen. Det handler om selvforståelse og virkelighed. Som rejsende spørger jeg helst mig selv om det samme i forhold til de mennesker og den kultur, jeg møder. Som rejsende har jeg mulighed for at få bekræftet mine eventuelle fordomme. Jeg har også mulighed for at få dem afkræftet.
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Er du i tvivl om vantroen i hans øjne? Så klik på billedet og hør talen |
Fire dage efter bliver han og hans kone likvideret i landsbyen Targoviste af en lynchmob, en folkemilitær standret. Ikke særligt charmerende. Heller ikke særlig nyttigt for eftertiden. Han burde være stillet for en egentlig domstol og pumpet for oplysninger. I stedet fik han en temmelig tvivlsom kup-militærdomstol oven i købet på falske anklager. Han burde have haft lejlighed til at hive hele sit regimente af røvslikkere og wannabes med sig. Har vi set det før? Man skynder sig at skaffe diktatoren af vejen, fordi han har alt for mange kompromiterende oplysninger om de eksrøvslikkere, der straks herefter overtager magten. Fx forsvarsministeren, der var loyal indtil ganske kort tid før, hvor han vejrede vindens blæsen. Selvom diktatoren har været indhyllet i hofsnoge og selvom alle dem, der har sagt ham imod for længst er likvideret (diktator-syndromet), så har han stadig alt for mange historier at fortælle, når han er fanget i en krog. Det gælder også om hans 'gode venner' udenfor sit eget land. Mange indenfor og udenfor klapper stille i hænderne og ånder lettet op, når lynchhoben gør sit beskidte job. Det kunne ha været dem, men nu får de en ny runde. De finder hurtigt et nyt sæt tøj i garderoben.
Et land kan enten helbrede sig selv eller lægge grunden til en ny form for elendighed. Fremtiden afhænger af måden, man håndterer sin fortid på i nutiden.
Det bør egentlig siges, at Ceaucescu turde gå imod Sovjetlinien i sin tid og rent faktisk protesterede mod invasionen i Tjekkoslovakiet og derfor nægtede at sende tropper til nedkæmpelsen af oprøret i 68. Det gjorde ham faktisk populær i Vesten. Ved et statsbesøg fik han oven i købet elefantordenen som en noget pinlig belønning for politisk korrekthed i den kolde krigs mentalforgiftede og sort-hvide æra. Pinligheden var helt på danskernes side. Var der noget med, at kongehuset aldrig måtte bedrive politik?
Dengang var rumænerne lykkelige over at slippe for 42 års knugende kommunistregime, det hemmelige perfide politi Securitate, den russiske tilstedeværelse, det paranoide og repressive regime. 25 år efter forlyder det besynderlige dog, at 60% af alle rumænere ville stemme for Ceaucescu, hvis han stod op fra graven og stillede op til valg. Besynderligt? Vi så faktisk det samme med russerne efter murens fald. Der var en hel bølge at Stalin-revivalisme. Vi så det i Østtyskland. Folk længtes tilbage efter sikkerheden i det kollektiviserede samfund, hvor ingen var rigtig arbejdsløse. Andre blev dog desillusionerede over, at det Vesten, de havde idoliseret og længtes efter, nu viste sig at have sine, skal vi sige: bagsider. Kapitalismen var ikke paradis på jord. Illusion i øst, illusion i vest.
Rumænerne er lige nu noget splittede over, hvordan de skal tænke om det, der sker lige nu i Ukraine. Deres gamle had til russerne fra kommunisttiden sidder stadig i dem. Ceaucescus afstandstagen til russerne kan forklare noget. Rumænerne er heller ikke russere, de er ikke engang slavere. De er snarere romere. Eller rettere: de er en gammel kultur, der på et tidspunkt blev okkuperet af Romerriget. Man hører det på sproget. Jeg har lige lært mig selv at tælle til hundrede på rumænsk, og det er stort set som at tælle på romersk-italiensk: Unu, doi, trei, patru (som quattro), cinci, sase (som sei/sextus), osv... Man kan næsten læse indskrifter på mure og bygninger og vejskilte. Endelser på ord er 'ul' og ikke 'o', en sø hedder lagul og ikke lago. En drage hedder dracul.
Så rumænerne er ikke tilbøjelige til at holde med russerne, når disse nu bliver angrebet af NATO, Pentagon og EU. De er blevet medlem af EU og er foreløbig glade for det. Foreløbig. De har endnu ikke oplevet, hvordan EU først giver med den ene hånd og dernæst tager alt og meget mere med den anden, for turen er ikke kommet til dem endnu. De lukker sig om sig selv for tiden. De burde ellers vide det, for deres nabo mod syd er Grækenland, og deres grænse ved Sortehavet er Ukraine, begge lande, der har oplevet og oplever EU's og de globale centralbanksystems finansterrorisme.
EU-strategien har i en periode været at støtte fx. landbrug og industri i Sydeuropa, det var her, industrialisterne så den bilige arbejdskraft. Herefter kom udvidelsen mod øst, og så flyttede industrialisterne deres støtte hertil. Samtidig slagtede og plyndrede de Sydeuropa. Romtraktaten er ikke underskrevet i Rom for ingenting. På blankt papir i øvrigt, men det er en anden historie. Spanien har i dag en arbejdsløshed på 25% / ungdomsarbejdsløshed på 50%, og modstanden ulmer lige nu her. Rumænerne har ikke helt fulgt med i timen og har ladet sig narre ind i skemaet.
Rumænien er mest et landbrugsland og håber selvfølgelig på at nyde godt af EU-støtte til landbruget. De forstår ikke helt, at deres land ikke har den samme værdi for EU, som den fede, sorte jord i Ukraine, der sammen med dets andre rige ressourcer nu bliver angrebet og plyndret. Men land har de nok af. Når man kører i det møjsommelige tog fra Bucharest mod kystbyen Constanta ved Sortehavet og videre nordpå til Tulcea syd for Donaudeltaet, mit bestemmelsessted, så kører man gennem et landskab med endeløse marker. Facinerende på sin egen måde. Ikke som andre steder, fx. Danmark, hvor landskabet er underdelt af små frimærker, ikke engang som dansk herregårdsjord, hvor markerne strækker sig helt til nærmeste skovbryn. Markerne i Rumænien strækker sig, til du ikke kan se dem længere for horisonten uden et træ imellem! Dette var statsbrugene under kommunismen, og der var derfor hverken plads til eller brug for skel og opdeling. Mongolerne må have elsket Østrumænien, her var der plads til heste!
Du kan stadig møde bonden og hans hestevogn på landevejen. Middelalder og modernisme lever side om side.
Jeg indrømmer, at jeg ikke har rejst Rumænien tyndt. Næste gang vil jeg se de transylvanske bjerge. Til gengæld har jeg sejlet i det enorme floddelta fra Donau, europas største. Jeg har set 10 millioner åkander, hejrer, skarve og kæmpestore hvide pelikaner, der æder 15 kg fisk om dagen. Og jeg ved, at der lever en malle så stor, at den kan sluge en hund i én mundfuld. Jeg har spist en grillet luns fra dens lillebror.
Dette er ganske vist ikke en turistreklame, men du kan hyre en taxa for 100 lei, ca. 130 kr og køre 50 km. En 340 km taxatur fra Bucharest til Uzlina ville have kostet 600 lei, togturen kostede 68 lei. Du kan ikke komme fra København til Slagelse for en hund. Som dansker er man en velhaver i dette land. Og man møder stort set kun søde mennesker. En normal by-taxatur koster omkring 10 kr! Man er nærmest nødt til at give gode drikkepenge for ikke at blive lidt flov. Et måltid med flere retter og det hele koster max 80 lei i det hotte kvarter i Bucharest, den Gamle Bydel. Hvad de mangler i hyper-trendiness, har de i soliditet og tradition.
For Bucharest er hverken Berlin- og Paris-fancy, selvom der bestemt er gang i den visse steder. Men for 100 år siden blev byen stadig kaldt 'Lille Paris'. Ind imellem Ceaucescu-modernismens grimme hærgen finder man stadig det gamle Bucharest. Det kan virke forfaldent og misligholdt, som Prag og Budapest, før de kom til penge. Mellem de renoverede paladslignende bygninger tilhørende banker, regering og militær findes der et væld af små og store pragtfulde 1800-tals-bygninger med afskallede facader, brunt byfedt og rustne metalgitre. Der er en vis nostalgi og svunden storhed over gadebilledet, 3D-fotografier af det forgangne. Der er en rolig rytme. Forfaldsæstetik.
Grimheden er der også. Men tag som sammenligning en tur i dit eget hood og omegn og se, hvordan betonmodernismen har hærget her. Er der noget at prale af? Se de trøstesløse socialdemokratiske sociale boligbyggerier. Se de endeløse forstæder i København med lejekasserner på stribe. Se ødelæggelsen af landsbyerne og det udplanerede landskab. Se villa- og rækkehuskvartererne med deres røvsyge ligusterkonformitet. Høj levestandard kalder vi det, men i sit væsen fantasiløst. Hvis Ceaucescu havde været dansker, havde han sat det i gang. Danmark havde sine egne kultur-ceaucescuer. Jeg har svært ved at se den kvalitative og æstetiske forskel på det og det, som turister kalder for Ceaucescu-stilen og dansk standardiseringskultur. Skandinavien er lige nu ved at blive til det nye kollektivisteksperiment, det nye bløde internaliserede Sovjet starter her, og EU-SSR er dets onkel.
Rumænerne har oven i købet et kulturelt forspring fremfor danskerne: de er endnu ikke blevet historieløse.
Manden de kaldte vampyr
Det bør egentlig siges, at Ceaucescu turde gå imod Sovjetlinien i sin tid og rent faktisk protesterede mod invasionen i Tjekkoslovakiet og derfor nægtede at sende tropper til nedkæmpelsen af oprøret i 68. Det gjorde ham faktisk populær i Vesten. Ved et statsbesøg fik han oven i købet elefantordenen som en noget pinlig belønning for politisk korrekthed i den kolde krigs mentalforgiftede og sort-hvide æra. Pinligheden var helt på danskernes side. Var der noget med, at kongehuset aldrig måtte bedrive politik?
Dengang var rumænerne lykkelige over at slippe for 42 års knugende kommunistregime, det hemmelige perfide politi Securitate, den russiske tilstedeværelse, det paranoide og repressive regime. 25 år efter forlyder det besynderlige dog, at 60% af alle rumænere ville stemme for Ceaucescu, hvis han stod op fra graven og stillede op til valg. Besynderligt? Vi så faktisk det samme med russerne efter murens fald. Der var en hel bølge at Stalin-revivalisme. Vi så det i Østtyskland. Folk længtes tilbage efter sikkerheden i det kollektiviserede samfund, hvor ingen var rigtig arbejdsløse. Andre blev dog desillusionerede over, at det Vesten, de havde idoliseret og længtes efter, nu viste sig at have sine, skal vi sige: bagsider. Kapitalismen var ikke paradis på jord. Illusion i øst, illusion i vest.
Rumænerne er lige nu noget splittede over, hvordan de skal tænke om det, der sker lige nu i Ukraine. Deres gamle had til russerne fra kommunisttiden sidder stadig i dem. Ceaucescus afstandstagen til russerne kan forklare noget. Rumænerne er heller ikke russere, de er ikke engang slavere. De er snarere romere. Eller rettere: de er en gammel kultur, der på et tidspunkt blev okkuperet af Romerriget. Man hører det på sproget. Jeg har lige lært mig selv at tælle til hundrede på rumænsk, og det er stort set som at tælle på romersk-italiensk: Unu, doi, trei, patru (som quattro), cinci, sase (som sei/sextus), osv... Man kan næsten læse indskrifter på mure og bygninger og vejskilte. Endelser på ord er 'ul' og ikke 'o', en sø hedder lagul og ikke lago. En drage hedder dracul.
Så rumænerne er ikke tilbøjelige til at holde med russerne, når disse nu bliver angrebet af NATO, Pentagon og EU. De er blevet medlem af EU og er foreløbig glade for det. Foreløbig. De har endnu ikke oplevet, hvordan EU først giver med den ene hånd og dernæst tager alt og meget mere med den anden, for turen er ikke kommet til dem endnu. De lukker sig om sig selv for tiden. De burde ellers vide det, for deres nabo mod syd er Grækenland, og deres grænse ved Sortehavet er Ukraine, begge lande, der har oplevet og oplever EU's og de globale centralbanksystems finansterrorisme.
EU-strategien har i en periode været at støtte fx. landbrug og industri i Sydeuropa, det var her, industrialisterne så den bilige arbejdskraft. Herefter kom udvidelsen mod øst, og så flyttede industrialisterne deres støtte hertil. Samtidig slagtede og plyndrede de Sydeuropa. Romtraktaten er ikke underskrevet i Rom for ingenting. På blankt papir i øvrigt, men det er en anden historie. Spanien har i dag en arbejdsløshed på 25% / ungdomsarbejdsløshed på 50%, og modstanden ulmer lige nu her. Rumænerne har ikke helt fulgt med i timen og har ladet sig narre ind i skemaet.
Rumænien er mest et landbrugsland og håber selvfølgelig på at nyde godt af EU-støtte til landbruget. De forstår ikke helt, at deres land ikke har den samme værdi for EU, som den fede, sorte jord i Ukraine, der sammen med dets andre rige ressourcer nu bliver angrebet og plyndret. Men land har de nok af. Når man kører i det møjsommelige tog fra Bucharest mod kystbyen Constanta ved Sortehavet og videre nordpå til Tulcea syd for Donaudeltaet, mit bestemmelsessted, så kører man gennem et landskab med endeløse marker. Facinerende på sin egen måde. Ikke som andre steder, fx. Danmark, hvor landskabet er underdelt af små frimærker, ikke engang som dansk herregårdsjord, hvor markerne strækker sig helt til nærmeste skovbryn. Markerne i Rumænien strækker sig, til du ikke kan se dem længere for horisonten uden et træ imellem! Dette var statsbrugene under kommunismen, og der var derfor hverken plads til eller brug for skel og opdeling. Mongolerne må have elsket Østrumænien, her var der plads til heste!Du kan stadig møde bonden og hans hestevogn på landevejen. Middelalder og modernisme lever side om side. Jeg indrømmer, at jeg ikke har rejst Rumænien tyndt. Næste gang vil jeg se de transylvanske bjerge. Til gengæld har jeg sejlet i det enorme floddelta fra Donau, europas største. Jeg har set 10 millioner åkander, hejrer, skarve og kæmpestore hvide pelikaner, der æder 15 kg fisk om dagen. Og jeg ved, at der lever en malle så stor, at den kan sluge en hund i én mundfuld. Jeg har spist en grillet luns fra dens lillebror.
Dette er ganske vist ikke en turistreklame, men du kan hyre en taxa for 100 lei, ca. 130 kr og køre 50 km. En 340 km taxatur fra Bucharest til Uzlina ville have kostet 600 lei, togturen kostede 68 lei. Du kan ikke komme fra København til Slagelse for en hund. Som dansker er man en velhaver i dette land. Og man møder stort set kun søde mennesker. En normal by-taxatur koster omkring 10 kr! Man er nærmest nødt til at give gode drikkepenge for ikke at blive lidt flov. Et måltid med flere retter og det hele koster max 80 lei i det hotte kvarter i Bucharest, den Gamle Bydel. Hvad de mangler i hyper-trendiness, har de i soliditet og tradition.
For Bucharest er hverken Berlin- og Paris-fancy, selvom der bestemt er gang i den visse steder. Men for 100 år siden blev byen stadig kaldt 'Lille Paris'. Ind imellem Ceaucescu-modernismens grimme hærgen finder man stadig det gamle Bucharest. Det kan virke forfaldent og misligholdt, som Prag og Budapest, før de kom til penge. Mellem de renoverede paladslignende bygninger tilhørende banker, regering og militær findes der et væld af små og store pragtfulde 1800-tals-bygninger med afskallede facader, brunt byfedt og rustne metalgitre. Der er en vis nostalgi og svunden storhed over gadebilledet, 3D-fotografier af det forgangne. Der er en rolig rytme. Forfaldsæstetik.
Grimheden er der også. Men tag som sammenligning en tur i dit eget hood og omegn og se, hvordan betonmodernismen har hærget her. Er der noget at prale af? Se de trøstesløse socialdemokratiske sociale boligbyggerier. Se de endeløse forstæder i København med lejekasserner på stribe. Se ødelæggelsen af landsbyerne og det udplanerede landskab. Se villa- og rækkehuskvartererne med deres røvsyge ligusterkonformitet. Høj levestandard kalder vi det, men i sit væsen fantasiløst. Hvis Ceaucescu havde været dansker, havde han sat det i gang. Danmark havde sine egne kultur-ceaucescuer. Jeg har svært ved at se den kvalitative og æstetiske forskel på det og det, som turister kalder for Ceaucescu-stilen og dansk standardiseringskultur. Skandinavien er lige nu ved at blive til det nye kollektivisteksperiment, det nye bløde internaliserede Sovjet starter her, og EU-SSR er dets onkel.
Rumænerne har oven i købet et kulturelt forspring fremfor danskerne: de er endnu ikke blevet historieløse.
Manden de kaldte vampyr
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| Kælderen under det gamle fyrstepalads |
Hoveder på pæle, krigens grimhed og rædsel. Som regel ganske ukendt af dem, der bestiller arbejdet. Tag og send en stak danske ministre på turisttur til en libyske ørken, til Felluja-provinsen i Irak, til Afghanistan, til Homs i Syrien. Giv dem en hyggelig rundtur i Ukraine, så de kan se, hvad deres tåbelige beslutninger har affødt af elendighed og folkemord, og hvilke perfide slyngler de danske skatteydere betaler penge til. Lad dem opleve på egen krop, hvad de i deres korrupte, embecile bekvemmelighed har været med til at beslutte på danskernes bekostning. Og lad danskerne vide nøjagtig, hvad der forgår, så de kan forstå, at de er fuldt medskyldige, så længe de ikke siger fra.
Så han var altså ingen flink fyr, mr. Dracul. Men vi må også forstå, at var en helteskikkelse hos flere folkeslag i sin tid og langt ind i eftertiden. Både grækerne og ungarerne har, om man så må sige, en vis forståelse for hans bedrifter. Det var ingen bagatel som lokal fyrste at sætte sig op mod datidens førende Imperium og oven i købet med succes. Senere blev han bagstukket af sin egen bror, Radu den Smukke, der som en anden prins John i røverhistorien om Robin Hood havde lavet en deal med tyrkerne og blev en ny boyar, en usurpator.
Vlad søgte hjælp hos Matthias Corvinus, den ungarske konge og tidligere allierede. I sted for hjælp fik han 12 år i ungarsk fængsel. Ikke så meget fordi ungarerne var hans fjender, men fordi også Pavemagten var begyndt at frygte hans effektivitet og foragt for Imperier, og fordi den ungarske konge efter egne krige ikke havde råd til at sætte sig op mod dem. Så han lavede en lokumsaftale med katolikkerne for at formilde dem, da Vlad søgte tilflugt. Efter fængslet blev Vlad frigivet og gjorde et kortvarigt comeback. Han døde i december 1476, 45 år gammel, på et togt et uvist sted i Sydrumænien eller Bulgarien, og hans gravsted er i dag ukendt.
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| Halvt i skygge, halvt i lys |
I dag kan vi se en buste af denne grumme men facinerende skikkelse ved ruinerne af fyrstepaladset. Bemærk det flot svungne overskæg. Hugtænderne overlader vi til Bram Stoker og Bela Lugosi, der spillede vampyren i filmatiseringen fra 1931. 'Hai hamm Drac-culaa. Vell-camm...' (teatralsk ungarsk-transylvansk accent med let læspende savlen).
[læs resten i den engelske udvidede version]
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