FANGS, BUT NO THANKS
Jessica Douglas-Home on a proposal to
vandalise an ancient Romanian town by building a Dracula theme park
THE beautiful mediaeval Transylvanian town of Sighisoara is under threat — not from war or natural disaster, but from an unseemly rush to build a Dracula theme park half a mile from the town.
The Romanian tourism minister. Agathon Dan, announced his 'Vampire Project' in the summer of 2001. A few months later, plans had been drawn up for a 'Horror Castle', electronically wired for spooky effects; restaurants serving brains and blood-red candy-floss; a Vampire rollercoaster; a semi-academic 'Insititute for Vampirology' and a replica of the torture chamber where Count Dracula's real-life Vlad Tepes, once 'skinned, boiled, burned, fried, buried alive, blinded, impaled, strangled and cut off the noses, ears and genitalia' of his enemies.
In October, armed with a glossy black-andblood-coloured 31-page feasibility study. Mr Dan set out to woo Western financiers and tour operators. The trip did not go well. The authors of the study seemed unable to add up their columns of figures accurately. Their projections and business assumptions were unsubstantiated and implausible. The $28 million per annum revenue forecast was based on the assumption that 75 per cent of visitors. spending $25 per trip and many of them coming two to three times a year, would live within 50 miles of Sighisoara. But these are desperately poor people, with an average monthly wage of $80 for those who can find work. From the standpoint of an international investor, Dracula Park was clearly a non-starter.
As for the tour operators, the 100 or so who turned up at Earls Court on 13 November for Mr Dan's press conference were uniformly negative. What the country needed, they said, was not a package-tour attraction in a remote area lacking tourist amenities, but investment in transport. hotels and restaurants.
Why reduce the area to an object of mockery? Why not spend the $2 million allocated to building a fake 15th-century castle on restoring one of the many magnificent local ruins? No doubt there was a market for popular kitsch, but at least let it be somewhere accessible to the public. Transylvania has a uniquely romantic and unspoilt heritage, which with careful nurturing could form the basis of a successful cultural tourism industry.
Mr Dan's failed European expedition did nothing to cool his zeal. Returning to Bucharest, he spoke of his 'successful reception' abroad. In Sighisoara he organised 2,500 signatories into a pro-Dracula front and arranged a town-hall celebration, promising 3,000 new jobs on the back of international investment and an influx of foreign tourists. In a scene reminiscent of the Ceausescu era, and with the obvious aim of overawing the town's brave little protest group, a crowd 'spontaneously' appeared from the local factory carrying banners proclaiming Mr Dan a hero. To general bafflement, an Orthodox priest was wheeled in to read the Lord's Prayer. Mr Dan reassured his audience that he had satisfied 'concerned bodies' abroad; an impressive list of international VIPs would be invited to the inauguration.
The gap between propaganda and reality remained as wide as ever. A local study, signed by the Dracula Park architect, Dan Covali, had already concluded that 300 new jobs would be created at best. As for Western investment. Bucharest Business Week telephoned a number of prospective participants named by the tourism ministry and found that many of the companies had not even heard of the project. Not one expressed any interest in investing. Even the ministry's geography was bogus. Its claim that the Dracula site is four miles from Sighisoara, and therefore poses no threat, turned out to be based on a circuitous road route. In fact, the site overlooks the town. The proposed cable-car, linking it to the magnificent citadel, will have only about half a mile to run.
In a country where trust is in short sup ply, rumour has it that certain newspaper proprietors have been offered land next to Dracula Park. If true, this might explain the surprisingly uncritical domestic reporting of the scheme. A year ago, when the electorate returned many of Ceausescu's old guard to power, it was widely hoped that they had changed with the times. But the Dracula fiasco has exposed an all-toofamiliar mindset. When Nicolae-Vlad Popa, the Liberal party senator from Brasov, had the temerity, on a popular television talk show, to suggest an alternative site, he was confronted by a ministry official, Marius Stoian, brandishing a supposedly incriminating Securitate file in his face and threatening him with investigation by the internal security services. Mr Popa has now started a civil suit to clear his name. Others who have voiced opposition have reported anonymous telephone calls threatening their children. Meanwhile, according to the newspaper Ziva de Ardeal, the Romanian foreign intelligence service has been given the task of investigating Dracula's 'enemies abroad'.
A fortnight ago in Helsinki, after a description of the project was read out to a silent 300-strong audience, the world heritage committee of Unesco. the UN's cultural arm, expressed alarm. Sighisoara is one of its most precious protected sites. Why had the Romanian government flouted its treaty obligation to consult before proceeding this far? The Romanians were asked to put the exercise on hold and to consider other locations. Meanwhile a delegation was deputed to make an urgent investigation and produce a report by June 2002. Unesco's condemnation was, however, lost on Mr Covali, who attended the Helsinki meeting but felt able to announce on his return that all misunderstandings had been resolved and that the Romanian government had been congratulated on the scheme.
As if to drive home the government's contempt for international opinion, Dracula securities were immediately offered to the Romanian people. Television stations halted their afternoon programmes to announce that Mr Dan had invested one month's salary in the shares. Prime Minister Adrian Nastase was then filmed placing his own 120 million lei (L3,000) investment. Prefects and state employees were encouraged to buy as a matter of national pride. Advertisements ask, 'Do you want to become a Dracula billionaire?'
Although President Ion Iliescu still has it in his power to spare Sighisoara, Mr Dan has said publicly that 'only God can stop this project now'. The 400-year-old oak trees currently growing on the Dracula Park site are scheduled to be felled in March. A fortnight ago, protesters, led by the dentist Alexandru Gota, wound their way on a candlelit walk through deep snow from the forest up into the citadel. 'There is an English saying,' one of them, Ben Mehedin, told me. 'It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.'
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