Count Dracula & Club Kristal

"This is thriller, thriller nights...."

SCARY. In all honesty, I don’t think I’ve ever been freaked out while out to eat, but I guess there’s a first for everything. At first, it seemed like we were going to have a normal dinner at the Count Dracula Club. Well, almost normal. I think we first noticed that something was up when some dishes on the menu were listed with very awkward descriptions that didn’t refer to any ingredients. The description of the meal Marc ordered, Renfields Dish, included something along the lines of Renfield being the Count’s slave and crying out “blood is the life” and how his eating habits included flies and rats. Marya and I stuck with dishes that actually had the word “chicken” in it just to be safe.

The fun began upon the departure of the table of 6 in the room next to ours. The lights started changing colors to an eerie blue and Halloween type sounds became our background music. We ordered our drinks and I almost fell out of my chair when our waiter came back and opened Marc’s beer with an overly loud popping noise. That’s when I decided it was time to switch seats. No way was I going to sit with my back facing the entrance so that anything or anyone could sneak up behind me.

All of a sudden, the lights go out and one candle on our table lit the entire room. Marc of course is trying to blow it out, while Marya and I are trying to protect the flame like it’s one of the most valuable things we own. Our waiter told us that Count Dracula himself would be visiting us in a bit. And visit us he did. A man fully cloaked in Dracula gear gave us his meant-to-be-scary spiel. Ok, so it was cheeseball, but it was still fun.

When it was time for our meals, the lights came back and all eyes were on the presentation of Marc’s dish. The opening of the lid revealed a chicken breast breaded and shaped like a rat. He was instructed to cut it in the center and sure enough some red looking juice came spilling out. Hilarious. My dish didn’t taste very good, but since the waiter could tell I hadn’t really enjoyed it, he gave me glass of some type of alcohol. Not sure what it was, but it was tasty. Maybe some kind of brandy? No idea. Well, that brought us to midnight so we decided to get a recommendation from the waiter for our next destination. He suggested Club Kristal so off to Kristal it was.

I always thought Europeans were good dancers, but wow, was I wrong. They dance like my Mom (no offense Mom). They just kind of stepped back and forth and made this push and pull motion with their hands curled into fists. Surprisingly, Marc does a pretty good impression of them. Who said white boys can’t dance? The house music was pretty good though, not really my scene but I couldn’t complain. I was in a club in Romania! The event was sponsored by Kent. We honestly had no idea what Kent was, until the ride home when our taxi driver (who by the way has been driving taxis for 60 years, and he’s probably not even 40 years old) explained that Kent was a brand of cigarettes and he was so surprised that we had never heard of them. He was yelling, “KENT, you know KENT, Tsigare!!” Do we even have Kent back in the states? Oh, I forgot to mention earlier, everyone in Romania smokes. Everyone. Packs are about a dollar. No wonder why they’re so freaking skinny; their metabolism must be through the roof. So anyway, that was Friday night, Saturday to come next.