My ex is close to reclaiming a gorgeous piece of property in Yugoslavia (bah, Croatia) on a beautiful island on the Dalmatian Coast. Decades after her family escaped from the communists with literally nothing but the clothes on their backs and a few small possessions, she and her sisters are about to regain some of the most beautiful oceanfront property in the Adriatic you can imagine.

Never give up the fight.

What was the Romanian government officials' name?

Intergalactice War Bush's Fault: http://news.yahoo.com/s/prweb/20051124/bs_prweb/prweb314382_1

I jsut wonder if it involves Xenu...

That'd be a creepy piece of property to live on, imagine gardening and hitting a skeleton/pike.

Greg. I saw that one too.
President Bush: Is there anything he can't be blamed for?

JackStraw, that's awesome!

Wasn't Vlad's surname Dracul?

Renfield,

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_Tepes.

Basically, back then they didn't have surnames like we do now. His given name was Vladimir, like his father. He also had the epithets Tepes and Dracula.

Vlad Tepes (Tepes means Impaler) took the epithet "Dracula" because he was the son of Vlad II "Dracul". Dracul means "the dragon" and Dracula means "Son of the Dragon". Vlad earned his other epithet "Tepes" from his endearing habit of impaling his enemies on spikes all the time.

Holding the above facts in my brain probably means that something actually important has been kicked out due to lack of space.

Who says you can't learn anything on these blogs??

http://www.xs4all.nl/~kvenjb/madmonarchs/vladdracula/vladdracula_bio.htm

For some more, though some of it is disputed.

There should be a cedilla (the thingy one finds under the "C" in certain French words) under the "T" and "S" of "Tepes". The name/word is pronounced as "tsepesh" in Romanian. Properly (as per Wikipedia), he is Vlad III Dracula. His brother was Radu cel Frumos (Radu the Beautiful). Radu was the lover of the Ottoman Caliph Mehmed II ("Fatih Sultan Mehmed" in Turkish, "Fatih" comes from his Arabic nickname: "al-Fatih", the Conqueror, in reference to his conquest of Constantinople), the first Ottoman Emperor.

The Order of the Dragon (to which Vlad II and Vlad III belonged) was formed to save Christianity (i.e., Christian Europe) from Islam (i.e., the spreading Islamic Ottoman Empire/Caliphate).

In one sense, Vlad III Dracula T(s)epes(h) was a hero: he resiliently fought against the Ottomans, who were quite unabashed at spreading the caliphate by the sword. So much for the peaceful nature of Islam.

Back in the 90's I had a friend whose father was restituted the family castle in the Czech Republic. It was nothing fancy (it only had 1 tower), but after his father moved back to the castle, the local villagers began bringing their minor disputes to him for resolution. Before the communist era, the locals apparently were used to the man in the castle adjudicating their issues and simply reverted back to form once the castle was reoccupied.

Yes, old Vlad was a fire-spitting Dragon when it came to the Caliphate. I wish the Romanian troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan had the inspiration to call themselves "Dragons". Oh, well... "Scorpions" ain't that bad either.

Visitors to the main house, it has been said, may sometimes be regaled with fireside stories of some of the more memorable impaling. Specialists of the lost art would often stop, measure and prod, it would be recounted, lest a vital organ be nicked as the wood post was driven up through the body.

Later, a measure of pride could be taken in proportion to the number of days - and in rare cases weeks - that the victim would continue to live. To maximize the effect, post and body would be affixed to a bridge or building from which high point the screams could be heard for a not inconsiderable distance.

Hollywood’s fanciful “Dracula” aside and waterfalls notwithstanding, there would not be a day go by when this mind could not help but wander back to those foregone times of unimaginable cruelty.

For me, it would be like getting a deal on Auschwitz.

Thanks lauraw, my own personal cold war victory.

With readers like this, you never know where a thread is going to lead.

With readers like this, you never know where a thread is going to lead.

I'm sorry but you've mispelled "whackjobs".