The Day I met Dracula in Wettenberg

This is a hilarious story which is true as I experienced it first hand. Last March 2007, was the Worldwide Agent's meeting
for Weiss Technik distributors held every 2 years in Lindenstruth, Germany. As is commonly practised, all the agents will meet in Lindenstruth (near Frankfurt) at the Weiss headquarters factory to present their Sales Objectives,Assesment of Objectives as well as the principal will unveil the latest equipment, software and technologies.The duration is normally 6 days to 7 days with sightseeing and dinners thrown in to encourage bonding and friendship.

All 60 of us from all over the world, stayed at the neighbouring town of Wettenberg and commuted by bus to the factory.
Many of us renewed friendships and made new ones, and this time, I made friends from Romania,Hungary and Slovenia.Alex,
from Slovenia was the new agent for Weiss and I bumped into him while doing one early morning run in the neighbourhood and he was formely a Creative Director before starting to work for Amtest,a trading company.Alex is in the 2nd picture on the extreme left with long trenchcoat. We got along pretty well and had lots of drinks in the evenings.

One morning while checking the hotel guest list, I glanced at Alex's name and it was DRACULARIS or DRACULA for short.
I felt it inapporpriate to ask him about his history then,but managed to later in the week. Anyway, on Wednesday,after
a long day in the seminars and after dinner after much Lynnie and beer, we were all smashed drunk to say the least and
laughing, cursing and swearing at each other - you know how tipsy guys are. My friend Ian Firth from Australia,(he's on the left in the 1st picture) decided that to clear up our systems, we take a brisk walk at 12 midnight, up to the Schloss (castle) Wettenberg in the very cold evening with temperatures of 3 - 4 deg C.

So off we went, 3 blokes up to a castle,1 Singaporean,1 Australian and 1 Slovenian. In the middle of the night. It was
cold and we all had our extra thick jumpers on. I had my trenchcoat, as did Alex and Ian had only a pullover so he was shivering. We cut through the cabbage patch which was very dark and slippery. Alex was leading and with the wind
blowing at his trenchcoat, he looked kind of menacing....... No words were said as we were quite intent on our task.

I HAD to ask, at midnight, THE QUESTION : "Say Alex, what is your surname, I saw it just now ! "
He stopped, trenchcoat flying, " My Name is Dracula is, Alex Dracula !!!!"

There and then, Ian and me froze in our tracks, I poked Ian in the ribs and he was white as a ghost. Together , we walked and ran up to the safe sanctuary, the castle, at midnight.We had a drink at the Mexican bar near the top after our climb and laughed ourselves silly and traded our backgrounds. It was quite a story.