Between the 27th and the 31st of October 2012, AEGEE-Cluj-Napoca brought together 11 AEGEEans for a spooky, fun filled AGORA pre-event, and they all got to experience Halloween in the country of vampires, ghosts and gools – Transylvania.
“Halloween is coming. The streets are dark, the pubs turn into castles, and everything becomes creepy. All this happens all over the world, but how about spending Halloween in the land of Dracula? We’ll turn the darkest holiday in the calendar into the craziest adventure and face the famous and fierce Agora of Thrones with courage and high spirits!”
This was the text that attracted the 11 participants to spend five days in Cluj-Napoca and experience life in the heart of Transylvania. Karaoke night, city tour, guided visit of the oldest cemetery in the city, pub crawling, scary European Night and Dracula Party were only a few of the things on the schedule prepared for the event.
On the first day, the participants were greeted with warm welcomes and a funny welcome package. The organisers wanted everybody to feel the Halloween spirit right from the start, so besides the map of the city, the schedule of the event, and a badge, each participant received some scary eye-shaped candy and a clove of garlic, to protect them from the vampires of Transylvania.
By far, one of the most popular activities was the “Pumpkin carving workshop”, held right before the scary European Night. The organisers provided some nice and big pumpkins and some sharp knives, while the participants got to show their creativity. The first few cuts were the hardest, but the concentrated faces of the carvers were great material for some very funny pictures. Once the top of the pumpkin was off, people got more into it, and all sort of funny, scary, and happy faces appeared. By the end of the workshop, 15 Halloween pumpkins were proudly decorating the basement where the European Night took place.
Timely to the Halloween theme, we had the most amazing pumpkin carving workshop. Most of us had never carved 
pumpkins before and though it was a lot more demanding than one would think (raw strength was needed!) everyone got to express their creativity and the results were, well, not that scary, but definitely fun! (Heini Myllylä, AEGEE-Helsinki)
The evening started with all the participants presenting the products they brought from their countries. Dressed in scary costumes and in the light of our new decorations, we got to taste stroopwafels, salmiakki, pufuleţi, Italian wine, Turkish rakı, and much more.
The European Night had a special spooky Halloween theme. We decorated the cavernous basement of the hostel with pumpkins we had already carved in the afternoon, to make the setting as atmospheric as possible for the night. An old phonograph playing a record with live songs from The Beatles made everything even more perfect, as from the outside people could probably only hear the screams of the girls in the band’s audience, making it sound like people were being killed in the basement during the European Night. (Koen Berghuis, AEGEE-Utrecht)
The event ended with one last memorable party – Dracula Party. Everybody got dressed as well and as creative as they could and we all went out to celebrate Halloween one day earlier. The night continued with another fun karaoke contest in the club where we went dancing. In the early hours of the morning we went back to the hostel, only to find that we were not tired yet and that we still had so much more to talk about.
Halloween in Transylvania – the unique way to feel and enjoy it is AEGEE-
Cluj-Napoca: unforgettable memories, the best parties, rich and colourful cultural programme, everything that one participant could want was collected in one place… Big thanks to the organisers who changed the boring reality to a nice and funny Tim Burton movie. (Cafer Saatchi, AEGEE-Sofia)
The event came to an end too quickly and before we knew it, the participants and AEGEE Cluj-Napoca’s Agora delegation had to catch the bus to Budapest. With sleepy eyes and no mood to leave, bags were packed, goodbyes were said and people parted ways, until some other event would offer the chance of a reunion.
Fantastic event, it was so nice to meet old friends again (mostly AEGEE-Cluj-Napoca members) and make new ones. I learned that AEGEE-Cluj-Napoca has only got fantastic and charismatic members (I wonder if you hide the others in cellars or kick them out of your antenna…) and that Finnish people wake up in the middle of the night if you say words like “Beer!” or “ Vodka!”, as they seem to be the only people who play drinking games alone… Miss you all! (Thomas Müller, AEGEE- Konstanz)
Written by Sabina Guja, AEGEE-Cluj-Napoca
Photos by Sabina Guja, AEGEE-Cluj-Napoca, and Koen Berghuis, AEGEE-Utrecht