I started reading it recently, having spent years reading about how Van Helsing is annoying. So I was kind of surprised how I didn't find him annoying or hard to understand when I reached his part in the book.

The zookeeper on the other hand, I have no idea what that guy was talking about. It was like reading Aramaic translated into Latin, then translated into Jimmy Nail (a dialetic of Gordie, spoken by few, and understood by far less).