Between the Woods and the Water

Fülszöveg

On Foot to Constantinople:
The Middle Danube to the Iron Gates
Here is the impatiently awaited sequel to that very remarkable travel-autobiography, A Time of Gifts. With a borrowed rucksack and the lifeline of a pound a week Patrick Leigh Fermor set ofF in 1933 from the Hook of Holland to walk to Constantinople—a walk of a year and a half. Between the Woods and the Water continues the journey down the Danube from Budapest; on horseback across the Great Hungárián Plain, and over the Rumanian bordér into Transylvania, a wild and beautiful region of forests and mountains secluded from Western eyes during centuries of religious and national complexity.
Patrick Leigh Fermor planned to live 'like a tramp, a pilgrim or a wandering scholar', sleeping in work-houses, monasteries and barns. But a chance introduction in Bavaria led to a counterpointing of this rough curriculum with leisurely sojourns in castles: one night he would be kept awake by cattle, the next by the heavily... Tovább

Fülszöveg

On Foot to Constantinople:
The Middle Danube to the Iron Gates
Here is the impatiently awaited sequel to that very remarkable travel-autobiography, A Time of Gifts. With a borrowed rucksack and the lifeline of a pound a week Patrick Leigh Fermor set ofF in 1933 from the Hook of Holland to walk to Constantinople—a walk of a year and a half. Between the Woods and the Water continues the journey down the Danube from Budapest; on horseback across the Great Hungárián Plain, and over the Rumanian bordér into Transylvania, a wild and beautiful region of forests and mountains secluded from Western eyes during centuries of religious and national complexity.
Patrick Leigh Fermor planned to live 'like a tramp, a pilgrim or a wandering scholar', sleeping in work-houses, monasteries and barns. But a chance introduction in Bavaria led to a counterpointing of this rough curriculum with leisurely sojourns in castles: one night he would be kept awake by cattle, the next by the heavily embroidered coronets on the linen of a rococo four-poster; then back again to the husks of somé friendly swineherd. Yet the journey, with all its adventures, was more than a picaresque trail across Europe. It was a double exploration across a continent which was already showing ominous signs of the holocaust to come, and it provides a coherent understanding of the dramatic events in Middle Europe. The author's travels take him to remote castles, mountain villages, monasteries and towering ranges that are the haunt of bears, wolves and eagles, of Gypsies and a diversity of sects. The woods of the title are Transylvania itself, and the water is the Danube and its tributaries. This part of the journey ends at the Iron Gates, where the Balkans begin.
A further and final volume will take the author through the Balkan ranges followed by a northward sally to Wallachia in south-east Rumania, down the Black Sea coast to his final goal of Constantinople. Vissza