PLURAL MAGAZINE

The moral picturesque is associated, in Dimitrie Ralet's Travel Souvenirs and Impressions from Romania, Bulgaria, Constantinople, 1858, with the ethnographic and lexical picturesque (He was a scrawny Turk, dressed in shalwar, jelek [vest] and kebe [cloak], with a raggedy

On this clear morning destined for the departure for Delphi I am unconsoled at having to leave Athens, where everything measures up to the artistic emotion. The distance between Athens and Delphi, on a well-kept road, is 243 kilometres. The itinerary includes a halt, around

excerpts We travel leisurely. The other passengers are discreet and nice. We cross a few borders almost without knowing it. After passing through Hungary without complications, we already believe in our lucky stars. Everyone's tongue loosens, recalling an episode of

*I intended to be concerned with literary form in this series of reportage. I can see I have done better than I expected. At the moment, my problem is preserving the chronological order of events. Our departure from Odessa was marked by a small, insignificant in fact, incident,

An open, communicative character, free from misanthropy and angst, the Romanian traveler has neither time nor penchants for hypochondria and self-analysis. by Florin Faifer

Whether the purpose is study, pilgrimage, or entertainment, traveling assumes a great thirst for knowledge and self-knowledge. Ioan Slavici believed that rambling builds one's character. No mean feat, I'd say: were it for this alone, it would still justify an

The sadness of the leaving trainIs something we have never felt,Although we often travel, For when we leave a station,We really stay –The train alone is leaving! The train alone is leaving,The train aloneIs carrying our silent restlessness,Our luggage-dreams,And thirst

My plan for this little article had already taken shape. After having read all the materials, learned quite a few things therefrom, enjoyed the erudition, remembered some of my friends' passion for rare watches, phone cards or antiques, or my own childhood stamp, coin,

excerpt A few essential socio-economic mutations have occurred in Romania in the last decade. Gaining individual freedom, in addition to the possibility of free economic initiative, briefly, the first steps towards a market economy, had as an immediate consequence the need

We are all collectors. Whether it is paintings, art objects, CDs, books, stamps, insects, pipes, watches, posters, napkins, match boxes, memories, connections and many other artful, useful or simply useless things, everybody has the instinct of gathering in a personal collection

Have you ever thought that no collection is being put together about us, the people of today, and that as a consequence we will not be represented in the museums of the future? Has anyone preserved samples of toilet paper of the last decade, has anyone deemed necessary to

It is so hard to put on paper relative memories about someone who used to be very close; you know the person so well that even his or her most characteristic features, be it even genius, appear as natural, and you take them for granted, without further research.  However,