Albania

Foreword The few words that I put as motto at the beginning of this book can be translated like this: God must have had a hidden plan for this people that the western states rediscovered on the banks of the Danube and adopted like Pharaoh's daughter adopted Moses.

excerpt Romanians love entertainment but they equally like to laze around. When they don't have a rest, they spend their time having walks, going to the theatre, parties, visiting acquaintances and playing cards. French, German and Romanian performances lure people

excerptsTHE WATER PIXY. Representations. The Water Pixy and the Human Head. The Water Pixy's Wraith. Stories. The Water Pixy in Other CulturesAccording to Romanian popular beliefs in Bucovina, the Water Pixy is a tall, heavily- built woman, some say as tall as a camel,

FATE, RELIEF, GOOD FORTUNETHE PARCAEUrsitoarele (the Fates, the Parcae), also called ursitori, ursători, ursite, ursoi, ursoaice or ursoni, or Mire by the Macedo-Romanians, or albe, harasite, caşmete or hrioase by the Neo-Greeks and Bulgarians are known as three virgins

Emil Popescu was an architect. His specialty was the oil factories and we can say, without any exaggeration, that wherever in the country an oil factory had been built in the last five or six years, one could easily tell it was the work of architect Popescu's skilled

I. Even if you do not want me, I want you  Iacov Eraclid, nicknamed The Despot, had been killed by the mace of Stefan Tomsha, who was ruling the country now, but Alexandru Lapushneanu, after he had been defeated twice by the army of The Despot, fled to Constantinople and

I was born and I spent my childhood in the capital of the country that is called Romania, a state that at that time had prided itself for about a decade with the name of Greater Romania, which was a creation of the preceding generation, but also the outcome of a long series

* The boom of geographic discoveries and trading expeditions that began on the eve of the Renaissance and continued throughout that era developed a new taste for describing remote, if not downright imaginary, countries and peoples. Before being discovered, the savage was

When the Hungarians conquered Transylvania, several Romanian noblemen decided to adopt Hungarian language and culture, in order to get prominent positions in the establishment. The most famous is, of course, Hunyady János, called, in Romanian, Iancu de Hunedoara. He eventually

I think I would never have come to love Balkania so much, had I not met Marina Marinescu in Munich several years back. We had been acquainted since we met for the first time in Athens. Florin Marinescu, the specialist in Byzantine history to whom I was talking one day in

Lend us some cash, do, till pay-day, now how's one supposed to react to such an entreaty, and at such short notice, too?, one may have or not have the money, but when one has an equally hard time making ends meet, when the gap between the lustre of respectability and

excerpt The Old Geezer had come again to the shore of the Black Sea to buy himself an eye. The other reason was to spend a honeymoon here. As a rule, he would go back with an extra honeymoon and the same number of eyes. Five years before, appalled as he was by the fact