Pita

* Algazy is a nice old man with a toothless smile, his beard shaven and silky, neatly laid out on a grill that is screwed under his chin and surrounded by barbed wire… Algazy does not speak any European languages… but if you wait for him first thing in the morning and

[1]Algazy is an old, loveable, toothless, smiling old man; his beard is shaven and silky, beautifully displayed on a grid, screwed up under his chin and enclosed with barbed wire… Algazy does not speak any European language… If you wait for him, however, at dawn, when

Sire,Dear Gentlemen and Ladies,The Somalis' Country, of which I have the honour of relating, stretches along the entire East Horn of Africa and is called Bar-as-Somal in the Somali language. The Somalis belong to the Mohammedan religion of the Shafi'ite sect and

The summon sounded imperative, I had positive interests, thank goodness – I was to receive by the hands of professor Cioranescu the second volume of his memoirs - this, as he had no intention of coming to the country this year – moreover, my curiosity was not inconsiderable.

Lisbon, a town whose name comes from the mythical traveler Ulysses – so they say – , illustrated in the Middle Ages by so many navigators and explorers curious and eager for adventure, shows to the visitor first its drowsy side. It is true that I first visited it on

excerpts30th September When I get on the tram, in Zurich, I cross myself. To whom? Not to the tram, of course, but to the Power that gave some people (engineers, technicians, workers) the ability to create such public means of transportation: and to others (the passengers)

(Constantin Golescu, Notes on My Travel, drawn up in 1824, 1825, 1826. Reprinted and accompanied by an introduction by Nerva Hodos, Bucharest, 1910)excerptsWhen today a Romanian travels in all European comfort, by railway; when he can, even without changing car, get to Paris

All roads to the West go through Vienna. Generous crossroads where the western world fuses with the horizons of eastern Europe and the Germanic spirit seems to have rich confluences with Latinity, the old Austrian metropolis still conveys the same charm that those claras

excerptThat afternoon we took a train to Constanta where, the same evening, we planned to embark on a Romanian ship bound to Constantinople. We arrived in Constanta late at night, so we didn't get to see any of the city or port. All I remember is the very agitated sea.

Chapter XLV – How to TravelTraveling is a spiritual need of everybody: our life actually ends with a trip that we are so sorry we have to take in mourning and without companions, leaving the body to which our soul, which is in fact ourselves, was so much connected. We

excerptsVienna, December 1838 Extra Hungariam non est vita, si est vita, non est ita.  Vienna and Bucharest! Oh, what a difference between these two cities! Like the sun and the planets is this Capital surrounded by adequate corollaries stretching to the margins of the

excerptsThe most dazzling phenomenon of the long Finnish winter night is the polar lights. The fantastical miracles that move profoundly the foreign traveler, they also impress the local people, who watch them in ecstasy like some genuine miracles of nature. The most impressive