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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.

excerpt In 1846, M. Kogalniceanu travels to France and Spain (Notes sur l'Espagne). The recollection of Moldavia lingers with him at the opposite end of the continent. I have studied Spain a great deal, he writes to I. Ghica, a very curious country whose language,

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

I cannot think of a more fortunate coincidence: this is the first time I have visited Paris in May and the show is extraordinary. I know somebody who keeps a dried chestnut flower between the covers of a notebook, a flower that he has picked up from the sidewalk in Cluny

We are stepping in on a realm of legend. My reader undoubtedly knows the thrill of finding himself in places bearing a special aura. Something memorable has occurred there. Not necessarily a glorious, heroic deed, a moment of history, but an act of spirit (pardon my grandiloquence!)

Studium (…) qui ne veut pas dire, du moins tout de suite, mais l'application à une chose, le goût pour quelqu'un, une sorte d'investissement general, empresseé, certes, mais sans acuité particulière. C'est pas studium que je m'intéresse

It is an old spillover from the landscapes of the great Dutch masters, as depicted forever on canvas.  Holland by Mihail Sadoveanu (1880-1961)

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)

Relying on analogies, the memoirist sometimes builds his 'account' on an allegoric construct. The major allegoric theme of such itineraries, suffused with metaphors and symbols (ranging from the proud verticality of the mountain to the protean horizontality of

excerptFor various reasons, travel became a fashionable experience at the beginning of the 19th century all over the Europe. Even Spain, originally a destination country for foreign travelers, mainly from Britain, is invaded by the mania de viajar; the Spanish playwright

The 'Dinicu Golescu complex' and its fecund implications. Years later, in order to certify – and prove to himself – the loss of complexes by the Romanian traveler, Adrian Marino subtitles his 'anti-diary' European Notebooks (1976): Notes on My Travel

(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