Ares

(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

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

The space of Travel is – may be, also a mythical space. In the Archipelago, the sea is filled with mythological rumors. The Mountain, as a colossal genius of the Narrative, partakes in countless secret stories (A. Russo). Arcana of the past, ruins are fragments which

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

Photographing is one of those imperatives that deeply strikes the traveler abroad. As it usually happens in these cases, the merchants don't miss this opportunity. Hence, an entire machinery was created to satisfy the tourists. With the corresponding foreign currency

excerptChicagoThe huge butcher's warehouses with their cattle enclosures lie on a surface of more than 160 hectares.  The number of cattle that are cut every year is 10 million, worth 250 million dollars. The meat thus obtained is used partly as food, partly as export

When I set out to New Zealand, I had a tape recorder and a tape with the bells from Putna monastery. And during the long flight, from Bucharest to Wellington – approximately 30 hours on the plane, plus two stopovers – I would listen to the bells from Putna and to the

You will be totally shocked! You will live a unique experience! You will have nothing to regret! Japan is not like other countries. These are not just some sentences whispered by friends or statements made by colleagues. They were my suppositions before leaving for Japan.

For centuries now, every once in three years, The Feast of Immortality – Kumbh Mela, takes place alternatively in four Indian centers : Allahabad and Hardwar (Uttar Pradesh state), Ujjain (Madhya Pradesh) and Nasik (Maharashtra). Descending from Vedic mythology, the feast

excerptI will never forget the nights spent with Bogdanof and Van Manen around Calcutta, in Serampore and Titagarh. Bogdanof, who had been the consul of the Tsarist Empire to Teheran and Kabul for ten years, was at the time my teacher of Persian. He had made friends with

C. H. R. – I was telling myself: how can a man like Mircea Eliade experience the diversity of idioms, cultures, fatherlands, abodes, countries? I begin to understand this now and yet would like to ask you how fatherland and the world interrelate in your inner self?M. E.