Ares

From The Balkans To Hong Kong And Back

Sometime in April the old and refined Victorianist Robert Langbaum came to Virginia in order to hold a conference at our university. Going out for a meal, I mentioned that I was going to spend a week in Hong Kong at the beginning of May for professional purposes. He answered

I Have Been To New China

excerptsAlthough if you observe it partially and with amusement the Chinese landscape may look like any other landscape, the fundamental impression is of being on another planet. The soil suggests here that the matter froze quickly while boiling and it stood still in dramatic

Three Centuries After Milescu

The parallel journals of two travelers, separated by more than three centuries, who crossed Asia from the west to the east, following the same route to the capital of China, offers us a human measure of the passage of time. Double photographs of the same places, even the

On Traveling And Hunting

excerptsThe greatest dream of my life, to see, with my very own eyes, the beauties and wonders of the tropical world, the hard nostalgia for those woods full of game from the Indian Archipelago, determined me to go on a hunting trip to Sumatra, together with my friend K.

Journey Around The Earth

You do not need a passport to travel to Egypt or to any other English colony. A visit card will do. In Alexandria, I made friends with the tropical flora: date trees that bear almost 100 kg of fruit each year, bananas or the cursed fruits because they grow without any effort

Preface To Extraordinary Travels, CD Press, 2001

excerptIn 1898, at the general assembly of the Romanian Geographic Society, its general secretary, George I. Lahovary, presenting a report on the activities performed the previous year, remarked that the Romanians had lately undertaken travels and even explorations of some

Delphi

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

Do Not Despise Children's Collections!

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

Aristide Caradja, Entomologist And Philosopher

Member of the Romanian Academy A Written Report at the Public Meeting on the 20th of April 1945 In every social group, may that be family, social class, nation, village, city, region, country, in every institution or social organization, an elite is automatically and spontaneously

Aristide Caradja, Princeps Biologorum Romaniae

I did not meet the great, indefatigable entomologist Aristide Caradja (1861-1955), but everything I have found out about him from firsthand sources has helped me understand he was a unique personality, an absolutely fascinating man. It is undoubtedly an indirect kind of

Constantin Pappia And His Library

The history of a country's libraries is made not only of facts and events related to large (or smaller) institutions, but also of phenomena that illustrate the taste for books and bibliophily of particular individuals, especially when such libraries come to be included

A Fragile Collection - The Memory Of Glass Plates

The Romanian Peasant's Museum Motto: A photo is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.  At the beginning of the 20th century, Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcaş1 was wandering around the villages of Oltenia and Bucovina, looking for folk art objects.