Reading Fermor's wonderful Ruskinian prose takes time. In fact it is unfinished, which makes it much easier to read quickly. Then after his death in 2011 we were told that the final volume in his trilogy had almost been completed. A quarter of a century passed and I gave up hope that we would ever read his description of Bucharest, to set beside his description of Budapest. I remember that book’s publication well as I did not have the cash to buy a signed hardback copy in the shop near where I lived. ![]() Between the Woods and the Water, the second volume, came out in 1985 and describes his time in Hungary and Transylvania. In the 1970s the first volume of his trilogy describing his journey came out. Patrick Leigh Fermor set out, aged 18, in 1934 to walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. It reminds me too of why I am in South-Eastern Europe and how much I love Romania and Bucharest, because after 15 years here I still feel like a tourist. It reminds me of Aristotle's definition of happiness as bloom upon the cheek of youth. Reading Patrick Leigh Fermor's The Broken Road is like feeling a fresh spring breeze against my face.
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