Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople from the Hook of Holland: The Middle Danube to the Iron Gates

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Release Date: December, 1986

Edition: Hardcover

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Evocative, erudite, enchanting travelogue

Fermor's second installment of his trilogy (I assume the third volume remains unfinished?) focuses on Hungary and Transylvania, and is an easier read than his first volume that described largely the German/Austrian stint of his long hike/hitchhike. I encountered fewer characters this time, due to his longer stays with people, and, as Fermor admits, he tended to keep to the company of the gentry more than the peasants and Gypsies he originally anticipated.

As in the first volume, vignettes stand out: he nevertheless manages to find a Gypsy encampment, Hasidim among lumberjacks deep in the Carpathians, a count who mutters in language out of Robbie Burns about his butterfly collection, and the romance with Angela, discreetly but poignantly narrated. My favorite scene is just before his great romance, when a briefer "roll in the hay" becomes exactly that in the company of Safta and Ileana.

Fermor's allusions to his later Crete exploits are tempting--I only wish he had had time to related these too in more detail. His comparisons to 1980s Europe and what transpired to some of his friends later on make for thoughtful and instructive entertainment--the mark of the best writing.

A crash course in eastern europe

Fermor traveled by foot from the Hook of Holland to Constantiople; this book is the second volume of his remembrances of that trip, starting off halfway through the journey at Budapest (where the previous volume, A Time of Gifts, left off). Oh, wait, I didn't mention that he made this trip in 1934 when he was 18. The book is an incredibly dense package of flora and fauna, history and action, characters and settings. For someone as unfamiliar as I about this area, it provided a crash course in providing for an understanding of the region.