Tag Archives: travel book

Roumanian Journey

It always amazes me how little we “Westerners” usually know about the culture and the history of South-Eastern Europe. And I am saying this even after sixteen years of Balkan experience.

It is therefore always a pleasure to read well-written travel accounts by authors that have the necessary curiosity, education and ability to transfer their knowledge to us readers. A good example is Roumanian Journey by Sacheverell Sitwell (the younger brother of Edith Sitwell, and an early member in Sir Oswald Mosley’s New Party before Mosley turned it into a fascist movement.).

The court ceremonial that Sitwell is describing is truly strange:

„As late as 1818, there is an account by an English traveller of an audience with the reigning prince, at Bucharest, in which he is described as being carried into the room, in the old traditional manner, supported by the arm of a servant under each of his shoulders, as though he were too important a personage to walk. These were the manners and customs of the old Turkish court, or even of the Court of Pekin. It was remarked, too, that the Phanariot princes had no standing army. This was not allowed them. Their state consisted in a multiplicity of servants, and in a few heyducks or Albanians gorgeously arrayed. I am even told, by Prince Matila Ghyka, that a Phanariot Prince, of the Mavrojeni family, made his official entry into Bucharest riding in a sledge drawn by a pair of stags with gilded antlers.”

A classical book – the first edition appeared in 1938 – that belongs in each library of anyone with an interest in South-East European history and culture; and for readers of travel books as well. The edition I read has a foreword by Patrick Leigh Fermor, another expert on Romania. Travel literature at its best, until about ten pages to the end when the author is revealing his anti-Semitism.

If it was not for the more than doubtful remarks about the “Jewish problem” that made me cringe, this book would be one of the very best in this genre. As it is, it is still a great read – with the mentioned restriction.

Sacheverell Sitwell: Roumanian Journey, with an introduction by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Oxford University Press, Oxford New York 1992 

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-6. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

A Brazilian in Berlin

The political changes in Europe 1989/90 affected probably no other city more than Berlin. The divided city was not only re-united but became once again a magnet for writers, artists, and all kind of creative people. With them came the hipsters, this sort of people that is so difficult to categorize and for whom Berlin seems to be the place for a never-ending party.

In literary terms, Berlin is – like any other bigger city – the scenery for many novels and stories; it also seems to be a good inspirational place for autobiographical books with sketches or travel notes. Cees Nooteboom’s Berlin Notes or his Roads to Berlin are good examples, as well as Wladimir Kaminer’s Russian Disco, a bestseller with cult status in Germany (more than 1.3 million sold copies). 

When João Ubaldo Ribeiro, the most famous contemporary Brazilian novelist (I am talking about literature here, not drivel – which excludes Paulo Coelho of course), came to Berlin in the early 1990s with his family, he published during his one year as a guest of DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and after his return to Brazil a number of newspaper columns about his life and experience in Berlin which were later collected under the title A Brazilian in Berlin.

His adventurous travel to Berlin, experiences in supermarkets or on the street (the aggressive Berlin cyclists were probably never described more up-to-the-point), examples for the mentality of the Berliners, visits of classmates of the kids at home, the very different concept of the word “tomorrow” in Brazil and Germany, the phenomenon that he met a lot of Berliners but no Germans at all, the naked people in Halensee (Freikörperkultur or short FKK is a very serious German movement, and indeed there is probably no other country with fewer legal restrictions of public nudity than Germany), or the unexplicable habit of many Berliners to go to public readings – voluntarily! – all this and a few other experiences are subject of Ubaldo Ribeiro’s causeries.

Although all his texts breathe humour and mild (self-)irony, the author has also a sensorium for the more serious effects of re-unification: since he knows the city from visits before the re-unification, he feels a certain difference in the attitude of people to visitors. Since Berlin was overwhelmed by visitors (and migrants) in the years after the changes, he feels that people are more stressed, less polite. Something seems to have changed…well, Berlin has never been a place of particular politeness, and typical Berliners are famous for their rough wit and no-bullshit attitude.

The book is a very fast read and a suitable preparation when you go to visit Berlin or plan to live there for a while. It was the first book I read by this author and it made me read his more serious works such as Sargento Getulio. The only downside of the book reviewed here: it is not translated in English. 

Joao Joao2

 

João Ubaldo Ribeiro: Ein Brasilianer in Berlin, translated by Ray-Güde Mertin, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1994; Um Brasileiro em Berlim, Objetiva 1995 

Wladimir Kaminer: Russian Disco, translated by Michael Huise, Ebury Press, London 2002
Cees Nooteboom: Berliner Notizen, translated by Rosemarie Still, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1991
Cees Nooteboom: Roads to Berlin, translated by Laura Watkinson, MacLehose Press 2013

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-5. Unauthorized use and/or 
duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.