During my gap year, I plan to follow in the footsteps of the travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor and walk the some 2,500 miles from the Hook of Holland to the Golden Horn of Istanbul over the course of around five or six months. Following a similar course to the route that Leigh Fermor – always known as Paddy – took as an 18 year old in the 1930s, I will no doubt note the similarities and stark differences between two very different portraits of Europe – on the page, a Europe on the eve of war, and in person one in a hyper-interconnected global landscape.
However – more importantly – I will meet new people, see new places and explore unencumbered by the restraints of work and home.
It is here that I will write.
In the spirit of Paddy, my reflections have taken some time to set down. This section is long, both in coverage and text, and is perhaps best read in multiple sittings. For those who are still eager for a dénouement, fear not: I made it, and my writing will too.
In a small valley cut between two hills packed thickly with green trees, I sat ensconced in a wooden chair in the outdoor restaurant of my roadside motel. There, I supped on vegetable soup and “Transylvanian” Tochitură (a Romanian and Moldovan pork dish) with egg and polenta. As I waited to order, the man who had kindly given me a lift in his cart an hour earlier appeared. I translated the word...
We went south: through the freak downpours characteristic of mountainous regions, we sped along the newly completed motorway, skirting the western regions of Transylvania. Two hours later, we drew up by the site of the old Roman fort at Alba Iulia, a Transylvanian capital in days past. With the sun now back out in force, we strolled around the later-Hapsburg fortifications and restored old town...
Come the morning, I set off from my roadside hotel just over the border into Romania. It was raining fairly heavily, and I followed a rather token cycle lane just to the side of the main road, where a long line of lorries and trucks queued towards the border. The winds picked up and it soon began to lash it down — though I had dressed fairly appropriately for the weather, I was drenched in little...
I left town early the next morning. István had prepared me a dish of two fried eggs served with a hunk of brown bread and, on a side plate, a small, light green bell pepper that he had diced. Grateful, I ate this in his living room over a mug of coffee.
My eastern exodus from Budapest was not all that dissimilar to departing Bratislava, a few weeks prior, albeit on a grander, busier scale; the charming backstreets of the old town fell away to the city’s perimeter transport hubs, which soon gave way to clusters of commuting urban centres, complete with brightly coloured communist-era blocks lent new life by the parks, greenery, and the odd...
By pure happenstance, I arrived in Hungary on the eve of Easter weekend just as Paddy did 90 years ago. Dropping my gear off at the hotel, I headed into town to grab some pulled pork as my celebratory supper. (This was one of the many cravings of the trip thus far. Most of these were frankly ridiculous, such as fish and chips, or American diner food – both of which I was hardly accustomed to back...
In the small hours, I awoke in the middle of a wind storm: entirely predictable. I had tried my best to keep warm, dry and comfortable, readjusting my prone position on the small bench every 10 minutes or so. After only a few hours of restless sleep, the winds picked up, and I took shelter under the bench itself. I woke at 2:30am to howling winds. I was cold (due in part to sodden clothes) and...
It was a great pleasure to share the next couple of weeks of my trip with two close friends; first one and, soon after, a second appeared in the Austrian countryside. And together, we headed east, the pull of Vienna almost tangible. I felt somewhat proprietorial as I showed off the Danube’s glories, as we headed into the Wachau region: proud and curious.
On a bridge over the river Saalach I crossed into Austria. I stopped two elderly Austrian ladies in the middle of the bridge who were headed the opposite direction, and they very enthusiastically agreed to photograph the event. Having told them where I had started and where I was headed, they shook their heads in disbelief and began stopping other passersby, relaying the tale.