Patrick Leigh Fermor

A couple of years ago, my father recommended me a book called A Time of Gifts By Patrick Leigh Fermor. The book chronicles the beginning of Fermor’s travels from England across Europe to Istanbul, ending at the border between Romania and Yugoslavia. I was a bit skeptical at first, as the other books of adventure which I read are more wilderness or survival experiences, such as Joshua Slocum’s circumnavigation of the globe, or Colin Angus’ source-to-sea descent of the Yenisey River. I didn’t really think that a walk from town to town across Europe would be nearly as interesting.

Of course, the circumstances help to make the trip more than a simple trip on foot across Europe. The setting is 1933, meaning that we’re seeing different countries in Europe as they were right before World War 2, when many of these places were changed forever. Obviously, Germany was in a state of rapid change, but in other places farther East, Fermor also delivers a snapshot of the lives of aristocrats in countries where aristocrats were completely dispossessed during, and especially after the war. Many of the people that Fermor met and stayed with along the way were persecuted because of their status as wealthy elites. This gives Fermor’s writings a historical value that isn’t found in most travel journals.

Two further books concerning this trip were published after A Time of Gifts: Between the Woods and Water and The Broken Road. The final book in the trilogy was started by Fermor, but only finished by others using his notes. In these works, Fermor finishes his trip to Istanbul, passing through Yugoslavia, then back to Romania, Bulgaria, and finally into Turkey. He spends a lot of time in these countries, and there is a detailed look at the lifestyles of people whose lives were to change forever during the war. Many of them died.

The most obvious link between all the subjects in these travel writings is Fermor’s intelligence. He was just 18 years old when he began his journey to walk across Europe alone. Yet he was very adept at picking up languages, becoming fluent in German, and always picking up enough of each local language to get by. He studied hard during his nights and extended stays, and showed through his writing his wide range of literary knowledge at a young age. This was the main factor that set these books apart as more interesting than typical travel writings.

The languages also show a time when the aristocrats of Eastern Europe were still clinging to a sort of nobility status, in which they all spoke French and often German, and lived lifestyles reminiscent of royalist societies. On the other hand, the lower classes included many communities of more isolated ethnic groups which spoke minority languages. I suspect that with the aftermath of the war and modernization that these communities have mostly dissappeared.

Having just finished the third and final book in this travel trilogy, I can definitely recommend it. It has value simply in the adventure of traveling on foot and seeing many different places. More significantly, it depicts adventure from a time period before the modern era as we know it, which is a type of adventure that we don’t get to see very often. The intelligence of Fermor and his incredible memory of the trip brings a bygone era to life.