Last week I asked for recommendations for must-reads on Romania on my Facebook page, and to my utter and pleasant surprise I got about fifteen people replying within the span of half an hour. All with great suggestions that made me expand both the Further Reading appendix to my guidebook (pub date Feb 2020) and my personal to-read list. What was more, two of these wonderful commenters, Ghent-based, suggested I could borrow some of their books. I thought I’d have to probably message them so that it would actually happen, but no: again to my surprise my boss pressed a book into my hands at work on Tuesday morning. ‘Someone dropped this off for you yesterday,’ he said, as I joyfully cradled Never Mind the Balkans: Here’s Romania by Mike Ormsby. I browsed through the pages and found a postcard from Tatiana, wishing me a pleasant read and with her number on it for when I was finished. No need to tell you this was a very good start to my day. I miss Romania awfully – autumn looks and feels quite forbidding here in Belgium and it inspires a sense of dread in the pit of my stomach. Whereas I know I could be roaming the mountains and feel perfectly blissful despite, or perhaps even because of, the season. So, suddenly getting surrounded with local Romanian love is the best thing that could happen to me right now.
more “Romania is here (even when I’m not there)” …
