PDF Chipyong-ni by Office of the Chief Military History in History

Description

Andrzej Stasiuk is a restless and indefatigable traveler. His journeys take him from his native Poland to Slovakia; Hungary; Romania; Slovenia; Albania; Moldova; and Ukraine. By car; train; bus; ferry. To small towns and villages with unfamiliar-sounding yet strangely evocative names. “The heart of my Europe;” Stasiuk tells us; “beats in Sokolow; Podlaski; and in Husi; not in Vienna.” Where did Moldova end and Transylvania begin; he wonders as he is being driven at breakneck speed in an ancient Audi—loose wires hanging from the dashboard—by a driver in shorts and bare feet; a cross swinging on his chest. In Comrat; a funeral procession moves slowly down the main street; the open coffin on a pickup truck; an old woman dressed in black brushing away the flies above the face of the deceased. On to Soroca; a baroque-Byzantine-Tatar-Turkish encampment; to meet Gypsies. And all the way to Babadag; between the Baltic Coast and the Black Sea; where Stasiuk sees his first minaret; “simple and severe; a pencil pointed at the sky.” A brilliant tour of Europe’s dark underside—travel writing at its very best.