Between the Woods and the Water [antikvár]

Introductory Letter to Xan Fielding Dear Xan, The first part of this narrative, A Time of Gifts, ended on a bridge over the Danube between Slovakia and Hungary, and as it must be unlucky to change in midstream, please let me begin the second part with a letter to you, as I did before. Nor will this be the last; there is one more book to come which will carry us to the end of the journey and beyond. I had set out from Holland in 1934 meaning to mix only with chance acquaintances and fellow-tramps, but almost imperceptibly by the time I got to Hungary and Transylvania I found myself having a much easier time of it than I had expected or planned: ambling along on borrowed horses, drifting from one country-house to another, often staying for weeks or even months under patient and perhaps long-suffering but always hospitable roofs. Many things made this part of the journey quite different from the rest. It was a season of great delight; all seemed immeasurably old and at the same time brand new and totally unknown and, thanks to my dawdling rate of progress and those long sojourns, lasting friendships sprang up. I suffered occasional pricks of conscience about straying so far from my original intentions, but when I look back now after putting these months together in writing, these twinges vanish. The next decade swept away this remote, country-dwelling world and this brings home to me how lucky I was to catch these long glimpses of it, even to share in it for a while. A subconscious wisdom might almost have been guiding this stretch of the journey and when it came to an end south of the Danube, it struck me, climbing through Balkan passes at my earlier brisk pace, how unusual were the regions I had just II