This trip could have been a nightmare, or he could have sketched it as one. He slept in barns covered in ice, had his belongings stolen, had to go door to door peddling his sketching hobby in order to feed himself, and again, need I say it, NAZIS. I mean, he tries his best to minimize the reality of it, but he walked across the north of Europe in the depression ridden 1930s in the depths of a horrible winter, where snow covered the otherwise picturesque scenery and where Hitler was in charge. Their minds are always working, and can always find something to think about, even at the most mediocre of tourist traps, even at the most average performance of the thousandth rendition of Pachabel’s Canon they’ve been forced to listen to.įermor is one of these people. You know those people who can make a thing, an occasion out of anything, out of doing errands if they must? It’s not just an Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (da da da dah dah da dah da!) thing, it’s a way of not letting a surface presentation of boring be the end of it. He represents something I've always envied. Yeah, the one making the embarrassing noises and eating ambrosia without a care in the world. Hailed as a masterpiece, A Time of Gifts is in part a coming-of-age memoir, but it is also a rich and compelling portrait of a continent that - despite its resplendent domes and monasteries, its great rivers and grand cities - was soon to be swept away by war, modernisation and profound social change.I’ll have whatever this guy is having.

Three decades later he wrote A Time of Gifts, the sparklingly original account of the first part of this youthful adventure, which took him through the Low Countries, up the Rhine, through Germany, down the Danube, through Austria and Czechoslovakia, and as far as Hungary.Īlone, carrying only a rucksack and with a small allowance of only a pound a week, Fermor had planned to sleep rough - to live 'like a tramp, a pilgrim, or a wandering scholar' - but a chance introduction in Bavaria led to comfortable stays in castles, and provided a glimpse of the old Europe of princes and peasants. In 1933, aged eighteen, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on his 'great trudge', a year-long journey by foot from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul.

Fermor a time of gifts