Trafika Europe 8 - Romanian Holiday

The Phanariot Manuscript

through the most fragile part of their flesh, teaching them to enjoy the pains of passion and the poison of a sigh. But no matter the changes they go through, there is no one who can resist falling into a prolonged euphoria. In Bucharest there are no worries, nor any lengthy melancholia, which explains even the name of this happy town, like a bell in the winter snows 1 . TheGreeksofFener,knowing the way well, took out their gold from the cellars, from the foundations of their homes, from under heaps of old things and junk which covered theneighbourhood, trying to convince the Sultan to give them the throne of Bucharest for any 1 n.t. Bucuresti – from bucurie = joy

period of time, no matter how short. The fame of the city spread from one end of the Ottoman Empire to the other, so that there was not a single person who didn’t know that Bucharest was the city where dreams come true. In the coffee houses of Istanbul a true elitist trade developed because it was here that the most stylish merchants auctioned their goods, with greyhounds from Moldova, falcons from Bucharest and Wallachian children reaching very high prices.

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