There’s a Dutch vibe to Cambridge that I rather like — but also a lingering Protestant Cromwellianism that I don’t. These two factors are not unconnected, and the highway that once was the North Sea is not so far away.

It is not a bad town. It’s like they took Oxford apart, put it back together again in not quite the same way, and added a lot of Regency infill. Oxford is more mediaeval, Georgian, and neo-mediaeval, whereas Cambridge is mediaeval, Tudor, and Regency.

The Cam is slower, quieter, and more peaceful than the Isis, which again gives it the quality of a Hollandic canal. I suspect the punting is better — or at least easier — here than at Oxford.

And of course it is rather more spacious than Oxford, which is hemmed in by geography in a way that Cambridge isn’t.

But it is also eerily quieter. A smart restaurant on a Thursday night was dead by half ten, and the staff refused our plaintive request for a second round of Tokay. (Protestantism.)

SIBIU’s name comes from a Bulgar-Turkic root word meaning “rejoice”, and having spent a few days in the city I can see why. It is handsome, clean, and clearly well looked after — perhaps well loved is the better term.

Unsurprisingly, the mayor partly responsible for this state of affairs was much vaunted for his efforts, to the extent that the Romanians elected him president of the entire country (and this despite him being an ethnic German).

As in all of Transylvania, there is a long history of mixture here, and while the past hundred years have seen a massive collapse in the Hungarian, German, and Jewish populations, many of them persevere all the same, sometimes even flourishing.

Hungarians are the largest and most visible minority in Transylvania — once the dominant people of this province of the Crown of St Stephen — but here in Sibiu they play second-fiddle to the Germans.

Arriving in the Church of the Holy Trinity in the great square for the Hungarian Mass on Sunday, the congregation at the Mass in German preceding it was still filtering away and clearly is the main event of the parish.

The Germans — or Saxons as they are often known — are today under two per cent of the city’s population but, as elsewhere, the Teutonic reputation for competence and efficiency means that a great many ethnic Romanians vote for the Germans’ party, the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania.

When mayor Klaus Iohannis was elected to the Romanian presidency, he was succeeded as mayor by another member of the German community, the rather elegant Astrid Fodor.

But what of the ethnic Romanians that today make up ninety-five per cent of Sibiu’s townfolk? They are anything but ethnic chauvinists, and seem keen to preserve the traditions of the city and the province, and especially to highlight Sibiu’s distinctiveness. Those I had the pleasure of interacting with were effortlessly warm, courteous, and inviting. Their language is alluringly if mistakenly familiar.

Curiously, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg maintains a consulate here in Sibiu / Hermannstadt with the ostensible excuse that the former German dialect of the town is a close relative of Luxemburgish. The connection bore fruit when Sibiu and Luxembourg City shared the honour of being European City of Culture in 2007.

It was around that time that Forbes magazine rated Sibiu as the seventh most idyllic place to live in Europe — ahead of Rome and just behind Budapest. While such ratings are always arbitrary, I can’t help but share their desire to praise this felicitous city. (more…)

One of the finest cities I have had the privilege of visiting, only lightly touched by the grim hand of modernism.

All in all, a rather amusing year I thought. In 2015 there were a lot of jaunts to the continent, but 2016 — in true Brexit fashion — was the year of the domestic excursion (or ‘staycation’ if you’re a modern person). I also, through great cunning, managed to get to the theatre fairly often and even a jaunt or two to the opera.

Here are a few photos from the twelve months just past us, in no particular order. (more…)

THE HOLY VALLEY cuts down like a gash in the earth, with the cathedral city of Bcharré on the clifftop, almost hanging off of it. One almost wonders if you started building at the other end of the town, it might force St Seba’s Cathedral off over into the deep beyond. There is something almost Lord of the Rings about the setting, a Levantine Minas Tirith, if only Tolkein had been a Maronite.

The Qadisha Valley (Ouadi Qadisha, وادي قاديشا, literally the “Holy Valley”) takes its name from the Aramaic word for saintly and for over a millennium its natural caves have provided shelter for hermits seeking solitude as well as others seeking refuge and safety. Evidence of human habitation dates back to the Paleolithic era, and the Qannubin Monastery here is said to have been founded by the Emperor Theodosius the Great in the fourth century. While this is the holiest ground of the Maronite Catholics, hermits living in these caves and in these monasteries have been Melchite, Nestorian, Armenian, Syrian Orthodox, and Ethiopian. When the Monastery of St Maron was sacked by Antiochene Monophysites, many monks fled to the Qadisha Valley, strengthening the presence of this Eastern church which has always remained in communion with Rome. For over five hundred years, the Maronite patriarch made Deir Qannubin his seat. (Since 1830 the Patriarchate has been based at Bkerké above the pleasant Mediterranean city of Jounieh). (more…)

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