Books about them to explain their past. Those books be due to other books. Often very obscure ones. We travel to learn and we can only learn by reading. The relationship between travel and good books is inextricable brian . Why a book about romania . Robert i have had a third of a century long obsession with romania because it is where essentially i started my professional life. Where i realized i was finally doing what i wanted. Brian 1973 . Robert my first visit was in 1973 as a backpack after college. I stayed in Youth Hostels from east germany down to bulgaria. Weaverey taught me reading that all these countries were the same. What i found in 1973 was at they were all extremely different from each other because even communism could not erase their ethnic histories, geographies, cultures. Really start not my session with romania. That happened later. It happened in 1981. In the fall. I was getting out of the Israeli Defense forces. I was in jerusalem. , a seeminglyk obscure book by