Along the Enchanted Way

 

An Enchanting Read
   During a deep clean of the study I uncovered this book, stopped cleaning and starting reading it again. I liked it the first time and it remains good and I highly recommend it. I'll try to convince you that you will like it and, if you live close by, come and borrow it.
   If you would like to save time and get on with reading the book, note that it is described above as "captivating" by Partrick Leigh Fermor. That alone should be enough to convince you.
   The book is, however, about a very remote and rural part of Romania, so more convincing may be required. Here is a brief description typical of many that will be found and which relates to the northern region of Maramures in Transylvania: 
   On a green sward, on hills high above the valleys and the villages, I stayed the next night in a sheepfold. The shepherd spread out a blanket on the ground in an open-fronted hut made of hazel wands. What little heat there was , was provided by a fire which burned just inside the opening. Into my hands he placed a warm cup of ewe's milk. As I drank he went out and sat on a rock. Then he picked up a long metal horn, raised it to his lips and blew. The blast echoed round the hills about us. It was the first time I had ever seen a true shepherd's horn being used by a shepherd. I watched him as he sat absorbed in blowing out the plangent notes. When they were be themselves, he told me, up on the hills by the forest it was good to blow on the horn and the hear from far away another shepherd replying and not to feel alone. In front of us the mountains stretched into the distance and across the horizon. (pp.28-9).

   Blacker ends up staying for a very long period and for much of it lives in a small village in a very small house with Mihai who is pictured. 
   I realize that the passage and picture provided will not be enough for some of my readers who prefer more action. If you look more closely at the photo you will notice that Mihai is holding a tumbler of horincă, a type of brandy. 


   Things become more lively when it is consumed and gypsies are encountered and Natalia usually carries a knife.
  Marishka is her sister and Blacker has a relationship with both and a child with the latter. Things are much livelier in the household of the Hungarian patriarch, Atilla, than they are in the hut with Mihai. There is a lot of gypsy music and dancing in the dark forests for those of you who need more than descriptions of cows coming down from the mountains and peasants scything in the meadows.
   Along the Enchanted Way is a slow ramble in Romania that takes place after the Wall falls and the Ceaușescus are executed. Blacker enters a country that was "frozen in time" and wanders without a destination in mind. It is a lyrical idyll in a place that no longer exists as it was and I am sure you will enjoy it.

The Bonus: 
   Patrick Leigh Fermor walked across Europe in the 1930s when he was eighteen. If you enjoy great travel literature you will appreciate the two books about the trip he wrote years later: A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. I have both if you want to have a look. There is an active website devoted to him and if you visit it you can read the review he wrote of Blacker's book, which appeared originally in the Sunday Telegraph. Here is the link to the review from patrickleighfermor.org. 
   The title, Along the Enchanted Way is from a poem by Patrick Kavanagh:

On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;
I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.

  If you would prefer an account by a woman, written about the same time see, Transylvania and Beyond by Dervla Murphy. I also have a copy of that book and wrote about it in a piece titled, oddly enough, On Barfing. She died in 2022 and details are provided in this post: Dervla is Dead.

Dervla Is Dead

                                           Dervla Murphy (1931-2022)

   Pictured above are the two books that I have which are authored by Murphy. You can borrow them. I provide a list of all of her books at the bottom and if you enjoy travel literature, you will appreciate what she has produced. I have already written a bit about her, in the post "On Barfing." It is from an episode in Transylvania and Beyond where she finds herself high in the Bistrita Mountains among some hard-drinking loggers. That book begins, by the way, with Murphy having all her belongings stolen (by the customs officials), but she still decides to keep on going: 

    "At 3 a.m. warmed by hot liquid and kindness, I left the restaurant - feeling an overwhelming compulsion to walk and walk and walk, on and on and on, until bodily exhaustion exorcised emotional pain. Striding east out of Arad, through unlit canyons beyond gaunt rows of high-risery, it suddenly seemed that all of those could not be true, that I was about to wake up. In real life people don't set off in the middle of the night through freezing fog - hatless, ungloved and possessing only a bottle of whiskey - to explore an unknown and recently traumatized country. Until dawn, this strong sense of outrageous improbability persisted; without my gear, I felt as disorientated and vulnerable as an unshelled crustacean." 

   The country was Rumania after it  'opened' in 1989. Murphy was alone and she was almost 60 when this adventure was undertaken.

   Travelling is rather tough these days and none of us are as tough as Dervla Murphy. It is far easier to stay home and read the books of those who are more adventurous.  After the obituaries and Murphy's books you will find some additional books by other very adventurous women. 

Selected Obituaries (there are many):

"Dervla Murphy, Intrepid Author of Travel Books, Dies at 90: She Began Her Prodigious and Free-spirited Career With an Epic Solo Bicycle Journey in 1963 Across Europe to India, Jori Finkel, Washington Post, June 7, 2022.

"Dervla Murphy, an Irish travel writer who began her prodigious career with an epic solo bicycle journey in 1963 across Europe to India and went on to explore vast stretches of the developing world by foot — defying social expectations of women along the way — died on May 22 in her home in Lismore, Ireland. She was 90...."

At home in Lismore, where she lived in a warren of old stone rooms without central heat, she never learned to drive a car or use a computer. She avoided small talk and regularly declined book tours and interviews. “Interviewing Dervla is like trying to open an oyster with a wet bus ticket,” Jock Murray, her first publisher, once said.

She gave up basic comforts when she traveled, often sleeping in a tent and using latrines, and acknowledged being “impervious” to discomfort. “It literally doesn’t matter to me whether I’m sleeping on the floor or on a mattress,” she said in the documentary. “I simply don’t notice the difference. And that really is a big plus when you’re traveling.”

"Dervla Murphy, Irish Travel Writer Who Preferred Her Bike, Dies at 90: A Curious, Intrepid Loner, She Famously Went From Dunkirk Through Europe and Then to Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India — Mostly on Two Wheels" Richard Sandomir, New York Times, May 27, 2022

"She became a leading travel writer, a fearless and curious loner who filled her rucksack with pens, a notebook, a light but warm sleeping bag and a change of clothing. Traveling mainly by bicycle but also on foot, by mule and in Jeeps and buses, she spent months at a time in Ethiopia, Peru, Cuba, Israel, Gaza, Madagascar, Nepal, Tibet, Baltistan, South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Romania and Northern Ireland....

When a wolf in Bulgaria was about to attack her, she killed it with a pistol; in Turkey, she wrote, when a “scantily clad” Kurdish intruder bent over her in the moonlight in the hostel room where she was staying, she fired a warning shot into the ceiling and sent him fleeing.

But those experiences did not deter her.

“At times during these past weeks,” she wrote about Afghanistan in “Full Tilt,” “I felt so whole and so at peace that I was tempted seriously to consider settling in the Hindu Kush. Nothing is false there, for humans and animals and earth, intimately interdependent, partake together in the rhythmic cycle of nature. To lose one’s petty, sophisticated complexities in that world would be heaven — but impossible, because of the fundamental falsity involved in attempting to abandon our own unhappy heritage.”

"Travel Writer Who Famously Journeyed Alone From Her Native Ireland to India on a Bicycle, Armed With a Pistol and a Compass, " The Guardian , Veronica Horwell, May 26, 2022.

"Dervla Murphy: Irish Travel Writer Dies Aged 90," May 23, BBC.

"While known as Ireland's most famous travel writer, such a description barely captures the fullness and deep understanding captured in her work."

"Dervla Murphy, ‘Secular Saint’ of Travel Writing, Dies Aged 90: On Foot, Bicycle, Pony and Public Transport, Murphy Visited More Than 30 Countries," Sylvia Thompson, The Irish Times, May 23, 2022.

"A master of straight reportage, she became a hero among travel writers and enthralled readers with what travel writer, Colin Thubron described as her “unpretentious, shiningly honest and accessible” books marked by their “earthy humour and charm”....

In 1979, Murphy won the Christopher Ewart-Biggs memorial prize for A Place Apart: Northern Ireland in the 1970s (1978), written after time spent with members of the Protestant and Catholic communities there....

In 2019, the Royal Geographical Society celebrated her work with the Ness Award for the “popularisation of geography through travel literature”. In 2021, she won the prestigious Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing."

"Tributes to Trailblazing Travel Writer, Dervla Murphy, 90," Caroline Delaney, Irish Examiner, May 23, 2022. 

"Dervla Murphy died today. She took her first cycling holiday abroad when she was 20, travelling through Wales and the south of England. The following year she embarked on a five-week continental tour...."

“If your fearless, you don’t need courage." 

"Travel Writer Dervla Murphy, 1931-2022 - Obituary, Kat Hopps and James Murray, The Express, May 29, 2022.

"Asked once why she travelled so much, she said: “I need to get away from the artificial life of the West. When I set out on a journey, my spirits rise. I’m never lonely or frightened.”

"Dervla Murphy," The Sunday Times, May 29, 2022.

"Dervla left school at 14 and spent the next 16 years caring for her arthritic mother. Only when her mother died was she able to embark on the bicycle journey she'd been dreaming of since the age of ten. In 1963 she pedalled from Ireland to India, then wrote about it in her most famous and best loved book, Full Tilt...

In the world of travel writing Dervla was not just unique, she was off the spectrum. She never accepted a commission or advance because it was the travel that mattered, not the book. She wrote her manuscripts on a typewriter, never a computer. If forced to do a publicity tour she would reject the offer of free accommodation and find her own place where she would feel comfortable by being uncomfortable. She had a deeply ingrained dislike of the tourist industry, preferring to travel to the least hospitable corners of little-known countries at the least pleasant time of year to avoid the dreaded "tourists". In fact she revelled in hardship. A reviewer of Muddling Through in Madagascar remarked that her "appetite for discomfort verges on the gothic".

[Travelling now is even tough for us. We have to get through the airports.]

"Murphy Was Spared the Misery of Modern Travel," Brenda Power, The Sunday Times, May 29, 2022. 

"In the week of the travel writer's death at the age of 90, it's tempting to compare the obstacles she faced on trips around the globe with those that confront modern holiday-makers, both visiting and leaving this country. Murphy had little time for tourists, figuring that their trips were less about exploring a new destination than fleeing the mundanity of their own lives. In order to do even this, however, they now face challenges that make bandits and wolves sound like a walk in the park."

Books By Dervla Murphy

(The travel book publisher, ELAND, provides some of her books and a good profile.)
The bolded titles can be found in the Western Libraries.

A Month by the Sea: Encounters in Gaza, 2013, Eland

A Place Apart: Northern Ireland in the 1970s, 1978, John Murray

Between River and Sea: Encounters in Israel and Palestine, 2015, Eland

Cameroon with Egbert,1990, John Murray

Changing the Problem: Post-forum Reflections,1984, The Lilliput Press

Eight Feet in the Andes,1983, John Murray

Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle, 1965,John Murray

In Ethiopia with a Mule, 1968,John Murray

Ireland (text by Dervla Murphy and photography by Klaus Francke),1985,Orbis

The Island that Dared: Journeys in Cuba,2008, Eland

Muddling through in Madagascar, 1985,John Murray

One Foot in Laos, 1999, John Murray

On a Shoestring to Coorg: An Experience of South India, 1976, John Murray

Race to the Finish?: The Nuclear Stakes ,1982, John Murray

South from the Limpopo: Travels through South Africa,1997,John Murray

Tales from Two Cities: Travel of Another Sort, 1987, John Murray

One Foot in Laos, 1999, John Murray

Silverland: A Winter Journey Beyond the Urals, 2006, John Murray

Through Siberia by Accident: A Small Slice of Autobiography, 2005, John Murray

Through the Embers of Chaos: Balkan Journeys, 2002, John Murray

Tibetan Foothold, 1966, John Murray

Transylvania and Beyond,1992, John Murray

The Ukimwi Road: From Kenya to Zimbabwe,1993,John Murray 

Visiting Rwanda,1998, The Lilliput Press

The Waiting Land: A Spell in Nepal,1967, John Murray

Wheels Within Wheels: Autobiography, 1979, John Murray

Where the Indus Is Young: A Winter in Baltistan, 1977, John Murray

(The London Public Library has an audio version of Eight Feet in the Andes and a print copy of The Island That Dared… .)

The Bonus:

While reading the obituaries for Murphy, I remembered Mary Kingsley. Like Murphy, Kingsley was able to begin travelling and exploring only after the death of her parents, for whom she had to care. Her books are older and available to read for free. See, for example: Travels in West Africa and West African Studies. I have mentioned Kingsley before, in the post about "The Guinea Worm."

   For additional exciting travel books written by women see: "Travelling About."  In that post I mention the "Marlboro Travel Series", produced by Northwestern University Press. You will find seventeen more classic travel books by both women and men. I suppose that somewhere I could locate books written by those in other gender categories. Jan Morris came to mind, but she began as James and chose to make the journey from him to her. 

Travelling About

Adventurous Women

   In my recent post about Northwestern University Press's "Marlboro Travel Series" I noticed, when finishing it, that two of the works are by women: the ones by Freya Stark and Ella Maillart. Then I remembered Virago Press which began in the 1970s to publish works by interesting and adventurous women. At the risk of being accused of 'appropriation', I will say in my defence that I am trying only to achieve some balance and am promoting books by women. There is below even one by a Canadian woman.

   If you are interested in books for your club, or trying to lure your daughter or granddaughter away from a screen, check out the list below (trigger alert: some of these works might be too adventurous and scary for you sons or grandsons. Perhaps I should issue another one - some of these women might not pass muster when viewed through the very narrow 'post-colonial' lens.) 

   If you are not that interested, then simply purchase the abridged version noted above. But, if you are curious about such things as Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys, then peruse the list below. You will also benefit from my blurbs and see that one of the young women kept a snake in her hair and that Ms Birtles was a rather naughty girl.

   These books are all readily available and some can be read for free via the Internet (see, e.g. High Albania and Station Life in New Zealand where I have provided direct links.) The titles that are bolded are available close by at Western University.

A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Bird.
Bird flew around. Find her below in Persia, Japan and the Yangtze Valley.

China to Me by Emily Hahn
Got a degree in Mining Engineering at the U. of Wisconsin before leaving for Europe and hiking across Africa.

The Cruel Way by Ella Maillart (Below in Iran in 1939/1940)

Apart from travelling and writing, she competed in the 1924 Olympics (as a sailor) and was a skier as well as the captain of the Swiss field hockey team.

Death's Other Kingdom by Gamel Woolsey
Born on a South Carolina plantation, she died in Spain. See the very interesting Wiki entry for her.

The Desert and the Sown: The Syrian Adventures of the Female Lawrence of Arabia by Gertrude Bell.
Surely the most popular 'Gertrude' ever.

Farewell Spain by Kate O'Brien
"This distinctly personal elegy was written during the early days of the Spanish Civil War by a writer whose future was indelibly marked by a year of travelling in a unique and changing country. A series of reminiscences, impressions and vivid insights, Kate O'Brien's thoughtful journey offers something unique at every stage, and captures perfectly the spirit of a lost place and the experience of travel and memory."

The Gobi Desert by Mildred Cable.
Surely the most popular 'Mildred' and this book "may be the best of many good books about Central Asia and the old Silk Road through the deserts of Western China."

High Albania by M. E. Durham
This is the first sentence from the no nonsense Preface which is available here:
"IF a book cannot speak for itself, it is idle to speak for it. I will waste but few words on a Preface. In my two previous Balkan books I strove to give the national points of view, the aims and aspirations, the manners and customs, of the Serbs and of the mixed population of Macedonia. I would now do the same for the people of High Albania."

In The Vine Country by E. OE. Somerville.
"Somerville was a devoted sportswoman who, in 1903, had become master of the West Carbery Foxhounds." She is found again below in Connemara. See also: the Wiki entry for Somerville and Ross. 

Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan : Including a Summer in the Upper Karun Region and a Visit to the Nestorian Rayahs. Vols. I, II by Isabella L. Bird

Letters from Egypt by Lucie Duff Gordon
"By the age of 13 she was reading the "Odyssey" in the original. She also kept her pet snake twined into her plaited hair, and was thought to be "un peu unmanageable" by her mother and "a potential homicide" by a friend of the family."

The London Journal of Flora Tristan by Flora Tristan.
Peruvian born, Flora Tristan's life, works, and ideals have proved fruitful for the excavation of women's work through time. See Peregrinations below.

My Journey to Lhasa by Alexandra David-Néel.
This should be enough for some of you: She "was a Belgian–French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist, anarchist, opera singer, and writer."

North-west by North by Dora Birtles.
An Aussie and surely the most popular 'Birtles'. "She was ahead of her time in studying at the University of Sydney in a period when few women received a tertiary education. However, she was suspended in 1923 for a poem appearing in the literary magazine Hermes, which describes post-coital bliss. Her future husband, poet and journalist Bert Birtles, was expelled for a still more explicit poem describing their tryst on the roof of the university quadrangle."

The Passionate Nomad: The Diary of Isabelle Eberhardt by Isabelle Eberhardt.
"Eberhardt moved to Algeria in May 1897. She dressed as a man and converted to Islam, eventually adopting the name Si Mahmoud Saadi. Eberhardt's unorthodox behaviour made her an outcast among European settlers in Algeria and the French administration."

Peregrinations of a Pariah 1833-1834 by Flora Tristan
See "The Bonus" below.

Roughing it in the Bush by Susanna Moodie.
You will know enough about her, but probably not that she was born in Bungay which is in Suffolk.

Station Life in New Zealand by Lady Barker.
It begins at sea and here are the first few lines from Project Gutenberg:
Port Phillip Hotel, Melbourne. September 22d, 1865. .... Now I must give you an account of our voyage: it has been a very quick one for the immense distance traversed, sometimes under canvas, but generally steaming. We saw no land between the Lizard and Cape Otway light—that is, for fifty-seven days: and oh, the monotony of that time!—the monotony of it! Our decks were so crowded that we divided our walking hours, in order that each set of passengers might have space to move about....

Through Connemara in a Governess Cart by E. OE. Somerville

Travels in West Africa by Mary Kingsley. 1982.
I discovered this in the stacks years ago and enjoyed it. "The notable success of Travels in West Africa was due in no small part to the vigour and droll humour of writing, that, in the guise of a ripping yarn, never wavers from its true purpose – to complete the work her father had left undone."

Unbeaten Tracks in Japan by Isabella L. Bird

Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys: A Midsummer Ramble in the Dolomites by Amelia B. Edwards.
If, like me, you are untalented, this you will find irritating: "She published her first poem at the age of seven and her first story at the age of twelve....In addition, Edwards became an artist....Thirdly, Edwards took up composing and performing music for some years, until she suffered a bout of typhus in 1849....Other interests she pursued included pistol shooting, riding and mathematics..." 

Up the Country; Letters From India by Emily Eden.
She wrote novels as well and these two titles are good ones:
"Eden wrote two successful novels: The Semi-Detached House (1859) and The Semi-Attached Couple (1860). The latter was written in 1829, but not published until 1860. Both have a comic touch that critics have compared with that of Jane Austen, who was Emily's favourite author.[6] The first of the two has been described as "an accomplished study in the social contrasts of aristocratic style, bourgeois respectability and crass vulgarity."

The Virago Book of Women Travellers by Mary Morris

West with the Night by Beryl Markham.
"On 4 September 1936, she took off from Abingdon, England. After a 20-hour flight, her Percival Vega Gull, The Messenger, suffered fuel starvation due to icing of the fuel tank vents, and she crash-landed at Baleine Cove on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. She thereby became the first woman to cross the Atlantic east-to-west solo, and the first person to make it from England to North America non-stop from east to west. She was celebrated as an aviation pioneer." I have a copy of her biography: Straight On Till Morning, and will give it to you if you email me.

Yangtze Valley and Beyond by Isabella L. Bird. 1985.
"In January 1896, at the age of 64, the indomitable Isabella Bird set off to explore the Yangtze River and the lonely mountain region of north-west China. A veteran of twenty years travel in America, Asia and the Near East, it was her last great adventure, but one as full of drama and spectacle as anything that had gone before. Eschewing the leisure enjoyed by England's expatriate community in Shanghai, she was thrilled and occasionally aghast at what she found in the little-known land which lay beyond. Travelling alone by riverboat and basket chair, she made her way almost to the Tibetan border, staying in inns and mission stations, observing with fascination the landscape and customs of the people, surviving the terror of a lynching mob, the hostitily of officials who would block her path and the perils of snow storms at 12,000 feet." -

Sources:

   For information about Virago, see the Wikipedia entry for Virago Press. Although Virago Press no longer exists as a separate entity, as a subsidiary Virago imprints are still available here. Some of you will appreciate that it began as Spare Rib Books. 

   Dervla Murphy is not mentioned above. I have her, Cameroon With Egbert and Transylvania and Beyond and she is a subject in my post On Barfing.  She will be 90 next month. Egbert was her horse in Africa.

The Bonus: 

Flora Tristan is Paul Gauguin's maternal grandmother. He also was a fascinating traveller and the Wiki entry for Paul Gauguin will keep you busy for the rest of the day. 

On Barfing

   This is a subject with which we are all familiar, but I am unusual in that I choose to bring it up. I do so because I just read an account of such an activity and was reminded of reading of another. Neither of them are from novels written about fraternities, but both involve nausea that is self-inflicted, and not from actions such as sailing or riding on the Tilt-A-Hurl at the amusement park. More specifically, I am referring to the barfing that results from having consumed too much alcohol, and when one ends up “Talking to Ralph on the big white telephone.” My first experience of puking because of drinking occurred in early adolescence, a fact of which I am no longer proud. Encountering examples involving adults overindulging, in books written by real authors, means I know longer need to feel embarrassed.

   It is probably quite common to run across vomiting in literary works and there are likely several doctoral dissertations about the subject. The two episodes I have chosen may be unique in that they both involve stairs, and are perhaps at least worthy of treatment in a master’s thesis. In the first case, the barf is encountered on the way up the stairs, while in the second it is found when descending. The first is presented because of the quality and vividness of the description of the source of the spew. The second is offered as a slippery way for me to introduce you to a good book by an author who has drank and puked a lot.

  This example is provided by Patrick Leigh Fermor, who as a teenager in the early 1930s is walking across Europe. On this winter day he is looking for a Hofbräuhaus and finds one.

    I was back in beer territory. Halfway up the vaulted stairs a groaning Brownshirt, propped against the wall on a swastika’d arm, was unloosing, in a staunchless gush down the steps, the intake of hours. Love’s labour lost. 
   Each new storey radiated great halls given over to ingestion…[One can get an idea] of the transformation that beer, in collusion with almost non-stop eating -- meals within meals dovetailing so closely during the hours of waking  that there is hardly an interprandial moment -- can wreak on the human frame… The trunks of these feasting burghers were as wide as casks. The spread of their buttocks over the oak benches was not far short of a yard. They branched at the loins into thighs as thick as the torsos of ten-year-olds and arms on the same scale strained like bolsters at the confining serge. Chin and chest formed a single column, and each close-packed nape was creased with its three deceptive smiles. Every bristle had been cropped and shaven from their knobbly scalps. Except when five o’clock veiled them with shadow, surfaces and polished as ostriches’ eggs reflected the lamplight. The frizzy hair of their wives was wrenched up from scarlet necks and pinned under slides and then hatted with green Bavarian trilbys and round one pair of elephantine shoulders a little fox stole was clasped….Hands like bundles of sausages flew nimbly, packing in forkload on forkload of ham, salami, frankfurter, krenwurst and blutwurst and stone tankards were lifted for long swallows of liquid which sprang out again instantaneously on cheek and brow…. Huge oval dishes, laden with schweinebraten, potatoes, sauerkraut, red cabbage and dumplings were laid in front of each diner. They were followed by colossal joints of meat -- unclassifiable helpings which, when they were picked clean, shone on the scoured chargers like calve’s pelvises or the bones of elephants. Waitresses with the build of weight-lifters and all-in wrestlers whirled this provender along and features dripped and glittered like faces at an ogre’s banquet.” A Time of Gifts, pp.90-92.

   The second case is provided by Dervla Murphy in Transylvania and Beyond. Like Fermor, she is walking alone in Europe, near Rarau which is in the Bistrita Mountains (close to the Obcine Range of Bukovina, to give you an idea of its remoteness.) Again, like Fermor, she is looking for a place to drink and bed down and spots a nine storey, unheated old lodge where she finds: 

   “A merry party of eight foresters wore mittens, and sheepskin jackets with the collars rolled up, and fox-fur hats with the ear-flaps pulled down… [They were] mixing cognac, white wine, tuica and beer, which seemed to me unwise. I little realized how soon I was to be the victim of their unwisdom…..[After spending a cold night in her sixth-floor eyrie she got up at dawn]:

Descending the mock-marble staircase in semi-darkness, I slipped on a pile of vomit and landed five steps down with my right ankle twisted under me. It had taken all my body weight, plus a heavy rucksack, and I at once knew it was broken. Apart from the pain, there is an audible thing: the brain, if not the ears, ‘hears’ bones crunching. Picking myself up -- some moments later -- after the first pain-wave had ebbed - I accepted that now was the time to do some involuntary research into  Rumania’s medical service. [which is very poor and the next town is inaccessible to motor vehicles].....Next morning my foot was, if viewed objectively, quite beautiful -- the size and shape of a rugger ball and marbled blue, green, brown and red, like high-quality nineteenth-century endpapers.

[The barfer later shows up - with a bottle to apologize]: By the end of the bottle (we were assisted by my nurse-attendants) Bogdan looked much more cheerful, having been assured that I quite understood his aberration -- that I, too, had over-indulged to the point of throwing up. This admission on ‘granny’s’ part severely shocked [those around her].

From the chapter “Footless in Moldavia” pp.190-193. 

   That's dear Dervla above and the event described happened in 1990 in Rumania. It was one of many unfortunate incidents and the first is found in the first chapter ("Dispossessed on the Frontier") when the Securitate steals all of her belongings. She takes off walking toward the mountains anyway and generally slept outside. When asked if she was afraid to sleep alone, she answered: "There's nothing to be afraid of if you are alone, if no one knows you're there. If however, three hard-drinking men know you're there, a move is indicated." Given that remark, she was probably leery of bunking down with eight foresters, but she was also used to it: "Even in the forenoon there were usually a few men eager to grope at me, while hiccuping in my face; already they were too far gone to see that I was old enough to be their mother. (Or in some cases, grandmother).
   I forgot to mention that Ms Murphy was around 60 back in 1990.

Sources: 
   In a recent post about jails,  I indicated that I was re-reading Fermor's A Time of Gifts and will probably read-again about the rest of his journey in: Between the Woods and the Water and The Broken Road.
   Apart from Transylvania and Beyond, Murphy has written: Where the Winter is Young: Winter in Baltistan; Cameroon With Egbert,(her horse); Tales From Two Cities: Travel of Another Sort; Full Tilt : Ireland to India With a Bicycle, and Eight Feet in the Andes, (The eight feet belonged to Dervla Murphy, her nine-year-old daughter Rachel and Juana, their staunch and beloved mule. They set out to travel some 1300 miles through the Andes from Cajamarca to Cuzco. Along the way they met the descendants of the Incas, suffered hard-ships such as landslides and tormenting insects and revelled in the grandeur of their wild surroundings.)

   As far as I can tell, Ms Murphy is still going full tilt. One of the things I learned when doing this (learning things is another reason for doing them), is that you can find interviews with her on YouTube, during which she is usually holding a beer. She is now 88.

Post Script:
   You are probably surprised that I did not use the word 'Vomitorium' which you, like I, thought was a place where those Germans and the Romans went to purge themselves to make room for more food and drink. We were wrong, since another thing I learned from this exercise is that vomitoria are those entrances and exits from which people can pour from stadiums. I am glad I found this out because one of my loyal readers is a classicist and he would have spotted the error. Actually, he is not that loyal and will only see this if I tell him I have written it. Non-classicists can simply look at the Wikipedia entry for Vomitorium. He can verify this by re-reading:  Radin, Alice P. (8 January 2003). "Fictitious Facts: The Case of the Vomitorium". APAClassics.org. American Philological Association, or "Purging the Myth of the Vomitorium: Ancient Romans Used the Word, but Pop Culture Has the Concept all Wrong," Stephanie Pappas, Scientific American, Aug. 28, 2016.