The lure of the gypsies

William Blacker ‘set off to explore the newly “liberated” countries of Central Europe immediately after Christmas 1989’. From Berlin he went to Prague, where he wondered, ‘Should I continue eastwards, even as far as Romania? In the end it was old architecture which persuaded me. I had heard of the famous painted monasteries of northern Moldavia.’ Entranced by ‘the Eastern Europe of wooden peasant cottages on the edge of forests inhabited by wolves and bears, of snow and sledges and sheepskin coats, and of country people in embroidered smocks and headscarves,’ he returned the following year and walked among the Saxon villages. But it was not until 1996, fed up with life in London, that he decided to ‘go there for at least a year, to see the whole cycle of the seasons, and to observe every detail of the old way of life.’