The Gate to Constantinople



Only the Danube separates Rumania from Bulgaria, yet the people--of the
two capitals, at least--are as different as the French and Scotch. The
train leaves Bucarest after breakfast; you are ferried over the river at
Rustchuk at noon, and, after trailing over the shoulders of long,
rolling plateaus, are up in the mountains in Sofia that evening. The
change is almost as sharp as that between Ostend and Folkestone.

You leave French, or the half-Latin Rumanian language, for a Slavic
speech, and the Cyrillic, or Russian, alphabet; names ending in "sco" or
"ano" (Ionesco, Filipesco, Bratiano) for names ending in "off"
(Radoslavoff, Malinoff, Ghenadieff, Antinoff, and the like), and all the
show and vivacity, the cafes and cocottes of Bucarest, for a clean
little mountain capital as determined and serious as some new town out
West.

It seemed, though of course such impressions are mostly chance, that the
difference began at the border. In Rumania, at the Hungarian border,
they took away my passport, which in times like these is like taking
away one's clothes, and, though I assured the customs inspector that I
was on my way to Constantinople, and in a hurry, it required four days'
wait in Bucarest, and innumerable visits to the police before the paper
was returned. Every one, apparently, on the train had the same
experience--the Austrian drummers looked wise and muttered "baksheesh,"
and in Bucarest an evil-eyed hotel porter kept pulling me into corners,