Category Archives: Romania

by Joel | 10 June 2026 · 12:38 am

PCV Exit Interviews in Moldova

From Lenin’s Asylum: Two Years in Moldova, by A. A. Weiss (Everytime Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 239-241:

The COS [Close-of-Service] conference convened on a spring weekend at a campground that wealthy Russians used as vacation property. The Peace Corps staff had reserved us several cabins that overlooked the river separating Moldova and Ukraine. For the first time in two years, the entire group of remaining volunteers was in the same place at the same time. Our original class had dwindled from thirty-seven to twenty-two. The meetings were brief and confusing. Our boss, the Country Director, described how we should avoid areas like shopping malls and rock concerts when we returned to America; large groups of people would probably unnerve us. He read updates from the previous volunteers who had quit or been evacuated; Callie was teaching English in Turkey and Paul was completing his first year of law school in Cincinnati. They were happy. We listened less to their advice for readjustment, and more to where these people lived. America was a big place. Jesse would live in Minnesota, Colin in Virginia, Will in North Carolina. And Sadie would be in New Jersey. I wouldn’t be anywhere near those places. The medical officer asked that those of us who’d contracted ailments continue our medications when we returned home. Jesse—in direct relation to his refusal to ever seek medical treatment—was awarded recognition as the group’s healthiest volunteer over the two-year period. The safety officer asked that we not celebrate our final days in country with binge drinking; our final benefit package would be delayed if we were arrested and deported from the country at the last minute.

The lecture portion of the conference now concluded, the necessary advice for readjustment into American life dispensed, the Country Director congratulated us and excused us to our exit language interviews.

* * *

The Country Director’s secretary was the only one in the office who spoke Russian well enough to test Jesse and me. I waited outside as Jesse spoke with her for ten minutes. He came outside smiling and said, “Piece of cake.” The secretary had given him an advanced mark.

Inside the cabin, I found the secretary sitting on the bed, her feet not touching the floor. She pointed to a chair in the corner and asked me to sit. She asked me to spell my name and then we began. We talked about transportation using verbs of motion, of food preparation, of my likes and dislikes and specific events in the past and future. It took five minutes to finish her checklist of language proficiency.

“So,” said the secretary. “We have some time to kill. What shall we talk about?”

I shrugged my shoulders and said, “It’s all the same to me.” The secretary giggled.

“Your accent is good. Your body language is good, also. Very Russian, it seems to me.”

I nodded, brushing aside the compliment.

“You live with Russians, I must guess. Is this true?”

I nodded.

“Tell me about them.”

“Not much to tell. Very good people. They treat me well.”

“Do you respect them?”

“Of course.”

“What do you mean by, ‘Of course?’”

We sat in silence for a moment as the secretary allowed me to compose my thoughts. My mind returned to my imagining Dima working across the border in Romania, taking orders in a language he hated. And in Bulgaria the women drank coffee on the street corners, I thought. Dima would never be happy anywhere else.

“I spend most of my time in family with the father, Dima. He’s a baker and enjoys working, perhaps not the amount that he must, but the work itself.”

I paused to see if the secretary understood me. She nodded encouragement and waved her hand in a rolling circle to keep me going.

“Like this there is happiness, which I respect. In Riscani, where we live, the streets are clean and pleasant; there is always someone to stop and chat with along the way on these roads. The purpose of life is open and understood, I think. Every day, life has a simple and direct purpose. Walk to work, don’t hurt anyone along the way, and get back home at night for a drink and a sleep.” The secretary nodded and then dismissed me from the cabin. She scored me advanced as well.

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Filed under Bulgaria, education, labor, language, migration, Moldova, Romania, Russia, U.S., Ukraine

by Joel | 8 June 2026 · 8:58 am

Our Quick Visit to Moldova

The Far Outliers have just returned from a short visit to Moldova, flying from Warsaw to Chișinău for Poland’s Corpus Christi school holidays. We had multiple reasons for the visit.

We had earlier considered doing another year abroad under the English Language Fellow program after our year in Poland. In fact, we had originally hoped to go to Romania, but there were no current openings. Moldova has an opening for next year, but my scary health problems during our deep winter in Poland made me fear I might not make it through a Moldovan winter, despite my advantage of arriving in Moldova still fairly fluent in Romanian. Public signage all over Chișinău was indeed almost fully in Romanian (not in Moldovan Cyrillic or Russian), and I enjoyed being able to converse much more readily in Romanian than I have been able to in Polish. (My ability to navigate written Polish is far ahead of my conversational ability.)

Our other reason for visiting Moldova was to make a pilgrimage to the village where Ms. Outlier’s Bessarabian German grandfather was born, and from which his family emigrated via Odessa to Canada and the Dakotas in the 1890s. Their rural village was named Neudorf, like dozens of German villages around the world. (There is a Neudorf village in Saskatchewan, and a poorly documented Neudorf cemetery in Eureka, South Dakota, originally settled by Germans from Russia). All the remaining Germans were expelled from Bessarabia in the 1940s, and Neudorf was renamed Carmanova (in Russian, Карманово).

Carmanova now lies in Transnistria, so near to the Ukrainian border that T-Mobile sent us “Welcome to Ukraine!” text messages when our phones came within range of their Ukraine cell towers. To get us there (and back), Moldova Tours was able to arrange for a private driver fluent in Russian, Romanian, and English, who had prior experience driving groups into the Transnistrian capital, Tiraspol, on their Soviet-era culture tours. But he had never been to very rural Carmanova and was curious about it. We ended up getting turned back twice at Russian Army checkpoints that could not handle international passports, and we had to wait in a long, slow line at the Grigoriopol checkpoint that could process our passports. They gave us a temporary insert but did not stamp our passports.

The rolling green hills of the Transnistrian countryside are quite lovely in June, with vast acres of foot-high sunflower sprouts. Several forks in the road had signposts directing us to the German settlements, and the road into the village featured a roughly made tall welcome sign with the year 1809 (when Neudorf was founded), its name in Cyrillic, Нойдорф, the year 1944, and its new name Карманово (from Карман ‘pocket’?). There was also a rock monument in the village inscribed to mark the 200th anniversary of its founding in 1809.

The village itself was very small and quiet. We were given a tour of the House of Culture by its cordial manager. It contained a curtained stage and auditorium, a disco hall, a barre-lined ballet studio, and several rooms for workshops of various kinds. We also visited the cemetery for Soviet soldiers who died there, billboards with the names and faces of local citizens who died between 1941 and 1945. We saw no sign of a former church. The little country store where we bought a bottle of Ukrainian water took only Transnistrian rubles, so our driver/translator handled the payment.

I’ve added a Moldova album to my Flickr site, Joel Abroad.

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Filed under family, Germany, language, migration, Moldova, Romania, Russia, U.S., Ukraine

by Joel | 6 June 2026 · 5:25 am

Ecology Speech Olympiad in Moldova

From Lenin’s Asylum: Two Years in Moldova, by A. A. Weiss (Everytime Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 104-105:

Each year every school in the country competed in contests of Language Arts, Science and Mathematics to determine Moldova’s top scholars. Teachers of winning pupils were also rewarded. The Russian School of Riscani, known regionally for subpar students, perennially lost to the rival Moldovan Lyceum up the hill. But this year the odds were in the Russians’ favor, as I—Mr. Aaron, the town’s foreign expert—would be the guest Olympiad judge.

Today’s contest was in ecology, a subject of which I knew nothing. Regardless, the presentations would be in English and I was therefore the authority. The entire event transpired over a hectic two-hour period.

We arrived at the Moldovan Lyceum, a castle with narrow windows that had once been the residence of the town’s founder. A legend stated the fortress had withstood an assault by raiding Turks. Once inside, I was introduced to the Moldovan half of the judging panel: a biology teacher from the Moldovan Lyceum and a Romanian language teacher from Mihaileni, one of the competing lyceums from a village within the district. Nadezhda and I were the other two panel members. The two Moldovan teachers knew Nadezhda and hated her. I did not know where this animosity came from, but I witnessed it in the side-whisper conversations and the politely sterile manner in which they greeted her by her full name, Nadezhda Ivanovna.

The competition began; presentations would precede a multiple-choice test.

The Moldovan team presented first, speaking about the need to use conservationist principles when building houses. I thought the presentation very fair. The two girls presenting were polite when they addressed the panel, spoke clearly, and despite repeating each sentence for effect, made some decent points about man’s impact on nature.

The Russian team went next, speaking about the need to clean apartments regularly unless one wanted to kill his family with the poisons that the human body produced every day and shed into the environment. I left the presentation unconvinced of the scientific rigor of the team’s investigations, but they’d presented with loud voices and had clearly convinced Nadezhda of their superior ecological intellect. She poked me in the ribs and nodded as though to say, winners.

The village team from Mihaileni went last, presenting about the need to protect well water. Their presentation was exceptionally well researched; however, I felt they’d relied too heavily on the bilingual dictionary. I audibly groaned when a young girl used the phrases “excrement cocktail” and “repeated, daily consumption” in the same sentence. Nadezhda—an English teacher herself—found no objection in that usage. And though I’d expected as much, I then knew for certain that the other Moldovan panelists did not speak English, and were merely grading these presentations on the volume and emotional conviction of the speakers.

The judging panel stepped outside during the multiple-choice test. The biology teacher from the Moldovan Lyceum tried to speak to me in Romanian so that Nadezhda wouldn’t understand the conversation. “He only speaks Russian,” said Nadezhda. “He speaks only modern languages.”

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Filed under education, language, Moldova, nationalism, Romania, Russia, U.S.

by Joel | 2 June 2026 · 12:15 am

Language Lessons in Moldova

From Lenin’s Asylum: Two Years in Moldova, by A. A. Weiss (Everytime Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 26-27:

Our language instructor gave us directions to a landmark in the center of town, and we soon realized the directions had been intentionally complicated so that we’d have to ask questions of locals. Away from headquarters, we passed a yellow, onion-top church and were then sucked into the central bazaar, an outdoor black hole of discount merchandise. Anyone dealing any type of transaction came at us with booming Slavic accents, as if their words need only enter our physical space to stun us and take control of our wallets. I considered buying cheese, batteries, soap packets, tin cups for drinking, but managed to pass through without losing money.

Vendors conversed with their friends in shouts from stall to stall. Flip-flops, light machinery, dried fish, bulk tea, clothing, duplicates of keys, endless buckets of salted cheese, olives, rice, cucumbers, tomatoes, liters of wine in reused soda bottles. These vendors were the types who’d ridden with me on the bus in the morning—old babushkas selling whatever they had too much of at home. Grandchildren ran wild in the corridors of the bazaar, dashing in between, behind, and under the vendor stalls with their rubber toy guns.

It seemed everyone in the capital spoke only Russian. Romanian might have been spoken at home among family members, but Russian was the language of money, spoken openly at shops and on the streets. And though I understood the majority of volunteers sent to Moldova would learn Romanian in order to serve the poorest communities, I didn’t envy them. Unlike other colleagues, Jesse and I would never complain about policemen and bazaar women refusing (or unable) to speak Romanian, checks from all restaurants presented in the Cyrillic alphabet, and host families only speaking an angry-sounding foreign language to them at home, expecting them to respond to the sharp sounds as though they were dogs.

The din of commerce activity decreased once we left the maze of the bazaar. We hadn’t yet asked directions, still waiting for someone who appeared within our age range to approach. A girl walked fast and picked up speed as we addressed her, perhaps to shorten our opportunity to harass her. But she stopped shortly after passing us, having responded to the softness and insecurity in our accents. She pointed toward a busy intersection a block away and seemed disappointed that we ended our conversation by wishing her health and happiness. I think she wanted to tell us her name. At the intersection a woman selling popcorn perked up when she heard our accents and pointed across the street to a sidewalk art sale. At the art bazaar a man selling Russian stacking dolls said we were on the right track and asked where we were from, and recommended dolls to match any personality. He thought our accents sounded Polish. A block farther we stopped another girl and she pointed across the street to our destination.

McDonald’s.

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Filed under economics, education, language, Moldova, nationalism, Romania, Russia

by Joel | 1 June 2026 · 7:27 am

New Peace Corps Teacher in Moldova

From Lenin’s Asylum: Two Years in Moldova, by A. A. Weiss (Everytime Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 16-17:

I was born in Ohio during the Cold War.

At that time Moldova wasn’t yet a country. Tucked between Romania and Ukraine, I’d never noticed it on the map during geography pop-quizzes or seen mention of it in National Geographic (my two childhood sources of world knowledge). Through pre-departure research I learned a recent civil war had ended, the president was a communist, and many outpost towns spoke Russian exclusively instead of the national language, Romanian. As the poorest nation in Europe, Moldova’s workers had little work—one in four adults left the country to seek employment. Those who stayed used their bodies for income and sustenance, working in the fields, yes, but also trafficking themselves to those trading in sex and human organs. It lacked an international marketplace for wine—its only export—so people tended to drink up what was on hand. It had schools without adequately trained teachers and politicians without scruples. Orphanages were filled with children whose parents had either departed the country or couldn’t afford to feed them.

Moldova needed a superhero, it seemed, not an English teacher.

I wasn’t the first American to be stationed in Riscani. Three other English teachers had passed through before me. Their site reports didn’t inspire confidence. “Kind of a ghost town,” and “very Russian,” one described Riscani. The mayor, a member of the communist party, was labeled “unhelpful and patronizing.” The schools were “terrible environments” which suffered from “daily disorder” and “undisciplined children.” Yet all the other volunteers had arrived speaking Romanian, and they’d clearly suffered for it. Each had recommended that future volunteers sent to Riscani speak Russian.

So there I was.

When I arrived at the Russian school for my first day of teaching, most people thought I was a parent dropping off a new pupil. I’d dressed in clothes purchased at the “professionals” section at the bazaar—a purple dress shirt with snapping breast pockets and a pink tie. Teachers asked if I was lost and told me where I might find my child. Sometime during the chaos of these first moments in the school, among the bodies of boys and girls and adults running to find the correct room, a small girl came up to me and complained that a boy had lit her hair on fire with a match. She showed me a collection of singed ends as proof. I understood nothing, patted her on the head and said, “Very good.”

I made my way to the English classroom, met briefly with the school director—a man with a naturally angry face attempting to smile—and was then alone with a class of fifth graders.

The look of serenity on my face was completely fake. Sweat rolled behind my ear down into my collar. I loosened my tie. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. “Does anyone speak English?” I asked. Nothing came out of their mouths. I repeated the question in Russian, and almost immediately fifteen little hands began shaking in the air to indicate fifty-fifty. We did introductions in Russian and then in English and completed forty-five minutes of basic grammar and vocabulary. I could tell these fifth graders weren’t ready to write poetry. But they’d successfully introduced themselves and expressed their likes and dislikes. Nearly all had liked football and disliked mathematics. It seemed my new job wouldn’t kill me.

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Filed under language, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, USSR

by Joel | 19 April 2026 · 1:59 am

Polish zakąski vs. Romanian zacuscă

My latest compilation from Culture.pl includes some articles about Polish gastronomy, including Natalia Mętrak-Ruda’s 2020 article on Zakąski Culture in Poland: What to Eat with Vodka?

The Spanish have their tapas, the Italians have their aperitivo and in the Middle East they feast on mezze. Small plates, which you most often share with friends and which – at least in countries where it’s generally accepted to consume alcohol – are usually accompanied by a fair share of drinks, are a part of many food cultures worldwide. In Poland, these dishes are known as zakąski and go exceptionally well with vodka.

…

Traditional Polish weddings, especially in rural areas, are occasions where the culture of zakąski still reigns supreme. While we’ve observed a cultural shift in past decades, and people in big cities tend to drink more wine and often prefer a more Mediterranean or French approach to banquet canapés, smalec [animal fat, cf. schmaltz], sausages and other cured meats, meat jellies, pickles, and herring are still among the most popular items included in traditional wedding buffets – sometimes known as wiejski stół, ‘a country table’.

… Yet the king of all zakąski was herring, served with a tomato and onion sauce (the ‘Kashubian’ way), with mayonnaise and peas (curiously named Japanese herring), or simply in oil with some onions.

In the last decade ongoing efforts have been made by some Polish chefs, bartenders and spirit connoisseurs to start looking at vodka from a new perspective. Not just as something to get drunk on, or dissolve in a cocktail, but an interesting local product, which has the potential to become as important to Poland, as whiskey is to Ireland and Scotland, or champagne to France.

To do so, passionate chefs started to think about much more refined zakąski, which would go well with artisan vodkas. Chef Aleksander Baron and food writer Łukasz Klesyk even wrote a book about it entitled Między Wódką a Zakąską (which literally means ‘Between Vodka and an Appetiser’, yet also refers to the idiom wcinać się między wódkę a zakąskę – to meddle or interfere).

The authors claim that the most important rules in creating new zakąski are following the contrasts created by the pairing of the sweetness of vodka with either salt or acid. At the same time, keeping in mind that the appetisers should be rich and complex enough to handle high levels of alcohol. It can be achieved by adding fat but also by enriching the flavours by grilling, roasting, adding herbs, spices or mushrooms.

The Russian equivalent of zakąski is zakuski, singular zakuska, with pretty much the same meaning, but the Romanian zacuscă that we Outliers are very fond of is instead a vegetable concoction of roasted eggplant, red bell pepper, onion, tomato, and spices.

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Filed under food, language, Poland, Romania

by Joel | 26 February 2026 · 8:18 pm

Publicizing the Auschwitz Report

From The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, by Jonathan Freedland (HarperCollins, 2022), Kindle pp. 272-275:

NATURALLY, THE WORKING Group always hoped that the escapees’ testimony would reach the Allied nations fighting the Third Reich. They had no clear idea how exactly it would get there; instead they cast the document upon the waters, hoping it would land on the right shore. The Auschwitz Report would be a message in a bottle.

One early copy fell into exactly the wrong hands. Oskar Krasňanský sent it to Jewish officials based in Istanbul through a courier who he had been assured was ‘reliable’. But it never arrived. Krasňanský later concluded that the messenger had been a paid spy who took the report to Hungary, only to hand it to the Gestapo in Budapest.

Another copy, also originally destined for Istanbul, followed an especially circuitous path. A Jewish employee of the Turkish legation in Budapest passed it to the head of the city’s Palestine office – representing those who were determined to turn that country into a refuge for Jews – who, keen to get the information to neutral Switzerland, passed it to a contact in the Romanian legation in Bern who, in turn, handed it to a businessman from Transylvania who had once been known as György Mandel but who had now, however improbably, become the unpaid first secretary of the consulate of El Salvador in Geneva, under the name of George Mantello.

The route was bizarre, but at last the report had found the right person. Mantello was a man ready to flout convention, and if necessary the law, if that’s what it took to rescue Jews from the Nazis. And for him, the Auschwitz Report had a bleakly personal significance. As he read it, he knew that his own extended family in Hungary had already been deported. The words of Vrba and Wetzler, reinforced by Mordowicz and Rosin, confirmed that all of those relatives, some 200 people, were almost certainly dead. He resolved immediately to do what he could to spread the word.

Mantello’s copy was a five-page summary in Hungarian, produced at an earlier stage of the report’s convoluted journey by an orthodox rabbi in Slovakia, so he now enlisted the help of assorted students and expats to make immediate translations of this abridged version into Spanish, French, German and English. On 22 June 1944 he handed the document to a British journalist, Walter Garrett, who was in Zurich for the Exchange Telegraph news agency. Garrett saw the news value immediately, but he also recognised that, even in its pared down form, the Auschwitz Report was still too lengthy for easy newspaper consumption. He had his British–Hungarian secretary, one Blanche Lucas, produce a fresh translation and he then distilled the core points into four arresting press releases.

Garrett made a break from the reporters’ unwritten code, which would forbid a journalist from receiving financial help from a source: doubtless for the sake of speed, he allowed Mantello to pay for those four texts to be sent to London by telegram, costly as that was. Still, despite that departure from traditional Fleet Street practice, and in welcome contrast with Krasňanský, Garrett understood the grammar of news. His telegram despatch, wired on the night of 23 June 1944, led with what was his most stunning revelation:

FOLLOWING DRAMATIC ACCOUNT ONE DARKEST CHAPTERS MODERN HISTORY REVEALING HOW ONE MILLION 715 THOUSAND JEWS PUT DEATH ANNIHILATION CAMP AUSCHWITZ BIRKENAU . . . REPORT COME EX TWO JEWS WHO ESCAPED BIRKENAU CORRECTNESS WHEREOF CONFIRMED . . . FROM THE BEGINNING JUNE 1943 NINETY PERCENT INCOMING JEWS GASSED DEATH STOP . . . THREE GAS-CHAMBERS FOUR CREMATORIUMS BIRKENAU-AUSCHWITZ STOP EACH CREMATORIUM . . . TWO THOUSAND CORPSE DAILY STOP GARRETT ADDS ABSOLUTE EXACTNESS ABOVE REPORT UNQUESTIONABLE . . . END

As soon as those words were humming along the telegraph cables to London, Garrett acted to ensure that his story – surely one of the scoops of the century – would get the widest possible distribution. The technology of 1944 allowed for few short cuts. And so, in the early hours of 24 June, Walter Garrett rode his bike through the streets of Zurich, pushing copies of his despatch by hand into the mailboxes of the city’s newspapers. Attached was a covering letter of endorsement, supplied by Mantello, from a quartet of senior Swiss theologians and clerics, all apparently vouching for the gravity of the revelations. (In fact, none of the four had seen the report: in a typical Mantello flourish, he had put their names to the letter but had dispensed with the formality of asking their permission first.) And so the first newspaper story based on what would become known as the Vrba–Wetzler Report appeared in Switzerland’s Neue Zürcher Zeitung later that same day.

Mantello’s efforts had worked. Thanks to those ‘two Jews who escaped Birkenau, correctness whereof confirmed’, the word was out. Breaking the dam of censorship, the following eighteen days saw the publication in the Swiss press of no fewer than 383 articles laying bare the truth of the Auschwitz death camp, even if, by accidentally omitting the estimated 50,000 Lithuanian dead, Garrett had revised down Vrba–Wetzler’s death toll. Put another way, between 24 June and 11 July more articles appeared about Auschwitz in the Swiss press than had been published about the wider Final Solution throughout the entire course of the war in The Times, Daily Telegraph, Manchester Guardian and the whole of the British popular press put together.

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Filed under Britain, Germany, Hungary, migration, military, Poland, publishing, religion, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland, Turkey, war

by Joel | 21 January 2026 · 9:09 am

Wrocław: Każda podróż to opowieść

The catchphrase on a travel poster, Każda podróż to opowieść ‘Every journey is a story’, in our fine hotel in Wrocław caught my eye because Polish opowieść is cognate with Romanian poveste ‘story, tale’, an old borrowing from Slavic. The Romanian infinite verb is a povesti ‘to tell a tale/story/lie, etc’. But for a polyglot traveler, podróżnik poliglotów, călător poliglot, every journey is a vocabulary lesson.

We were in Wrocław sightseeing for a few days on the way to a conference in Szczecin for my better (unretired) half and some other foreign teachers in Poland and neighboring countries. One of Wrocław’s major tourist attractions is the hundreds of tiny krasnal ‘gnomes’ all over the city, but I found its topographical vocabulary more interesting, especially in contrast to Kielce, which was never a castle town (or a river town).

Like every old town in Poland, Wrocław has a ratusz ‘town hall’ in a rynek ‘central market square’ surrounded by its stare miasto ‘old town’. Our hotel overlooked one piece of the old moat (fosa) side of the old town. The Odra river, with its many branches, islands (wyspy) and bridges (mosty) bordered the far side of the stare miasto, which is nowadays typically criss-crossed with trams and busses. The large railway stations in both Wrocław and Krakow touch the edges of each city’s carefully maintained stare miasto, which is surrounded by przedmieścia ‘suburbs’, a bit like the Japanese jōkamachi ‘castle towns’ that lie outside the castle walls and moats. One such early suburb in Wrocław is Przedmieścia Świdnickie (formerly Schweidnitzer Vorstadt), which lay outside the Świdnica Gate.

By the way, every one of the (six or eight) young English-speaking staff we queried at our hotel had studied six or more years of German in school, then let that ability lapse in favor of informally acquired (often fluent) English! This seems to be the pattern throughout Polish Silesia.

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Filed under economics, education, Germany, Japan, language, Poland, Romania, travel

by Joel | 10 October 2025 · 5:14 pm

Liberating Bukovina, August 1917

From The Other Trench: The WW1 Diary and Photos of a German Officer, by Alexander Pfeifer and Philipp Cross (True Perspective Press, 2024), Kindle pp. 243-245:

1.8.1917 At 6 o’clock in the morning, my company again takes the lead towards Moldauisch Banilla — terrible heat. The Hutsuls erect triumphal arches for us and distribute bouquets of flowers. Almost all of them have beautiful faces. As always, the Russians have looted and burned everything during their retreat. We again capture five dispersed Russians in front of Moldauisch Banilla.

…

We continue further towards Moldauisch Banilla in the afternoon, which is very heavily occupied by the Russians. Because my company deployed three assault squads, I just have 40 men left and go in reserve. The entire jäger brigade attacks. I receive heavy artillery fire and have two wounded. Moldauisch Banilla is mostly taken towards the evening. This is a large place with a large German colonist quarter and a Jewish quarter. The residents had a bad day in the town, which was bombarded from two sides, with many being dead and wounded. Multiple houses burn. Late in the evening, I move into a Hutsul house in Moldauisch Banilla, where we are given a very friendly welcome by the residents.

…

2.8.1917 Forward march at 6 o’clock in the morning. An old Jew bangs like mad for joy on a Russian drum as we march past. The Russians have cleared the heights to the east of Moldauisch Banilla by morning — the thankful inhabitants kiss my hands while marching through. My company is taking the lead in our division today.

We march over a wooded ridge towards Czudyn. The last Russians disappeared into the forest an hour ago after being shot at by our patrols. It is tropical heat again today. My assault squad, under Lieutenant Fischer, surprises an enemy battalion bivouacking in the village of Neuhütte, which flees under fire and later retreats hastily; so that when we advance, we find the village no longer occupied. During the evening, the residents, who hid in the forests with their cattle for a week, return and kiss our hands with joy. I am staying with a Romanian farmer, and the whole family is touchingly looking after us. A neighbour even brought us a slice of honeycomb.

…

Just as we had made ourselves comfortable, we were alarmed at 3 o’clock in the morning and marched to Czudyn, an endless nest where the other companies took up outposts, whilst my company quartered itself as a reserve in Romanian houses.

3.8.1917 My hostess brings milk and eggs again in the morning. There are eggs, geese, chickens, milk, and an abundance of livestock here, and it is very cheap. I have drunk incredible amounts of milk in Bukovina so far. It was previously called “Mologa” by the Hutsuls, and now “Lapte” by the Romanians.

There is an incredible tropical heat again. At 8 o’clock in the morning, we continue to the church in Czudyn, and my company secures the place via field guards. Bouquets of flowers are presented to us everywhere, and all the horses and carriages are wreathed. We have been pulled out of the front line today and are now division reserves. The Russians are in a hurry to flee. They didn’t burn anything apart from the bridges in Neuhütte and Czudyn.

I am living with Poles. My company is stationed as field guards.

…

4.8.1917 I slept wonderfully in a proper bed. In the morning, I march behind the battalion that marched ahead over Idzestie and to Petroutz, where there is a longer lunch break. I then catch up with the battalion in Kupka. We encounter thunderstorms twice, the likes of which I have never experienced before. We attack Fantana Alba (Rom. ‘White Fountain’) towards the evening, where the Russians want to prevent us from leaving the forested mountains. We stay in the forest as brigade reserves, where we can fortunately light large fires and dry ourselves. I was wet to the skin despite the rubber coat. I am spending the night on the stove bench inside a lonely Ruthenian forest keeper’s house, inhabited by 1000 flies.

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Filed under Germany, language, migration, military, nationalism, Poland, religion, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, war

by Joel | 9 October 2025 · 7:41 pm

Carpathian Front, August 1916

From The Other Trench: The WW1 Diary and Photos of a German Officer, by Alexander Pfeifer and Philipp Cross (True Perspective Press, 2024), Kindle pp. 173-174:

25.8.1916 There was thick fog during the night — the ground is littered with fireflies — an enemy patrol is being driven out.

The food is good and plentiful, but it usually only arrives late in the evening when it is dark because the road lies under artillery fire. There are three different types of field-kitchen food — Pearl barley with mutton, beans with mutton, and dried vegetables with beef. Besides this, we also get half a loaf of bread every day, and alternately some lard substitute, Dutch cheese, canned sausage, and marmalade. We also get cubes of coffee daily, and sometimes tea.

The night before last, we caught a Russian officer’s orderly who had gotten lost and came to us with the food and coat intended for his master. He was very surprised at how he was suddenly captured by us.

26.8.1916 Wonderful warm, sunny day. We are now living rather well because we have been brought up several boxes with all kinds of things from the canteen. For breakfast this morning, we had tea with marmalade bread, liver sausage, and Swiss cheese; and for lunch, asparagus spears, fried potatoes, one egg, roasted meat, and 1901-dated Tokay wine. We eat out of the field kitchen in the evening.

Two Russian patrols are being shot at in the night.

28.8.1916 The declaration of war by Italy and Romania was reported to us via telephone this morning. Maybe now we will reach the Romanian border. There was shooting from patrols on several occasions during the first half of the night.

Heavy rain. It is raining into my shelter, so I am having a wooden roof put on it today.

29.8.1916 The weather is nice. I now have a medium mortar in my sector, which launches mortar shells with a diameter of 18 centimetres and a weight of one quintal. We just zeroed in on the field-guard summit with four shots. Those things have a huge impact; the Russians will have run away nicely as a result. They have constantly been shouting “Hurrah!” since yesterday evening, and have also stuck out a signpost on which Romania’s declaration of war is most likely written. They probably think that this is being kept secret from us, or they want to annoy us with it. Our mortars are the correct response to this.

30.8.1916 There was artillery fire to our left for several hours from 4 o’clock in the morning onwards, the likes of which I have never heard in the East. The volleys follow one another without interruption. It must be within the vicinity of the Jablonika Pass where the Austrians have retreated to in the last few days. We are always happy when we don’t have Austrians next to us, as you can’t sleep peacefully otherwise. As kind as the Austrian is as an associate, he is just as unreliable as a soldier — Always according to the motto: “Make room. The Germans want to attack. The Germans are braver people!”

I was just guiding the Count through my position which the Russians must have smelled, because they sent over plenty of shells and shrapnel from 10 to 12 o’clock at noon, although without success. Since my hut doesn’t provide enough cover against artillery fire, I am now having a stronger shelter built in a more protected area where the sun also shines all day, as it is well needed up here.

The strong artillery fire to the left of us is continuing all day.