Mrs Harding lacks the depth (as she mentions in the prefance herself) of having properly explored and understood Romanian culture and the Romanian people. She is quick to judge and make uninformed opinions about Romanians. She makes an opinion about Romania even before reaching the country and sticks to it and reinforces it as travelling through Romania. However I cannot stop feeling that she has not tried at all (apart from in the preface section where the benefit of hindsight gives her some depth). As a Romanian from the new generation that has not experinced those dark, hard times I found her portrayal of my people deeply offensive. Reading the book years on from the fall of communism I was mainly interested in reading about her portrayal of the spirit of the Romanian people rather then about the political past. However this spirit was missing. In her travels she has not befriended a single Romanian because of her inability to read beyond the stern, dark, troubled faces of the people that were in fact a visualisation of their internal state of mind, triggered by the hardship of those times. She makes the entire population of the country seem barbaric. A true shame that she has not used the great opportunity at those crucial times in Romania's history to open up the reader's heart towards Romania and the Romanian people.