A Time of Gifts sees Patrick Leigh Fermor setting out at the age of 18 in 1933, on his epic journey across Europe from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. This first volume takes the reader as far as Hungary.;Fermor offers compelling glimpses, not only of the events which were curdling Europe at that time, but also of the resplendent domes, the monasteries, the great rivers, the hospitable burgomasters, the sun on the Bavarian snow, the storks and frogs, the grandeurs and the courtesies.