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I am proud of a line I coined many years ago
Romania is the Orient dreaming that she is Franceand repeated it to a British diplomat friend this week. His rejoinder was to quote a British diplomat in Paris who told him,
It's taken me years to see that France is the Middle East with a very thin veneer of civilisation. Paris is essentially Cairo.It's good to know that we still have diplomats like that.
Very poetic, Paul.
ReplyDeleteSomewhat more prosaically, I like to tell my Swiss-based friends that Romania is one hour ahead and 20 years behind.
marc
Sir, I feel insulted by your comment. We sacrificed our self's at the gates of Europe to stop the "Orient" overrunning it only to have Europe open the back-gates to the Orient. It is your country of origin on the way to becoming part of the Orient. Demographically at least, in maximum 2-3 generations the religion of the majority of the population will turn London in to Cairo and perhaps as well Paris, Brussels, and some other once famous centers of European culture !
ReplyDeleteYou make a very good point with which I sympathise. By Orient I meant the Near East though Romania has things in common with the Christian Middle East. It is not derogatory to say this and it is probably true of Greece too.
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