**This talk has been pre-recorded and event registrants will be contacted by email with details on how to watch online at the scheduled event time of Wednesday 24th February at 6.30pm**

Jim accidently started studying Romanian while taking a degree in French at Manchester in 1970. He first visited the country in 1972 and spent a year there as a British Council scholar studying Philology. He also spent most of the nineties based in Bucharest. This time he was installing banking systems.

Both jobs left lots of time to wander the mountains, talking to shepherds and visiting interesting places. In this short talk he will combine three of his discoveries to try to give an overview of the Romanian culture he loves.

These are: a most unusual graveyard known as “The Merry Cemetery”, a shepherds’ folksong which has become the national epic myth and the work of a great twentieth century poet and philosopher, Lucian Blaga.

Event image: Merry Cemetery, Săpânța, Romania – photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash