Leigh Fremor's A Time of Gifts as social anthropoloty

I continue to be impressed by the terrific writing in Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts, his 1977 emoir about his wintertime solo trek from London to Constantinople (volume 1, which I'm reading, ends in Hungary, I think). His sense of detail and his capacity to bring the detail into social context is extraordinary; I would be tempted to say that the lesson for all travelers is to keep a detailed journal, but we learn in this volume that he journal, along w/ the rest of his belongings, was stolen in a youth hostel in Munich early in the travels, so the recovered info in the first section of this memoir was from memory (and perhaps some research) alone. Still, good idea to keep a journal and to keep it close to you (or in the Cloud, a resource that PLF obviously did not have). Particularly impressive passages are his hilarious description of the eating and drinking in a Munich beer hall and his unflinching recollection of the kitsch and bad taste in the design and decor of the house of a wealthy German businessman. Yes, there's a certain snobbism throughout: PLF finds it easier to critique the working class and the self-made and to go into raptures on the taste and good manners of the last pathetic remnants of the aristocracy. Still, his observations feel right on, and he incorporates them well into a great narrative, with adventures (nearly forced to spend the night in a drafty barn, where he might have frozen to death, misadventures (hard to imagine anyone taking on this kind of travel, by foot in winter across northern Germany, then or today), and frightening observtions about the signs all around him supporting Hitler and the Nazi party. Many times, as an Englishman, he felt uncomfortable or even threatened; despite his encounters w/ many "good Germans" who still held out an ethic of helping wayward travelers and students, he had to be appalled by the storm troopers, the fascist salutes, the many houses and pubs that he entered that displayed - whether willingly or not, does it matter? - pictures of Hitler and swastikas. You have to wonder: How could he stand it? Why didn't he just head due south and retreat into France or Switzerland? How could he pretend to be at ease with these people, in that culture, at that time? Nevertheless, these glimpses of fascism taking route are important; it's almost as if this work were a form of social anthropology even more than a travel memoir.