Among the growing number of foreign observers who sojourned in the Danubian Principalities at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century was the famous orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. He dedicated a chapter of his monumental autobiography to the year he spent as “Consular Agent” in Jassy between 1806 and 1807, which is published here for the first time in its entire length, as a pre-print to a more comprehensive edition. Relating about his scholarly interests and leisure time activities, commenting upon the social life of the local élite as well as on the nuisances of everyday routine, his narrative provides widely unexplored insights into the backstage of the political history of the Napoleonic Age from a local perspective.