Get me to the Danube!


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February 6th 2011
Published: February 6th 2011
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20-6-2007 Get me to the Danube

Damn! No places left in the sleeping wagon! I’d waited so long to start this journey. I didn’t want to retreat back to my baking 10th floor flat in one of Bucharest’s less select areas. Besides which, the amount of time before I had to leave for the UK was rapidly dwindling. Affairs at school where I was teaching out here in Romania had dragged on interminably as we tried to secure a place at another school for an unsatisfactory student. I took a seat in an ordinary compartment thinking that I could doze in there or, indeed, if it wasn’t very full, stretch out a little. As it turned out, the seats were all taken.

In Romania there is seldom any question of sitting on a train minding your own business. On the contrary, your business is going to be the centre of discussion for most if not all of any given journey. This is even more so if you are a foreigner. A foreigner with even only a mediocre command of the language will be kept busy for the entire ride. The fact that it’s the middle of the night will make absolutely no difference. My companions that evening rose to the occasion. As ever it was party time and nobody felt the need to sleep. All of my new friends were elderly people going back home to Turnu Severin. A town set on the banks of the Danube.

By the time the train pulled in at a ghastly 3.45 we all had a fairly full picture of one another’s lives. One of my companions, invited me back for a little breakfast. I wasn’t sure about this but what else was there to do in the middle of the night? We walked a long, long way and the surrounding architecture got more and more depressing as communist blocks reared up on every side. His flat was in one of these. He left me in a bedroom whilst he went and washed in a basin in the kitchen. As I sat there I became more and more uncomfortable with the situation and in the end made my excuses and left.

Finding my way back to the centre wasn’t too much of a problem. By now it was dawn. I wandered around and had a look at the fine old school buildings. The market was just starting up as I walked back towards the station. Suddenly I realised that the train waiting there was bound for my next destination – Orsova. What’s more the next train timetabled wouldn’t leave until midday. I leapt on board in the nick of time. I was heading towards the Danube Gorge. I have travelled by boat many miles along the Danube and am very fond of this great river that for the most part bowls along in a wide peaceful course drawing together peoples from so many countries.

Back in the 90s I spent a wonderful week exploring its Delta and the village of Sfîntu Gheorge which in those days dreamed away just at the point where the river enters the Black Sea. High bowed fishing boats vaguely reminiscent of Venetian gondolas drifted along the river channel and it was in that village that I watched a woman re-plastering the exterior of her house with a mixture of cow dung, straw and mud. (A well-tried and very effective mixture.) I later met her son who lived in London and worked in computers. In the course of the holiday I received a proposal of marriage from the local hydrologist. He apologised for his lack of height saying the problem was that he had to wade into the Danube twice a day and the river had shrunk him. When I decided to walk back home to London from Romania I decided that this point on the Danube, where the Carpathian range sweeps up out of Serbia, would be an appropriate place to start.

So the Danube is an old friend and I was looking forward to seeing its more dramatic face as it flows through its Gorge, a Gorge which for centuries had been very tricky to navigate. Between 1964-72 the Iron Gate Dam was constructed. The project finally made this section of the Danube navigable but resulted in several villages disappearing beneath the waters, including the enchanting sounding island in the middle of the river known as Ada Kaleh and inhabited mainly by an ethnic Turkish population. The town of Orsova also had to be rebuilt. What greets the visitor now is a functional little place but it’s not strong on character. I picked up some essential supplies and thought about my next move.

Originally I had intended to walk along the Danube admiring the drama of the scenery. I would then strike out over the Almăj mountains from just past the junction at Liubcova up to a village called Sicheviţa and ultimately on to Şopotu Nou where the trek down another Gorge, that of the Nera, begins. One of the complications of this stretch of country is that nothing like a walking map exists until you reach Şoputu Nou. By now it was 8.00 and already extremely hot. Suddenly the prospect of starting out along that baking white road by foot seemed extremely unappealing and I opted for a ride up to my turn off in a minibus.


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