The Danube

  Copyright © 2013 Nick Thorpe

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Thorpe, Nick.

  The Danube : a journey upriver from the Black Sea to the Black Forest / Nick Thorpe.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978–0–300–18165–4 (cl : alk. paper)

  1. Danube River Valley—Description and travel. 2. Danube River Valley—History, Local. 3. Danube River Valley—Social life and customs. 4. Thorpe, Nick—Travel—Danube River Valley. I. Title.

  DJK76.4.T47 2013

  914.96045—dc23

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This book is for Andrea

  Contents

  List of Illustrations and Maps

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction. The Lips of the Danube

  1 The Beginning of the World

  2 The Kneeling Oak

  3 Mountains of the Fathers

  4 The Colour of the River

  5 The Dogs of Giurgiu

  6 Gypsy River

  7 River of Dreams

  8 River of Fire

  9 The Black Army

  10 Smoke, Ash and a Tale or Two

  11 The Wind in the Willows

  12 Danube Fairytales

  13 Oh Germany, Pale Mother

  14 The Tailor of Ulm

  Afterword. A Kind of Solution

  Notes

  Select Bibliography

  Index

  Illustrations and Maps

  Plates

  1. Mile Zero, the lighthouse at Sulina

  2. Sulina with Adrian Oprisan

  3. In the heart of the Danube delta

  4. Simion outside his home in Sulina

  5. Statue of the Glykon, Constanța

  6. Statue of Pontus, Constanța

  7. The Kneeling Oak, Karaorman

  8. Alexander's grandmother, Karaorman

  9. The Black Sea from the mouth of the Danube near Sfantu Georghe

  10. Recep Lupu's wife and mother-in-law, Babadag

  11. Gypsy girl, Babadag

  12. Mitya Alexi, Ghindărești

  13. Nikita Ivan, Ghindărești

  14. Momi Kolev and a camel

  15. Dark skies over Nikopol

  16. Danube Iron Gates from the water

  17. Danube dawn at Eselnita

  18. The water tower, Vukovar

  19. Wetlands at Kopački Rit

  20. Depiction of the Red Army crossing the Danube in 1945

  21. Snails after the floodwaters fell, Kopački Rit

  22. Danube floods in Budapest, 2013

  23. The Danube bend in Hungary from the Tatabánya

  24. At the helm of the Tatabánya

  25. Hermann Spannraft at the wheel of the cable ferry

  26. Josef Fischer, Rossatz, Austria

  27. The Atsaeva family, Grein, Austria

  28. The cable-ferry at Ottensheim

  29. The Inn and the Danube meet at Passau

  30. The tailor of Ulm

  31. The youth of Ulm

  32. Statue of Mother Baar showing the young Danube the way to the Black Sea

  Maps

  1. The Danube delta

  2. The Lower-Middle Danube

  3. The Upper-Middle Danube

  4. The Upper Danube

  1 Mile or Kilometre Zero, from which the length of the Danube is measured: the lighthouse at Sulina.

  2 Leaving Sulina with Adrian Oprisan, towards Crisan and Karaorman.

  3 In the heart of the Danube delta, on the way to harvest reeds near Crisan – from Adrian Oprisan's boat.

  4 Aunty Nicolina was not at home, but Uncle Simion was. ‘I never could stand fish.’ Outside their house in Sulina.

  5 The Glykon in the National History and Archaeology Museum at Constanța: the head of a lamb, the ears of a man, body of a serpent, and the tail of a lion – like the Danube.

  6 Pontus, the god of the Black Sea, rising out of the seaweed, clasping the rudder of a ship. From the Museum at Constanța.

  7 The Kneeling Oak at Karaorman: keeping the Turks safely in the ground – or a place for donkeys to scratch their backs.

  8 Alexander's grandmother in Karaorman: preparing a bucketful of carp to last Alexander a week at university in Tulcea.

  9 The sweet waters of the Danube mingle with the Black Sea at the southern mouth of the Danube near Sfântu Gheorghe.

  10 Babadag – Recep Lupu's wife and mother-in-law. ‘In the Pentecostalist church, you can marry who you wish!’

  11 Gypsy girl in Babadag. ‘And anyway,’ Regina adds, ‘if we stayed at school, the boys would steal us.’

  12 Mitya Alexi, fisherman in Ghindărești: ‘In my household, money is like the Danube. It flows through our fingers!’

  13 Nikita Ivan, fisherman in Ghindărești: unravelling a net the colour of his full beard.

  14 Momi Kolev and a camel called Emir, Koloseum Circus, Ruse, Bulgaria. ‘In Bulgaria…we enjoy life!’

  15 Air pollution on the Romanian shore. A storm gathers over Nikopol in Bulgaria, site of the defeat of the last Crusade in 1386.

  16 The Iron Gates from the water, looking upstream towards the Church Above the Water, which replaced the Church Beneath the Water.

  17 Danube dawn at Eselnița, looking downstream towards the lost island of Ada Kaleh, across the storage lake formed by the Iron Gates dam.

  18 Siege damage on the water tower at Vukovar: The doves of peace have taken over Vukovar's war monument.

  19 Wetlands at Kopački Rit. ‘They [hunters] have to realise that now they have to move over, and make way for the nature conservers’: Tibor Mikuska.

  20 The monument to the Soviet liberators at Batina, Croatia. The Red Army crosses the Danube in November 1944, under the onslaught of German artillery.

  21 ‘The best flood protection is a wide floodplain, to absorb the rising waters’: snails waiting for the all-clear, after the floodwaters fell, Kopački Rit.

  22 ‘The flood waters are already climbing the steps of the Hungarian Parliament, and are expected to peak in the capital on Sunday night.’ Budapest, June 2013.

  23 The Danube bend in Hungary from the stern of the Tatabánya, March 2010. Just seven months later, she was wrecked off the Turkish coast.

  24 At the helm of the Tatabánya, heading upriver with the mainland on the left, Szentendre Island on the right.

  25 ‘The best job in the world.’ Hermann Spannraft at the wheel of the cable ferry, Ottensheim, Austria.

  26 ‘I haven't eaten salmon for ten years' Josef Fischer and his fish, Rossatz, Austria. A love affair with a threatened species.

  27 ‘I would like to look after people,’ says Hava, ‘because I have been through so much myself. I know how much help people need.’ The Atsaeva family in Grein, Austria.

  28 Hi-tech from the nineteenth century. The cable ferry at Ottensheim, one of only four left on the Danube. The ferry uses no power other than the current of the river.

  29 The Inn and the Danube meet at Passau. The ‘white gold’ of salt was exchanged for the yellow- orange gold of wheat.

 
30 The tailor of Ulm: The Danube dilutes his homesickness. ‘I'm glad that I live so close to a river which flows all the way to the Black Sea.’

  31 The youth of Ulm. Geraldine, Erdem and Theresa. Three kids, just starting out. An image of a harmonious, modern Germany.

  32 Mother Baar shows the young Danube the way to the Black Sea. The Baar is a plateau in south-western Germany, bordering the Black Forest.

  Acknowledgements

  THE DANUBE has wound its way through the many years I have lived in Hungary and eastern Europe – sometimes straight as an arrow, sometimes wild and meandering. As I began to write this book, my relationship with the river became more intimate. It was as if the river looked back and watched me for the first time. When I arrived at the end of the journey in Donaueschingen, I realised that I now carry the whole river within me.

  Many people, friends and strangers, helped make this journey and this book possible. The list below is seriously incomplete.

  My wife Andrea first took me down to the river and gave me a home beside it. In the winter of 1991, before the Danube was diverted, we walked late at night beneath willows pure white in the snow and the hoarfrost at Ásványráro.

  In Romania Mihai Radu was an indefatigable researcher, translator and driver. In the Danube delta, Radu Suciu introduced me to the sturgeon, and Daniel and Eugen Petrescu, Grigore Baboianu and Adrian Oprisan guided my travels. Todor Avramov saved me when I was stranded at the mouth of the river, and his wife Maria told me stories from her childhood.

  The staff of the National History and Archaeology Museum in Constanța, and Marian Neagu of the Museum of the Lower Danube in Călărași were generous with their time. In Sulina Aurel Bajanaru and in Dervent Father Atal deserve special mention. Doru Oniga was an excellent host on several visits to the Iron Gates.

  In Bulgaria I would like to thank especially Nikolai Nenov, Eskren Velikov, Milan Nikolov, Momcilo Kolev and Theodora Kopcheva in Ruse, Todor Tsanev in Červena Voda, Nikolai Kirilov and his team and Father Iliya in Lom, and Mitko Natovi and his whole family in Vidin.

  In Serbia, Lacka Lakatos and Milorad Batinić drove me through the long reaches of the summer night. After so many wars it was a relief to cover the story of a river in peacetime with them. Andrej Starovic explained the intricacies and controversies of the Vinča culture.

  In Hungary, Adam LeBor first suggested the Danube as a theme, the crew of the Tatabánya took me all the way to Esztergom, and Szilárd Sasváry and Gábor Karátson generously shared their knowledge of the river. Viktor Filipenko translated texts from Russian, and Andrea Iván translated the story of Teddy Weyr and my interview with Todor Tsanev from Bulgarian. Onur Yumurtaci of the University of Eskișehir translated the Turkish songs from the Danube delta.

  In Austria, I would like to thank in particular Bethany Bell, Lana Šehić, Omar Al-Rawi, Seda Atsaeva and her whole family, Hermann Spannraft and Refik.

  Many environmentalists, the whole length of the river, shared their time and knowledge with me. Apart from those mentioned already, I must thank Orieta Hulea, Stela Bozhinova, Tibor Mikuska, Claudia and Arno Mohl, Jaromír Šibl, Philip Weller, Georg Frank, Hannes Seehofer and Siegfried Geissler.

  The main maps I used throughout the journey were the excellent four-volume Bikeline editions of the Esterbauer publishing house, designed especially for long-distance cyclists. By pretending to be on a bicycle even when I was in a car, I was able to stay within sight and smell of the river for almost the whole journey.

  No English writer or traveller in eastern Europe can escape the magnificent legacy of Patrick Leigh Fermor, who passed away in June 2011, as I was in mid-stride on my own journey. Neal Ascherson's Black Sea was a great inspiration, and without him the precious Danube snail might never have found refuge between these pages. The Ottoman Empire by Patrick Kinross was invaluable as a source on the Turkish period, and I have quoted liberally from his work. I first read Danube by Claudio Magris when it was first published in English in 1989. While my own book is very different, I enjoyed his literary company throughout my journey. For my understanding of the archaeology of the Danube, The Lost World of Old Europe – The Danube Valley 5000–3500 BC, edited by David W. Anthony, was a constant reference work, as was the book so many of its authors challenge, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe by Marija Gimbutas. The archaeologist John Chapman kindly corresponded with me to clarify the origins of the spiny oyster shell, Spondylus gaederopus. Donald Wesling of San Diego introduced me to ‘The Willows’, the astonishing short story by Algernon Blackwood about the Danube between Hungary and Slovakia. Gary Snyder's writings, from the faraway Sierra Nevada in northern California, have been a precious reminder since my youth of the power and importance of wilderness.

  In Britain, I would like to thank especially Robert Baldock of Yale University Press for his unstinting support, and also at Yale, Steve Kent, Tami Halliday, Samantha Cross and Candida Brazil. My agent Sara Menguc enthusiastically backed the project from the start. Loulou Brown painstakingly copy-edited the book.

  Many friends walked under the willows over the years, encouraging me to write: Gerard Casey and Louise de Bruin, Roger Norman, Simon Pilpel, Jim Oppé, Bill Brockway, Nicola Balfour, Steve Johnstone, Frances Land, Stephen Batty, Frances Hatch, Art Hewitt, Charlie Foster-Hall, Nikola Leudolph and Mark Frankland. At the BBC, among many friends and colleagues, Tony Grant, the editor of From Our Own Correspondent was a tower of strength and enthusiasm.

  Finally, I would like to thank my mother Janet, my sister Mish, my brother Dom, and last but not least my friend and faithful champion Xandra Bingley.

  INTRODUCTION

  The Lips of the Danube

  I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river

  Is a strong brown god

  T. S. ELIOT, ‘THE DRY SALVAGES’1

  Yet the river almost seems

  To flow backwards, and I

  Think it must come

  From the East.

  FRIEDRICH HÖLDERLIN, ‘DER ISTER’2

  History flows backwards now

  Gathering in its wide pages

  This terrible river:

  Water spills, from three mouths of the Danube,

  But from the fourth, blood.

  ANDREI CIURUNGA, ‘CANALUL’3

  HISTRIA. A thin column of smoke leans inland from its roots among the reeds. The sharp north-easterly breeze brings tears to my eyes. There's a flicker of flame; I can just see the heads of two men above the reeds, beside their fire. Two small fishing boats pass northwards up the coast, like racehorses, side by side. Their bows cut the rough grey surf. There are twin figures in the stern, one in the bow. Are the men by the fire fishermen, come ashore to cook, or reed cutters, who have reached the end of the world? Has the mariner built his last or his first desolate fire on this coast?

  Here on the fraying fringes of Europe, between the Greek and Roman ruins of Histria and the rising waters of the Black Sea, I begin my journey up the River Danube. Suddenly an explosion splits the fabric of the morning. We crouch for shelter, but find none among the ruins. The roar rolls slowly round the rim of the horizon. The Persians, under Darius the Great? The Iranians under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? The Romanian coast is only two hours’ flying time from Baghdad or Tehran. But it is only the Romanian navy, or their close allies the Americans, testing the firepower of their frigates far out at sea. The ruins take no notice. These walls were overrun for fourteen hundred years. Histria was established by Greek colonists from Miletus in time for the Olympic Games in the mid-seventh century BC, and abandoned in AD 700, when silt from the southernmost lip of the Danube turned its sheltered bay into an inland lake.

  To travel the Danube upriver, from the Black Sea to the Black Forest, I must first explore the hinterland of Dobrogea – the ‘good land’, according to one etymology4 – between the Danube and the Black Sea coast. In the National History and Archaeology Museum at Constanța, forty-five kilometres down the coast from Histria, stands a coiled snake ma
de from purple marble, its head erect. Known as Glykon, the sweet one, a Roman god of healing, the snake has the face of a lamb, the ears of a man, and the tail of a lion, signifying gentleness, attentiveness and courage. It was found during excavations beneath the old railway station in the city in 1962, with thirteen other gods, most probably deliberately hidden to save them from the Christians, with their passion for destroying pagan images. Did the owners expect the Christians to pass like a sudden squall, after which the snake could re-emerge, unscathed? At the start of this journey up the Danube, the serpent is for me the river herself, a single body, green, brown, white, yellow, grey, blue, silver and black, her moods and her surface colours constantly changing.

  Up the Danube? Many people I met on this long journey thought I must be mad to attempt the river the wrong way. I clung on for dear life in the stern of Adrian Oprisan's small fibreglass dinghy, riding the waves at Sulina in the Danube delta; I battled on my bicycle along the dyke into a fresh north-westerly wind near Mohács in southern Hungary, as immaculately dressed Swiss and English cyclists glided effortlessly past me in the other direction, their mouths wide open in amazement, catching the fruit-flies of late summer; and finally I chased the tail of the Danube in my car, snaking away among suburban German hills.

  Rivers follow a certain inevitable course from the mountains to the sea. Intrepid travel-book writers emerge from coffee shops in Furtwangen and Donaueschingen, gorged on Black Forest gateaux, to follow the same route downstream, with growing apprehension as they reach less and less familiar lands. But what do east Europeans think, in their palaces and hovels by the river, in towns whose names few geography teachers in Bonn or Brighton, Basel or Barcelona, ever utter? In Brǎila or in Cǎlǎraşi, in Smederevo or Baja? And what of the steady procession of migrants and traders, soldiers and adventurers who travelled in my direction, up the Danube, in search of a better life. What was on their minds and in their satchels? And what did they leave behind?