Treibgut

Around Orsova, Toplet and Herculane
Once arrived at Ilie´s house in Toplet we get taken over by the outstanding hospitality of Ilie and his family. As they want us to stay and show us around and we quite like the place and the people we end up exploring Toplet and its roundabouts for a couple of days, enjoying Mama Popescu´s cuisine and having a party with Ilie and his friends.

We had a really great time going horse riding, rumbling around the forest crawling into caves, visiting old health resort Baile Herculane with a nice bath in the sulfuric hot springs and strolling around the village marveling at watermills and alambicos to produce Rakija (local spirit)  that seemed to be from a different century.

Ilie with the wood for his new living room

The four remaining pirates experienced the sensation of sleeping in a proper bed again, having a warm (boiler heated with wood) shower almost everyday and having great food made in a proper Romanian kitchen in more than one pot… We washed our clothes, shaved and felt a bit more like humans in the 21st century – except the surroundings felt like time travel.

There goes a big Thank You! from all the crew to the family Popescu, who made everything possible and didnt avoid cost or effort to love and entertain us as guests and friends.

After about a week in this beautiful Romanian village we started thinking about our lifes after this legendary boat trip. Some had to go back to uni, others had to find a job and everybody had to get back somehow.

So we sold the motor and left the *Keks* parked on the property of the friend who bought the motor. There it is waiting for us to come back next summer and go tothe Delta and the black sea.

Then the boys left direction home and the girls started off direction Bucharest to enjoy the Romanian capital for a couple of days.

Now everybody is back to their landlubber life, the little pirates inside are sleeping until next year…

private property   – Orsova 954

We get woken up by musica folkore. Turish-balkan-gipsy beats and singing puts an end to our sleeping in.

As we are short of essential supplies such as bread and there is no shop around, we decide to go to the Decebal restaurant next to our landing for coffee and french fries. This is un unusual combination also in Romania and maybe thats why we had to wait quite some time for our take away chips and instant coffee.

We untie our raft from the private property and start off. The weather is changing, a bit cold and gray, so soon everybody backs out reading a book, steering with headphones, staring into the sky or enjoying the impressive landscape of the Iron Gate.

Suddenly there´s screaming and waving on the left river side. We draw closer and make out four guys standing on some landing. Steffi recognizes her Romanian friend Ilie Popescu, we pull over and after a heartily greeting of Ilie, his father, his cousin and a friend of them we leave this place – now with Ilie on board – towards the Base Nautica of Orsova where we will leave the raft and go to Ilie´s place in Toplet, a little village about 10km up the river Cerna.

But having arrived at the marina we happen to meet the Romanian border police who want to trouble us. It turns out to be a waiting game which we win in the end thanks to our native friends.

Once we´re done with paperwork we drive off to Ilie´s house where homemade Rakija (local spirit) and a delicious hot meal from Mama Popescu are waiting for us.

some weekend house 1007 – private property in front of Decebal´s face 9

We leave with gray sky, our friends from last night gone fishing for hours already. It is windy and as there is almost no current because we are not far away from the Portile de Fier/Djerdap I watergate we get along quite slowly.

We try imagining the scenery some 25 years ago, before the building of the two huge watergates. Water was 30m down and there were island and whole villages the older people tell us about that are never to be seen again. Some kind of Danube Atlantis… Some of the villages were “moved” to places higher up, othersjust drowned forever. The famous turkish influenced island Ada Kaleh for example is now part of the underwater landscape.

The Iron Gate was very feared by the fishermen at that time though and probably we wouldn´t have made it through the sizzling floods with our little wooden raft.

So in a way we are happy we don´t have to fight the strong waters, on the other hand it is less exciting than I thought this passage would be.

As night falls we keep going until we really cannot see anything but black shades of mountains on the sky anymore. Landing gets quite interesting in the big bay of Kazan, but in the end we make it. Just to find out that Romanian border police is approaching. Suspecting trouble we are quite surprised when they leave after checking our passports, a call to the local police station and writing down our names.

In the end we have a nice hot soup and go to bed.