Another typical “marching day”: Have a sleep in and no breakfast before we attack  Golubac Fortress – high, higher and to the highest summit we climb! And feel like ancient kings of “Danubia”… The big freighters look like toys down there..

Letting our feet dangle, 3 of us enjoy the amazing view: Cliffy rocks forming vertical walls to both sides of the river, it’s really impressing after having traveled  all those weeks in totally flat regions! naked stones laugh at us because of our baby-like age. Still being right in the middle of the Iron Gate, we keep on driving, the sun sets. What a great feeling to float down the nighty river in the dark.. When we find a place to stay and ask the people if we can tow the boat there, we get a clear “no”; we tried to explain that we really need it and they sound quite pitiful: “No. Please!”. Ok, we’re pirates from the dark floods, but still!

Turning and picking some plants from the turbine, one of the guys goes like: “Hey! Why you not stay here?!” Really confused we turn again.

Finally, we get beer and have a nice evening with the guys on the veranda being surprised by German vocabulary like “Ferienwohnung” or “Bescheid”.

For the journey, the nice lady gace us ripe apples&peaches from her garden as well as a bottle of home-made Rakija made of apples. The fruits are gone pretty soon cuz they smell & taste like serbian summer… we pass the huge lake located right before the “entrance” of the Iron Gate. Luckily, the wind has calmed down – it would have been pretty hard to cross with the strong koschava moving you rather upstream than downstream… in the evening, we landed in the middle of the Golubac fortress: for the 2 watergates Djerbdap I & II havebeen built, the pegel of the Danube went 30 meters up -  that’s why we could park there and climb a wall from the keks-roof! What a wicked fortress! and a strategic spot: the Serbians built it to fight the Osmans but 30 years later Golubac was alrdy conquered by them and kept for a few centuries… ironic. No1 of all the placed we stayed over night, perfect kulisse for the Keks – pirates meet serbian and osman soldiers -  in our minds …

After maybe 2 weeks of discussions about Rene’s hair, he gets a funky fresh haircut today – Steffi on one side, Kathi on the other, Mo stays sceptical about the whole mission..

When we arrive in cute Veliko Gradiste, we get a warm welcome: a young lady with her two kids is approaching us waving and laughing and offers anything she can help out with. In the centre we had a funny Serbian conversation with an old woman on the sidewalk, all we could understand was that she once had a German teacher (80 years ago? In 1980? She’s 80 now?); but she was having fun telling us lots of stuff!

Waking up in a new place, it feels like Belgrade by day is like a different city. It’s hot. Too hot. That doesn’t hold us back from going of all on our own missions exploring and wandering through the Serbian metropolis. By the time the sun disappeared behind the seven hills of Belgrade busy buzzing nightlife kicks in. Together with Nemanja, a local couchsurfing host and his friends Nina & Sinisha we are celebrating pirate drinking traditions with vino and cheap cocktails away from the posh touristic part of the shopping malls.

Although life goes on quite normal here, zou notice that this place was a warzone some ten years ago. Not only that on some houses a bomb had blown away 15 floors. But no. This feels like we are traveling east. A good vibe is what we get from all sides.

We’re happy about every visit!

We started our cruise in the fuckin hot morning sun – soon being surrounded by a horde of macho jet skis. After being visited by a local water ski senior we invented ‘Keks-skiing’:

After a while the weather changed and we raced through thunderstorms choppy floods – heading to the city of Passau. Having dropped René and Christoph at the last watergate we finished the leg with a fancy 180°-backslide-dock-on.

Now we feel quite sorry for our stomachs. Can you hear them???

From Watergate Straubing (2327,5) to Schutzhafen Deggendorf (2284)

That day we created a new recipy: the bavarian white sausage – ‘danubed’ and being caught again fresh from the river – we’d be glad to teach you how to chase your gas cooker successfully.. that moment saved our day! tasty brunch on the sun deck.. (Weißwurschtfrühstück)

Ready for the dark side: pirate-flagged we went on..

With the nice people in the little harbour we ended up sitting around and chatting – in the warm mosquito  summer night.

Proper shit! (without dislocations)

The day started quite early – and exciting: Daypack over board! jump in – get rescued and finally brought back his car keys. Unfortunately, our first guest on bord had to leave us in bomb fucked egypt – paddling happily to the river bank having his things packed in a yellow rubbish bag..

In the afternoon we were close to be locked in the first big big watergate on the way - our motor was letting us down so we had to get our paddles and started a 1 kmh speed run to the wharf  while a scary sized freighter was waiting behind the gates. On a nice sandy beach we saw two people freaking out waving and shouting at us – finally we recognized René and Christoph with their racing bikes. They were ready to come with us  for the weekend. The Keks was getting more and more colourful (cheers Margit!) and cosy. Seven people, Pedro the Spider, two bikes, loads of food and drinks - a real sumo- raft!

From Regensburg Kanuclub (2381,5) to Zimmer4 (2378,5)

2 am: pissed dutchmen try to enter our home – ‘please!’ – and away they went.

4 am: mo tries to enter our home – and he really did.

8:30 am: (felt like 6!) 4 early birds around 60 keep shouting out loud – they were about to cut the ropes when we came out in pyjamas and found a different solution for them to get their boats in.

After that start we were pretty glad about the nice breakfast we got sponsored by Margit, Reka and Lena.. Around midday loads of people came to help us with our damaged steerage e.g. Steffi’s granddad and her whole family.

The official ’ship’s ceremony’ took place in the Kanuclub – then we went for the first hurdle: The Stony Bridge in Regensburg. Supported by our wonderful musicians Olli and Peter (who played us some balkan sounds standing on the top of the bridge) we shot through one of the bridge archs – to spend the night not really far away.. (damn it)

We met another raft and they kindly invited us for dinner – which was delightful! discussions, beer, wine, beer, wine – for some maybe too much: the crew awoke because of a scream and a bang! one of the sailormen (moritz)  fell out of his bed (1.6 m!) but had a soft landing on another one. Though he was under shock he went back to bed.

hier könnt ihr nachlesen, wann wir uns vermutlich wo befinden werden, falls ihr uns besuchen oder sogar mitfahren wollt.

01.07.- 29.07.09 Aus- und Umbau des Floßes in Regensburg

30.07.09 Jungfernfahrt und Treffen aller beim Bau beteiligten Leute

01.08.09 Abfahrt in Regensburg

03.08.09 Grenze D/Ö

07.08.09 Wien (Ö)

09.08.09 Grenze Ö/SK

10.08.09 Bratislava (SK)

14.08.09 Grenze SK/HU

17.08.09 Budapest (HU)

22.08.09 Grenze HU/RS/HR

24.08.09 Baja (HU)

26.08.09 Grenze HR/RS

29.08.09 Novi Sad (RS)

01.09.09 Belgrad (RS)

06.09.09 Eisernes Tor

09.09.09 Grenze RS/BG/RO

10.09.09 Orsova (RO)

13.09.09 Vidin (BG)

18.09.09 Ruse (BG)

22.09.09 Grenze BG/RO

27.09.09 Galati (RO)

01.10.09 Rückfahrt nach Regensburg