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.

Ritopek 1141 – Smederevo 1115 – Nowhere beach 1104

Leaving the rubbish pile behind towards the former Serbian capital Smederevo to restock supplies. Skyscraper impressions with overhangs and individually designed balcony empires…

A Russian-Serbian fisherman stops by for a chat. He keeps talking in Serbian and Russian we keep understanding very little but for the essential parts – fish? yes!  vodka? yes? – it’s enough. After this nice little exchange (3 shots of vodka from us for about 4kg of fresh river fish from him) we gotta gut the fish. Everybody goes for it, we take turn steering so everyone can have some fun.

Later we found a beach where we started a barbecue for estimated imagined 10 people (heaps of fish, potatoes and other veggies in tinfoil, stuffed champignons…). In between plastic bottles, old shoes, river shells and strange industrial sounds from behind the gravel hill the Danube fish got grilled. The little spiky, pointy nose fish found lots of  ‘friends’ or rather eaters whereas the so called Danube flat fish who due to many small spines wasn’t loved as much.

Belgrade 1170 – Ritopek 1141

After a last walk to the petrol station/bakery we leave our kind friends in Dorcol. Back on the Danube, we face a strong wind and blue-gray waves, which give you the impression of being on the sea.

In the evening we land in Ritopek, rubbish village. Colourful plastic bottles, bags, glass, every kind of rubbish was in sight. people on tractors drove by.

Back to the city center after a rather chilly swim in the lush and soft waters of the Sava. Steve’s taking a trip to the hospital after his hand has not significantly recovered. The whole x-ray odysee took several hours but brought clearity that he had broken some part of the middle hand in Novi Sad one week earlier.  In order to get it all properly fixed again he decided to go back to Germany.

Belgrade 1170

Where is Steve? that was what the crew wondered about this day. He’d taken the turnoff to the club-boat esplanade and won’t be seen for the next time.

Full moon, changing weather, all in all we got up to some internet business but a kind of general unorientated state took overhand in which none of us was able to take the lead.

During the whole time in Belgrade a burger/pizza with ketchup/fast food flash burst out within the crew as of 24/7 availability.

Launching at sunrise. A steaming hot day once more. The Danube has widened up some more. Sharp calculations by the crew predict by the time we reach Belgrade we are going to run out of cookies, petrol, bread, garlic and all other important goods.

After a quick check by suspicious forces of the the river police we get saved with a pack of welcome-to-Belgrade super cookies by some happy old fisherman. Thumbs up.

we the last bit of energy we do the Danube city circle tour being rather indecisive where to land till out of the blue we find the secret pirate headquarter. Dorcol. A small shabby marina on the mouth of the river Sava on the foot hills of the impressive fortress Kalemegdan.

Basic, free but piratey. here the local rivermen enjoy themselves playing chess, cooking together and most important drinking from sunrise to sunset. Most of them could be our grandfathers.

With lots of helpful advice we go for a walk to Belgrade downtown ready to fill our bellies with all culinaric specialties the capital has to offer.

Backa Palanka 1299 – Novi Sad 1259

Beatiful morning, waking up in the middle of the moss green lake of Backa Palanka you cant miss the refreshing morning swim. After the usual necessities and preparations we’re floating down the now broader and more polluted stream.

With estimated 45 degrees our brain and body cells start melting or rather boiling…

At sunset we reach Novi Sad, first big Serbian city, welcomed by a cool elderly man who gave us a nice bottle of wine because he liked our “Huckleberry Finn concept” so much.

Friday night Novi Sad downtown checking out boys, girls and bars in the crowded streets of the city center. We find out: Serbia rocks! For there is music everywhere our lost sailor – now legally here- has a problem working out where the crew is hanging out.

DoM JE TAM0 GDE JE DUNAV!

My home is where the Danube is!

Serbian backwater 1380 – Vukovar 1333

Two of us are still awake when the sun  shows up. Three grumpy pirates start the engine to flee from the worst mosquito attac ever!Floating through the foggy landscape – accompanied by egrets and wafts of mist fading in the early morning’s twilight – the first pilot falls asleep and wakes up watching upstream. Navigation does not really get better before breakfast.

on our compulsory walk to the police station we explore weird signs of the past: bombed buildings tell stories about the war we can hardly remember and still dont know much about. Houses facing the street with wild green growing out of windows and doors and the naked skeletons of formerly elegant buildings, next to renovated insurance agencies, supermarkets and brand new hotels. Bizarre aspects of a new beginning like a fancy lingerie store in a last century style mansion full of bullet holes make us wonder about the scars of war, the time of recovering and the way people deal with it.

In contrast to all that we bumped into a bunch of funny people organizing a film festival with open air screenings on deck of an old cargo ship.  Funny enough, they show the German movie “Berlin calling” at the official festival opening tonight. For us, it’s like home entertainment as we towed the * Keks* to the freighter’s side and enjoy the film from our sun deck.