Blue Danube to Black Sea Day 1: A Thousand Miles to Go

This is the first episode of my blog about cruising down the Danube. Some of you may recall that I blogged about the Danube in 2014 when we made the river voyage upstream from Budapest into Austria, Germany and then Prague. We enjoyed it so much that we decided that when time and funds allowed, we would cruise downstream from Hungary to the Black Sea. So we did, there and back, an amazing journey of two thousand miles. The previous blog ran to a box set of nine episodes. This one, covering a two week voyage, will run to fourteen (yes, I know...). I wrote it during the cruise itself, if only to make sure I could recall where we were on each particular day before all those Eastern European names and memories of people, buildings and landscapes began to coalesce into one another.

My aim was to try to capture so much that was new to us east of Budapest, not least the culture and politics of nations we'd never visited before. I've now edited slightly and inserted some photographs. But it's mainly as written, complete with errors of fact (please tell me!) and - more important - all the risks that first impressions carry - superficial perceptions, shallow interpretations. These could be misleading in countries that have experienced decades, no, centuries, of alien rule and have also experienced terrible conflict in the twentieth century in two world wars and (in the case of two of them) the Balkan wars of the 1990s following the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

With those caveats, here goes....


Friday 24 May
The airport is heaving with holidaymakers flying out to Lanzarote, Alicante, Rhodes and similar sunny destinations. The check-in queue snakes around the concourse and down to the entrance. The heart sinks. Why are there so many children and young people not at school on this last day before half-term begins, I ask grumpily? Suddenly the queue starts moving like an unblocked bowel. We learn that the luggage conveyor had stalled but has now been put right. Relief that constipation is over.

Thankfully, we are on a grown-up flight. Many of the passengers look likely candidates for the cruise, though not the cross-dressing young man at the front who is wearing a white outfit with a sash telling the world that he is the “Bride to Be”. The elderly man next to J seems unsure about flying and fumbles with his seatbelt. J is always helpful in these circumstances. We fly along the Danube valley. The river is unmistakeable, curling bulbously through Austria and Hungary, defining the historic empire. We recall our first Danube cruise five years ago when we sailed upstream from Budapest to Passau. Now we are to sail down from Budapest to the Black Sea. As we descend towards Budapest, huge thunderheads tower up on the horizon. But the plane does a 180 degree turn as it comes in to land, so worries about sudden downdrafts and rain squalls are needless. We land gently in Danubia.

It is a 50 minute drive from the airport to the ship. I have to remind myself which side of the river is Buda and which is Pest. My mnemonic is that West rhymes with Pest, but Pest is not West. Buda is where palace, church and Fishermen's Bastion perch on their Acropolis. Our visit there last time is coming back. Meanwhile P is for Pest and for Parliament, whose vast emblematic building stands on the opposite bank. It is late. In the darkness, the grand buildings on either side of the Danube and the bridges connecting them are beautifully lit.

There are arrival rituals: handwashing (for ritual as well as physical disinfecting), passports taken from us (creating a temporary society without nationality on this ship, though the point is to make crossing international frontiers easier to manage), photographs taken at check-in for ID, issuing of key-cards and so on. There is the usual nervous conversation of people who are strangers suddenly thrown together. Michael Argyle’s definition of a “total community” comes to mind, a group that works, lives, eats and sleeps within the same confines such as a prison, an asylum or a boarding school. The social architecture of our cruise ship begins to take shape and structure our existence for two weeks: fertile ground for observation and ethnographical analysis. What kind of people go on cruises? What kind of people have chosen this one? What kind of voyagers will we be? Tourists? Visitors? Guests? Or even pilgrims? Memories from Santiago last week are stirred. I try to remember the content of my addresses on pilgrimage.

It is all very well appointed, this ship. Our cabin (cell?) has everything you could need. But I do not expect to sleep this first night. There has been too much stimulus too late in the day, too much excitement. And I don’t. So I read from the second half of Andrew Beattie’s excellent book on the Danube* that I’ve brought with me. Part one served me well on the Upper Danube cruise we made five years ago. I’m surprised that the ship’s library doesn’t carry any books at all about the landscapes we shall travel through, not even the standard Rough Guide or Lonely Planet volumes on the five countries we shall be visiting. I’m aware of how little I know about Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria where we shall be setting foot during the voyage, to say nothing of Ukraine and Moldova which we may glimpse across the water.

Saturday 25 May
The evening and the morning of our first day. On this cruise there are no concessions to your long journey the day before or the lateness of your arrival. It’s up bright and early to be on the coach to go and visit the local city of Kalocsa. “My little city” says the bright young Hungarian guide endearingly.

First we visit the Italianate baroque cathedral. It is an enjoyable building, restrained compared to Passau or Melk upstream on the Danube, or indeed Santiago where I was only last week. Our guide waxes eloquent about the part beauty plays in evoking faith. Then he turns to the organ on the gallery. The great Franz Liszt played it several times, he tells us, and loved this amazing instrument. They are excavating medieval remains in front of the west end. The Archbishop's Palace reveals a marvellous library (“one of the twelve best in the world”) which contains priceless incunabula and early printed books, including an early edition of Luther’s Bible (yes, here in the heartland of catholic Hungary, though it is being "rested" at present so is not on display). A steward lurks in the corner to make sure we don't touch anything we shouldn't. I ask about conservation practice in Hungary and am told that it's second to none.

Then across the road to the only paprika museum in the world. There are limits to the excitement I am feeling about this much-trailed visit. The building looks vast. Is there any end to the role paprika plays in the cultural history of Hungary, I ask myself? Much to our relief, the museum consists of only a couple of rooms in the basement. Actually, it is surprisingly interesting to learn how central paprika has been and still is to the rural economy of Hungary. We inspect historic artefacts associated with its cultivation, harvesting and trade. I sense a renewed enthusiasm for Hungarian goulash awash with paprika. Except that we Brits appear to have misunderstood goulash which strictly speaking is a thick broth rather than a stew. We resist the paprika-themed souvenir shop and wander off to explore this intimate little city.

Apart from a pleasant pedestrianised boulevard lined with sculptures of Christian saints and local clergy, there is little to see other than a few once proud, now faded buildings that hark back to the days of Austro-Hungarian Empire. But there is a new museum by the cathedral, only opened three years ago, in which its ecclesiastical treasures are exhibited. It is beautifully constructed, partly out of a refurbished outbuilding of the Bishop's Palace, partly in a new purpose-built space. It seems deserted, but the doors are open. The serious young man at reception seems surprised that we would actually want to visit it, and pay however many thousand forints equates to the 3 euros it will cost us each. Having issued us with tickets, he follows us like a hound into every gallery to make sure we are behaving ourselves. It’s true that paintings, vestments, large items of silverware are on open display and could easily be damaged. J tries to explain that I am a priest (so above suspicion?) but I’m not sure he understands. After all, what would a priest be doing with a wife? 

After lunch we are back on the coach again bound for the city of Pécs. It's situated in one of the wine-growing regions of Hungary. Many of the signs with village place names have a German name underneath as we pass by. Our guide explains that in the eighteenth century Empress Maria Theresa needed viticulturists to develop and care for the vineyards, so Germans from Swabia came here in large numbers. They preserve their language and culture even to this day. All this we learn as part of a lucid survey of Hungarian history as we travel. We're told we shouldn’t think of Hungarians as Europeans but as Asians who migrated here in the early middle ages (Magyars who have nothing to do with Huns). This explains the peculiarities of the language which is neither Romance nor Slav, but related only to Finnish and Turkish. (Looking at the words for “left luggage” and “lost property” while we waited for our bags at the airport carousel has already made me wonder how any non-native speaker sets about learning this characterful but obscure language.)

On the coach some of us get talking about the European Union and Brexit. All the countries we shall be visiting are now EU members states apart from Serbia which has official candidate status and is likely to join in 2025. Our guide joins in. He is clearly one of his generation’s Europhiles too, so I ask him what he thinks about Viktor Orbán's politics. He looks wary and points to his guide’s badge. “While I have this on, I have to be impartial and not venture an opinion” he says. “Once I take it off, then I can speak for myself.” “Then take it off at once” I reply. He laughs. But it stays on. He is official. He is in role.

Pécs is an ancient episcopal city with a medieval university, cathedral and fortifications, a pretty picture in an unprepossessing (and oversized) suburban frame. Can I think of any city that is not let down by its suburbs, I ask myself? As a child of the banlieue, I can’t. We make for the Cathedral, a fine Romanesque building, its towers reminiscent of Speyer. Alongside is the Bishop’s Palace. Nearby in the garden is a statue of Frank Liszt peering up at the Cathedral. For all my love of Wagner, Liszt was never my favourite composer, this Abbé whose music doesn’t so much make the piano sing as suffer under the hammering he inflicts on it. But Hungarians are intensely proud of him (as they are of Kodály and Bartók. You can understand why. Maybe now that I have visited his country I need to listen more carefully. Just maybe.

The guided walk ends up in the city's central square. It's extremely noisy as some kind of festival is happening there, and a band is playing on a dais with the amplification turned up to maximum. We have some free time, we walk back to the Cathedral. But it's closing as we arrive. An apologetic steward tells us that evening mass is shortly to begin. “What time?” I ask. At 6 o’clock, we are told. That’s in one hour and a half. Does it take ninety minutes to clear the nave of visitors, set up for the service and invite the faithful in? Not in any cathedral I've worked in. But we can see enough of the nave to see that the Romanesque promised by the exterior is not delivered inside. It is harsh chiselled neo-Norman, heavily painted in dark hues, a style that is so much more unsympathetic than Neo-Gothic. And we would have had to pay to go inside and see it.

But then we have a wonderful surprise. On our way down to the centre of town, we stumble across what looks like an unprepossessing bunker with a half-open concrete door. This turns out to be the World Heritage Site of Cella Septichora, a unique and extensive Romano-Christian burial ground. Our guide had pointed it out beneath our feet just outside the Cathedral complex - you can look down at it through thick glass panels, but it’s impossible to make any sense of it from above. It’s an extraordinary and vast subterranean labyrinth of passageways, burial chambers and tunnels, reminiscent of the Catacombs. It would need several hours and a good guide to make sense of these wondrous spaces, but we are moved by what we see, most of all the fourth century burial chamber named after St Peter and St Paul where there are wall paintings of Adam and Eve, Daniel in the lions’ den, and Jonah in the belly of the fish, all palpably related to the theme of death and resurrection. A Christogram at the centre of the composition pulls it all together around the emblem of Constantine, “in this sign conquer”. Once again I sense the powerful allure of late antiquity, not least in its Christian phases. We love the atmosphere of this evocative and holy place. (While we are there, teenagers on a school outing are listening to a guide explaining it in Hungarian. Some of them are a lot more interested in their mobile phones than in late antiquity. Ah well. They are a bit young to be entertaining thoughts about their distant past, or even their own mortality, as we older voyagers are prone to do in a place like this.)

I wonder why we weren’t all urged to visit Septichora without fail. Maybe the cruise company doesn’t want to encourage people to go to sites where you have to pay to go in, the assumption being that the cruise excursions are all thrown in for free. But for a mere three euros each (reduced tariff for seniors), this must surely be one of the most memorable visits of the whole journey. It reminds us of the importance of doing our own research prior to each visit to make sure we don’t miss out on the must-sees by accident.

During dinner on the ship, we are all summoned to appear before reception to have our faces checked against our passports. This is because we are about to leave the EU at Mohács and cross over into Serbia at Bezdan. The process of checking our names and identities against the passenger list is called “revision”. Two uniformed Serbian police officers are sitting there scanning our documents. I think of the well-known names of their countrymen in my own lifetime, leaders like Slobodan Milošević, surely one of the worst men of the twentieth century for the bloodshed and genocide his policies unleashed on the Balkans. Given its recent history, the very name “Serbia” seems to hold something of the shadows about it. The Serbian river bank is dark and mysterious, obscure, like my knowledge of it. But these policemen are friendly enough, and even give us a smile as they check our passports. Maybe it's not just a case of passport "revision", but revising my own preconceptions about the country we are about to enter?

*Andrew Beattie, The Danube: a cultural history, Oxford, 2010.