Blue Danube to Black Sea Day 11: A Fault Line in Central Europe

Tuesday 4 June
We awaken to thick fog. Both banks of the river are clothed in the mist. Occasionally the ghostly outline of an onion-spited church or a house can be glimpsed among trees that are no more than shadows on the river banks. From time to time tree trunks and branches drift languidly by. The fog emphasises our insulation from the world we are gliding through. We sail on in this capsule that is gliding so effortlessly across Eastern and Central Europe.

I speculate about the hazards of navigating in these conditions. I’ve read enough about the Danube to realise how tricky it is to stay safely within the deep water channels, avoid the sandbars that are constantly shifting with the changing currents of the Danube as it responds to rainfall and snowmelt upstream. These 135 metre-long river cruisers are flat bottomed, enabling them to negotiate the river in all but the driest conditions (I came across a bitter complaint on social media from last year telling us how, when customers were already en route for the airport, Riviera had had to cancel a cruise because there was not enough water in the river to navigate safely).

After breakfast the mist has cleared and we go out on deck to enjoy the sunshine. We have now travelled beyond the Romanian border, so all around it is Serbia. Pretty villages line the river bank on the south side where a line of hills sweeps down to the river. The Danube is very high round here. On the north bank, there is extensive flooding isolating horses, cattle and pigs. Bird life is abundant, and a group of voyagers has gathered with their field glasses and notebooks pointing out what’s to be seen - storks, terns, Black-winged stilts, squacco herons, bee-eaters nesting in holes in sandy banks, wagtails, little winged plovers, a white-tailed eagle, and even golden orioles - heard but not seen.

That’s an impressive list of fauna, but I claim no credit for it. I've no eye for bird life, alas. It calls for an attention to detail that I seem not to have been gifted with. I've always been drawn to the bigger picture. But I've enjoyed overhearing what these experts have been discussing for an hour this morning - obsessives they tell me they are happy to be called. One of them says that the history and politics have passed him by on this voyage, but the ornithology has been to die for. He could sit on deck all day peering into the forests to enjoy their natural history. I reply how good it is that on this cruise there is something for everyone. But another affirms that for her, the history and politics have been eye-opening. “This voyage on the Danube has made me a better European” she says with real conviction. I love that because it’s been precisely the same for me.

We draw in to Novi Sad. My guide book is unremittingly negative about this once elegant Habsburg city, Serbia’s second largest with a quarter of million inhabitants. It suffered badly in the Balkan wars, all three Danube bridges being destroyed in 1999. Our Serbian guide corrects one misapprehension about this. It’s said that NATO bombed them all. In fact, the bridge by Vauban’s citadel was blown up by Serbian forces themselves to avoid offering up the citadel as a target for the bombers. Now these three bridges have been rebuilt, the finest of them an “infinity” bridge like Stockton’s, opened last year.

We take a coach tour of the city, and there is more Serbian history to go with it. Novi Sad (= "new orchard") is another very ancient settlement that became Roman Cusum when it was conquered and incorporated into the imperial province of Pannonia. We see Roman tombs outside the museum in which there is a good collection of antiquities. I wish we had time to look inside. In the centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire, the city had a complicated history in which Hungarians, Slavs and later the Ottoman Empire all vied for control. In Habsburg days it was Ratzen Stadt, "Serb City".

We get to the final decade of the twentieth century and the terrible cost of Yugoslavia's break-up. Unlike a previous Serbian guide, today's doesn’t dismiss the 1990s as merely “difficult”. She points out that Serbia sits on fault lines that divide Rome from Constantinople, and Catholic from Orthodox, and Christian from Moslem, and after the last world war, all faith groups from the communists. So it’s not surprising that conflict is an ever-present risk in this part of Europe. And because whoever controls the Danube controls central Europe, Novi Sad’s bridges are always going to be vulnerable to attack. “It’s happened for centuries” she says, “and the 1990s attacks will probably not be the last”. It’s a sobering introduction to the city.

We drive round the citadel, noting the entrances to the tunnels that Empress Maria Theresa ordered to be constructed underneath the fortifications. Mention of her name introduces the geographical position of this place. Our guide says we are not to think of Novi Sad as a Balkan city but rather as belonging to the Pannonian Plain that links it to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. This is a highly cosmopolitan city she says, in which no fewer than eight languages are officially recognised. And as we drive round, we can’t help noticing the colourful, vibrant character of the centre. It’s a lot better than my gloomy prognostications informed by my book - but then that was written closer to the destructive Balkan wars than we are now. I have already decided that I like this place a lot more than Belgrade.

We walk round the centre. In the Orthodox Church our guide explains that it is strongly influenced by western ecclesiastical architecture. Completed only in 1903 rather in the style of a London Wren church, it has stained glass windows, most unusual for a church in the east. She elaborates on further differences between Orthodox and Catholic architecture and spirituality, including an excursus on the Iconoclastic controversy in order to explain why Orthodox churches are filled with paintings but have no sculpture. The significance of the iconostasis is explained, as is the liturgy of Orthodoxy with its Little and Great Entrances. And the importance of the eastern tradition of standing throughout the liturgy. It’s good that all this is spelled out to people who may be unfamiliar with the practices of the Orthodox (or, for that matter, any other) Church.

In the free time we have we wander round the streets, and visit the Catholic Church in the central square (for there is a significant minority Catholic community here). It’s a nicely designed hall church whose aisle vaults reach the same height as the central nave.

But after the Orthodox Church, it leaves us cold. There isn’t the same spirit of devotion here, somehow, the same fervour, the same conviction. I can’t explain it, but for the first time I begin to see what it is that many western Christians find so appealing about Eastern Christianity. One of my theological students is now an Orthodox priest, while another has made the journey there and come back to Anglicanism, albeit enriched by his experience. I recall my discussion with our Bulgarian young guide Peter on the coach, how he complained that his Catholic upbringing gave him no hint of the rich treasures of mystical prayer that Orthodoxy had opened up for him. There’s a clear lesson for us practitioners of western Christianity. Whatever else it is, it needs to be more impassioned, more affective, less milk-and-water, less sweetly reasonable, less afraid of touching and changing lives. This, I imagine, is what lies behind these "Thy Kingdom Come" days between Ascension and Pentecost that we are travelling through at this precise time.

Back on the ship I sit by the open window and gaze out at the river. It’s a lazy, sultry afternoon. We’ve already had one thunderstorm today, but the cumulonimbus is piling up again and promises more to come. A push-tug propels a heavy load of barges upstream at barely more reaching walking pace against a fierce current energised by the recent downpours. This journey is almost at an end. We have come a long way together, and I’m clear that my writing about it is only the beginning of the search for understanding what it may mean for my own Europeanism and my grasp of this continent’s past, present and future. There is so much I realise I don’t know. What wasn’t I paying attention to all these years? Why has this closed book of Eastern Europe only now begun to open for me, in just the same way as classical Greece did last autumn?

But there is still time for curiosity and discovery even this late in life. “Old men should be explorers” said Joseph Haydn in old age, a man from the golden age of imperial Austria-Hungary whose ear for the natural world was so well-tuned and whose music, therefore, must have been inspired by the Danube that flowed through the landscapes that he loved. I hope I can live and die as an explorer of the spirit. A voyage like this is the best possible metaphor, as it is the best possible stimulus too.

Blue Danube to Black Sea Day 3: The Iron Gates Gorge

Monday 27 May
We have been reminded to put our clocks forward by an hour overnight. We are entering Eastern European Time. The Orient can't be far away. But the capsule we are living in is very much of the privileged west. As, no doubt, will be the perspectives of most of us on board. The question is, how can the sounds and savours of the east begin to penetrate what is in effect a luxury hotel on water? I have to say I have a conscience about the contrast between our lifestyle on board and the simplicity, not to say poverty, of some of the riverine communities we are passing through.

What does it mean to be an ethical tourist in eastern Europe? On this journey I've been reading a book about someone else's Danube journey.* The author, Andrew Eames, is scathing about these cruise ships that bear elderly, affluent, well-fed westerners to these lands in such a way as to keep them inoculated against any real exposure to their cultures. I think there's a degree of envy in that sweeping judgment. But the challenge is important: how to allow travel make me more aware, how to be a voyager with a conscience? I doubt it's the last time I'll entertain these questions.

We awaken to a change of scenery. Gone are the flatlands of Pannonia, the Hungarian Plain that seems to stretch for ever beyond Budapest. Now the river is sneaking through high wooded hills, Romania to the north, Serbia, still, to the south. There is time to enjoy the landscape as it glides by. We have decided that first thing in the morning it will be allowed to sit quietly on our own and not seek out the company of other travellers. We introverts like quiet breakfasts.

But to my right a conversation is going on not about the Danube but about the EU Parliamentary election results that have come through overnight. The general consensus at that table seems to be that the outcome is inconclusive. Everyone is an expert on Brexit these days. I am dismayed to learn that the North East has elected not one but two members of the newborn Brexit Party, which is one more hard Brexiter than before. We sail on midway between an EU member state on one side and a candidate-state on the other. As one state comes in to the Union (or plans to), another comes out (or plans to). What goes round comes round. For the Danube as an EU boundary, substitute the English Channel or the Irish Sea. Only here, where two nations separated by a few hundred yards of water gaze across the EU frontier at one another, the paradoxes of “Europe” seem all the sharper.

Conversations at meal tables tend to be a sharing of travellers’ tales. “Have you ever made one of these river cruises before?” is a standard opener after introductions have been made. This is our third, so we are graduates with plenty to say about the Upper Danube and the Rhine, the relative merits of cruise operators and their ships, their policies on who sits where at dinner. People are less curious about where we come from and hardly at all about who we are and what we have done with our lives. We’ve often remarked on that and wondered why other people are less inquisitive than we are.

Back to the Danube. We are sailing between the Carpathian Mountains to the north and the Balkans to the south. This stretch of the river known as the Kazan Gorge was notoriously dangerous once upon a time, because of the violent rapids and the rocks just below the surface. The Iron Gates barrage was constructed in the early 1970s as a joint hydro-electric project between Romania and Yugoslavia. This created a lake 100 km long upstream, drowning towns and villages in the process. I wish I’d seen the Danube in spate roaring down this defile between the sheer limestone cliffs. But the scenery is dramatic, fjord-like, even if the adrenaline rush, the frisson of navigating treacherous waters has long been a thing of the past.

Along the gorge, just as I’m finishing my scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, we pass a beautiful orthodox monastery, and soon after, the huge (and absurd) stone statue of Decabolos carved into the cliff on the Romanian side. He was the ruler of the Dacians for whose territory the Roman Empire had ambitions because of its valuable gold deposits. In the end, and not without difficulty, Trajan overcame Dacia, creating out of it the only Roman Province north of the Danube, hence the name Romania. I miss seeing Trajan’s memorial on the opposite bank (how could that happen? it's one of the most important antiquities on this journey!), but I have promised him that I shall look out for it on our return next week.

There is much excitement as we enter the Iron Gates lock. It’s two locks actually, because the fall of the river is nearly 40 metres. It is far from being a beautiful sight, but it is intensely interesting to watch this huge engineering achievement at work. And photogenic, as all of us who are photographers are not slow to realise. Most people gather at the ship’s bows, but I find the stern more evocative; maybe in older age I’m tending to look back on where I’ve been rather than forward on where I may be headed, or maybe it’s just an obvious (and less breezy) place for back-row Anglicans like me to linger.

Anyway, peering back into the dark recesses of the empty lock as we leave it strikes me not only as an interesting photographic image, but as an eloquent metaphor of passing through some key stage in life, some rite of passage. My own retirement four years ago comes to mind as we make this transition from one level of engagement to another. It’s a better image than the watershed because in a lock, the river is the same and the waters are the same, yet the retrospect and prospect are markedly different. Up on the hillside above the lock is a large blue tablet with a red star and the name TITO. Serbia looks back to halcyon South Slavic days.

Beyond the lock the scenery flattens out so we go for lunch. At our table is a single passenger who tells us that when she opened her toilet bag on the first morning on board, she realised she had forgotten all her medication. She has nothing but praise for the onboard team, one of whom comes with her into town, takes her to the hospital, translates for her as she explains her condition to a doctor with no English, then drives her to the pharmacy to collect the medication. Luckily she had her prescription with her prescription, something I’m always careful to do too.

We sail on. A stiff breeze has sprung up. Most people have gone inside for shelter but I stay out on deck with my camera. The river is immensely wide now. Even our long ship a full 135 metres from end to end seems dwarfed by all this water. The Danube is languid, no longer the swift mountain stream it was even as far down as Budapest. Behind us the mountains are receding. But we glimpse another line of hills, bluish on the distant horizon. Could it be Transylvania, the romantic "land beyond the woods"?

As I think of Matthew Arnold’s poem ("The Buried Life") about the river as a metaphor of human existence, fast-moving and energetic in its early stages, purposeful and well-paced in its mature middle phase, slow-moving towards the end as it nears the sea - calm and peaceful you could say, or maybe just lazy and listless. Below the Iron Gates, the Danube has become a river in old age. It settles down to its characteristic uneventful landscape setting that we recall from sections of the Upper Danube. But now it goes on and on for mile after mile. Alder, poplar and birch line the river banks, interrupted every now and then by villages, a few industrial towns, and fishermen’s bothies. You could imagine that the Black Sea is just round the next bend. But it’s not. There are more than 500 miles still to travel. This is a river with longevity. Its final senility, that’s to say its loss of identity, its falling apart into different bits of itself as it dissolves in the Danube Delta is a long way off yet.

The day has been warm but overcast with an even whitish light that photographers don't greatly care for. It’s true that the lack of shadows makes the landscape look bland and featureless. But low contrast has possibilities too. On the north bank, quite a distance away, I spot a group of half a dozen trees, with a couple of outliers. The river in front is slightly ruffled in the breeze, so the reflections have interesting textures. I take a series of studies from our open cabin window and am pleased with the results. All light is God’s light, whether it’s sharp and dramatic, or even and low in contrast.

There is a quiz in the lounge tonight. But we’ve had enough socialising for one day. We need time to ourselves for quiet restfulness. We go up on deck to enjoy a radiant sunset. Then back to the cabin to ponder the day's experiences and try to get my thoughts into words while the memories are fresh. 

* Andrew Eames, Blue River, Black Sea: a journey along the Danube into the heart of the New Europe (Black Swan, 2010).