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 8: Churches of Bulgaria

Saturday 1 June
After last night’s storm, it is cool and overcast on the river today. We have said goodbye to Romania and are berthed back at Rousse in Bulgaria where we were last week. We drive for a couple of hours to Arbanassi, a village in the foothills of the mountains that straddle the central part of the Balkan Peninsula.

Our guide is a young man who combines seriousness of purpose with a light touch, just right for the job. He tells us more about Bulgaria, a country I’ve always regarded as somewhat mysterious, as if it keeps itself hidden away on the south bank of the Danube. Once again I’m struck by the deeply rural character of these rolling landscapes. As we saw before, there are hardly any buildings between the villages - no farm buildings like you see in Western Europe, or Romania for that matter. Here, villages have clear boundaries. Outside them, the countryside is deep, tranquil, remote, “one of the most peaceful areas to live in the w 
hole of Europe” he says. He speaks about the depredations of the communist era, how long it is taking for the country to recover. This is a refrain we have grown used to: every guide has told the same story. But it’s been illuminating to hear it from the personal perspective of each of them, whether in Hungary, Serbia, Romania or here in Bulgaria. Part of that story is also the persistence of Christianity in these eastern European countries. And Peter our guide speaks about both of these with particular intelligence.  

We arrive at Arbanassi as a folk festival is in full swing. Pretty girls and young men in native costumes are dancing to pipe and accordion music. All round are stalls selling food, drink and souvenirs including an enticing collection of mugs with Soviet heroes ironically depicted on them. My heart sinks at the thought of an hour of nostalgic Bulgarian folklorique.

But this is not the plan. We walk through this showpiece village with its display of pantile roofs till we get to the little church. It is a revelation. It was built at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in what was then a Greek speaking Christian enclave in Ottoman Bulgaria. Outside, it is nothing special, though I notice the unusual presence of the Star of David engraved in a stone immediately above the west door. Peter takes this as a sign that the church may have provided shelter for the Jewish community during times of persecution, though the church guide who takes us round the building interprets it as a reminder that Jesus was himself a Jew. I wonder.

What is remarkable about this this church is its interior decoration. (I have no images to share: photography is not allowed inside.) Every inch of it is covered with paintings - the two narthexes, one on the north side and one on the west, and the nave itself. Walls and vault are, to resort to cliché, a riot of colour. Can there be a single Bible story that is not depicted somewhere in this extraordinary church? It would take detailed study to work out the narrative scheme, and time to linger is what you never have on these group visits. But the guide does her work well. She points out the Tree of Jesse, Moses and the prophets, and scenes from the nativity, passion and resurrection. Pilate washing his hands is memorable because Jesus is depicted as immersed in the water basin as if to say, Pilate washes his hands not only of a dilemma but of the very Lord himself.

On the east wall of the central narthex is the last judgment, with a river of fire emanating from Christ’s throne, and immersed in it, an archbishop in full regalia. The guide, clearly a devout believer, finds this amusing. To me, most thought-provoking of all is a line of twelve Greek philosophers, among them Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Homer (yes, not just a poet but a purveyor of wisdom) haloed just like the saints and angels all around. It speaks of a sophisticated world view that is brave enough to see the presence of the divine even in the writings of pagans. There’s a world of insight here about grace and culture, and how the church should be doing theology and mission in the market-place where many faiths, ideas and world views clamour to be heard. I sense that these powerful paintings we have seen have had an effect on some members of our group. Is awe the right word to describe it?

After lunch we stop at the nearby university city of Veliko Tarnovo, “the city of Tsars” that is spread out across a remarkable site where four steep-sided valleys meet. We gaze from afar at the remarkable monastic citadel with its walls and towers (why isn’t there an opportunity to visit it?) before walking the old town and climbing up some steep steps to visit the beautiful eighteenth century church.  Inside, an elderly woman is selling candles. Our guide buys one.  

Before our next port of call there is time for me to ask our guide about something he has said to us earlier. He's told us that he was brought up as a Catholic but had turned to Orthodoxy in adulthood. He explains that he went to Germany to study economics. There he embraced atheism until he realised that life without faith was unrewarding and empty. He recognised that his upbringing had not given him the mystical or liturgical richness of Orthodoxy, and that as a Bulgarian, this was the native faith of his people. So he decided to convert. I ask him if he has studied theology, for his account of his spiritual tradition is lucid and convincing. He says he hasn’t, apart from his own reading. "Are you an ordinand then?" I persist. He laughs and says I’m not the first person to ask him. “Who knows what God may intend?” he says. And he asks me to pray for him.

I’ve mentioned the visceral hatred eastern Europeans have for the years of communism, but I've also sensed a similar if less explicit aversion for the centuries of Ottoman rule that coloured so much of their medieval and modern history. At the beginning of May Pope Francis paid a pastoral visit to Bulgaria. It proved problematic. He had requested a meeting with the Orthodox Church's leaders, and asked to pray with them. However, the Bulgarians would not receive him as a fellow faith leader, only as a head of state to whom political, but not spiritual, courtesies were due. On the other hand Pope Francis did meet Muslim leaders and, I understand, took part in a shared act of prayer with them.

Peter supported the stance of the Bulgarian Church leaders both in not recognising the Pope's spiritual authority (because of the Great Schism between the eastern and western church), and in their insistence that Islam is incompatible with Christianity. They believe that Pope Francis was compromised by meeting the imams and this justifies the Bulgarian church leaders’ resistance to welcoming him as their spiritual peer. “But Judaism, Christianity and Islam are Abrahamic sister faiths” I remonstrate. "Allah is the God whom Jesus called Father, whom all three faiths worship because of Abraham.” “Yes, but Allah is not a Trinity of three Persons” comes the response. “How can there be any sharing of holy things if you can’t agree about the Trinity?” The spectre of Ottoman Islam seems to haunt this exchange. So this response is not only typical of Orthodox theology but of a particular historic expression of it that is so coloured by its former subservient relationship with Islam. 

My own Christianity feels very different, so western is it, so influenced by the Reformation and the Enlightenment, and with a very different religious history behind it. Yes, his faith is more ancient than mine, and I honour that. Maybe I envy the certainty with which he practises it. I hope I am not less passionate about my faith than he is. We would gladly recite the creeds together. But in other respects we inhabit worlds that are very different and have been for centuries. Yet it is a fascinating conversation not only for its warmth and candour, but for how it helps me understand religion in Eastern Europe.

We detour and sink down from the green plateau into a deep gorge. The yellow limestone cliffs rise up sheer from the valley bottom, an arresting sight in its own right. But this is the land of the famous Ivanovo rock churches, created in these cliffs by monks who sought solitude here in the thirteenth century. We walk up to the top of the cliffs by a steep path. There is a profusion of colourful wild flowers. The tree canopy, as we climb clear of it, shows every possible shade of green. It’s marvellously fresh, vivid and vibrant, this holy and verdant landscape we find ourselves walking in on this first day of summer. As we walk, Peter talks to us about the monastic life. I was not expecting to learn about hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer on a Riviera cruise. There can't be many guides who can speak about mystical spirituality and prayer from the standpoint of a practitioner and do it so genuinely, without a trace of self-consciousness.

We contour along a pretty path until we reach some caves in the rocks. Here the monks lived in their solitariness. The low roofs are darkened by smoke from their fires or, equally probably, their candles. These primitive dwellings precisely echo their forebears, the desert fathers of Egypt a thousand years earlier who set the pattern for monasticism and whose rules of life proved such an  inspiration in the formation of monasticism in both the east and the west. Presumably this was a conscious harking back to a more primitive way of life. Did they know about the Irish monks who followed these patterns too in isolated locations like Skellig Michael? You’d be tempted to doubt it, yet Irish monasticism had well-travelled origins across Central Europe. I think of Cuthbert on the Inner Farne finding seclusion not to get away from the business of everyday life but to immerse himself more deeply in its challenges, choices and contradictions. And to fight evil in the name of his Lord - the world’s demons, his own. “Go into your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.” 

A little further on we come to the rock church itself, dedicated to Saint Michael, the guardian of these high places. There are more than twenty of them hidden among these cliffs and crabs; this is the finest, and the most visited. Like Arbanassi (but tiny, no larger than a monk’s cave), its walls are covered with frescoes of Jesus, Mary and the saints. They take you back to the devotion of these holy men, their willingness to forsake everything for the sake of the gospel that called them into this life of poverty and prayer. There is a little platform outside the cave (thoughtfully supplied in modern times with a railing) on the cliff edge, with a sheer drop below to the valley floor that it’s not good to look down on for too long. I imagine a monk, stylite-like, perched on this space where there is barely room for a human being to stand safely, totally still and silent in prayer, rapt in  contemplative communion with God.

Then I look down at the ground. A metal rail has been inserted across the cave’s opening in modern times, maybe to contain a door or window of some kind. I look more closely at the lettering on the side. The message is unmistakeable, announcing its place of origin. Middlesbrough. The North East has come to Bulgaria. This calls for a photograph.

In the car park an elderly man is selling icons he has created (that's to say, "written") himself. I wish I could l could linger to buy one. But icons are prayers, windows on to heaven, and choosing one will not be hurried. It takes time because in truth, we do not choose the icon: the icon chooses us.  And the coach and the ship will not wait.

But what a remarkable day it has been.