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.

Golubac Fortress 1043 – some week-end house in Romania 1007

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”.

Veliko Gradiste 1059 – Golubac 1043

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 …

Nowhere Beach 1104 – Veliko Gradiste 1059

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!

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.

Sava island – Ada Ciganlija -  Belgrade Dorcol 1170

Fuzzy headed all day we started off becoming club members of Redorno Ulanska Korta and joining the club president for a traditional Rakija breakfast. Extreme Minigolf in the afternoon by the lake finishing with some deluxe Serbian fast food.