The Danube Read Online Free PDF

Atlantic Ocean by the long, lazy body of the Mediterranean. Bold sailors passing through the straits of Gibraltar, the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus must have wondered if they would ever see the Bay of Biscay again. In places, sand-dunes and soil have settled long enough to allow a village to spring up. Milea 23 is named after ‘Mile 23’ from the Danube mouth. C. A. Rosetti, on the Chilia arm, is a cluster of villages named after a nineteenth-century Romanian novelist, though the settlement was actually created by shepherds whose sheep found just enough dry land to lead them on towards the beckoning surf. Constantin Rosetti was also a politician, whose support for the 1848 revolution nearly led him to the gallows. Rescued by the pleas of his English wife, Mary, the sister of the British consul in Bucharest, he later served as Minister of Police. 2
    I go out on deck into the grey afternoon. The Danube is grey, the sky is grey, even the forests on each side of the river are shades of grey. The scene is brightened only by the occasional splash of colour of the peasant houses and the sea-stained hulls of passing ships. Upriver they carry bauxite ore from Russia or Brazil to the aluminium works in Tulcea. Other ships are empty, high in the water, on their way to fetch laminated sheets from the steel mills of Galați; the Belfin , and the Burhan Dizman , registered in Istanbul, the Ayane from Valletta. 3 Like rare birds, lone sailors stand gazing down from the gangways at our crowded river ferry into a world in which families and friends still travel together. If my children were with me, we would wave. Instead, I sweep their decks with my binoculars, trying to catch a glimpse of the man at the wheel, his face set against the dying day.
    There are a few villages beside the river, spreadeagled along the shore on either side as though the river were the main street. Tidy stacks of cut reedare piled high beside houses with thatched or tin roofs. Rowing boats with black-tarred hulls are moored by wooden jetties, or turned upside down like seashells by the path. The houses are wooden, their window frames painted blue, or white or green. Cockerels call from the shore. White-coated geese waddle self-importantly, like doctors on a tour of a hospital ward. Fishermen, always in pairs, cast off in their black boats. One man rows while the other patiently feeds the floats of a net out between his fingers.
    There is not a bare head to be seen in the river world. The men wear Cossack-style hats, flat caps or baseball caps; the older women scarves or knitted woollen hats. Even the birds seem to be wearing hats, the tufted plumes of their feathers. The river is wide, ten to fourteen metres deep, and there is plenty of space for all manner of craft to pass. The blue, yellow and red Romanian ensign, the blue and yellow of Ukraine, and the Dutch tricolour are stiff in the afternoon breeze.
    Our boat arrives in Sulina right on time at five-thirty. A crowd of people and a horse and cart are waiting on the quay. The gangplank clatters down and thick wire ropes are looped around the stanchions. A bubble of laughter bursts as relatives fall into each other's arms, elderly couples peck each other on the cheeks, then reach for their bags. Much of the rest of the town, with no one in particular to meet, has wandered down to the shore to watch the new arrivals. Cut off from the rest of the world by water and reed banks, the visit of the daily boat from Tulcea is a landmark in their lives.
    I book into the Hotel Jean Bart, just along the shore from the ferry landing. It has a Wild West feel, with heavy, wooden panelling in the dining room and hibernating geraniums on the window ledge of my high-ceilinged bedroom, smelling of black pepper. From the outside, the hotel is striped dark red and white like a raspberry ripple. I'm in a rush to reach the Black Sea before darkness falls.
    On the unmade road east to the sea beyond Sulina is the town graveyard. A young