Sue's Travels: Danube Trip - 5 September 2011

We have entered a different time zone and my watch had to be set one hour ahead. This is the first day and probably the only day of the trip in which we do not go ashore. We left Belgrade sometime last night and have been heading sort of south on the Danube ever since. The big excitement in the morning has been sailing through the Danube Gorge. The most exciting part was what is called the “Iron Gates” also known as the “Iron Caldron”. In general the scenery reminded me of the Hudson valley. The “Iron Gate” or the “Iron Cauldron” as the captain kept calling it in the past required about four and half days to traverse. At the narrowest point, there was the Balloon House, whose purpose was to signal vessels whether or not they could proceed based upon the presence of absence of a ship coming in the opposite direction. The construction of the dam built by the Romanians and Serbians, which was completed on 6 August 1971, has drastically altered navigation on the Danube in this part of the world. What used to required four and a half days now takes about fifteen hours. The dam has backed up water for about 100 kilometers creating a large lake and making navigation much simpler. Before reaching the dam we saw the cave in which the Austrians held out against the Turks for forty odd days until they ran out of food an ammunitions. The face of Decebalos Rex Dragan Fecit has been carved into rock along the river. He was one of the “barbarian” tribes that fought against Rome. There is also a tablet left by Trajan describing his conquests.

The shop anchored and we had a picnic lunch on the sun deck which since I was sitting under the awning was very pleasant, but the other tables had umbrellas. A wind came up and blew the umbrellas over. Apparently they make everything with pork, but there was some chicken that had been barbequed and the salads were quite good.

At about 2:30 pm, the anchor was lifted and we headed for the locks which would take the ship to the other side of the dam. I was particularly interested in how the locks worked because while I understand the theory behind locks I had never seen them in operation. The locks can raise ships of 5,000 tons and are capable of holding up to12 ships at a time. The ships are raised or lowered depending on whether they are going up or down river between 17 and 20 meters in each of the two locks.

There is a road across the top of the dam which forms a bridge between Serbia and Romania. There is a power plant on each side of dam which provides power to its respective country. Environmentalists complain about the flooding of the land above the dam, which necessitated moving villages and roads. On the hand it generates electricity without pollution and does provide relatively cheap transportation along the river.

Tonight was the banquet. The principal offices spoke briefly and a festive dinner was held. We were served wine with the meal and sparkling wine with the desert.