6th august 2007 - upstream at cernovoda

"Don't you have a more comfortable way of spending time than travelling?
What are you missing?
Isn’t your house in an attractive and healthy area?
Isn’t it adequately furnished with all you need, isn’t it spacious enough?"
Michel de Montaigne

extreme low tide is causing trouble for a lot of ships. Some have run aground; many don’t dare go any further. Near galati and braila the danube is "parked up" with convoys. Since our journey downstream two weeks ago the water level has fallen 50 – 70cm. Thanks to our small depth we are not affected. The barge is 70cm deep, the barracks ship even less and the "josef", our tugboat is 1.3m. the navigation nevertheless requires a great deal of concentration and intuition in order not to deviate from the shipping lane.

It is one of the sections that the construction of which the EU requested and encouraged. A shipping lane is being planned, into which the waters of the many distributaries should run, thus literally cutting the ground out from beneath the last spawning grounds the sturgeons have. Before the danube was dammed they came as far up as austria. One splendid specimen even made it into the net in salzburg.

It becomes muggy and the mosquitoes start to attack. A storm comes down, "There's lightning and thunder, it rattles and bangs..." then the rain comes drumming down. The first for how long now? I don't know. The rain suits my mood. It is a blue Monday. I took Laura to the bus at 6am. A sad goodbye. She will be back home this evening. Now we have the long journey back. 1000km all in one go to budapest. That's where we have the next planned concert. If we make good progress perhaps we will add in one or another extra-curricular activity. We'll see. first of all we have to get to the iron gate without running aground. Then we must get the various entry and exit audits over with, as well as bunkering fuel, water and food. And not least must the weather god be fair to us. On a day like today it would be impossible to play. It's dark night. Outside the wind roars, agitating the kilometres-wide, shallow danube to a wild herd of cattle. I sit with my back to the side of the ship, listening to the howling and feeling the waves constantly beating and kicking against it. The ship groans and creaks. The last time we had anything like this was in donji milanovac. Although that time it was during nice weather and was not accompanied by thunder and lightning. Again and again bickering, cold light penetrates the hatches and windows, briefly illuminating ship and river. I go outside and look around. We are alone, far and wide, there are no houses on the bank and no other ships. It is as though we are the only people in the world. I feel like noah on his ark. Only instead of animals, we've "saved" music.

At the same time, we nearly drowned ourselves. When the anchors were hoisted at some unearthly hour one of the two became stuck and so we hung on just the one, unable to manoeuvre, while the current pressed us to the starboard side and the whole might of the water and wind beat against the side of the barracks ship. It wouldn't have taken much more to overturn us. This was at 5am while everyone was sleeping. It would have been unlikely that anybody survived.