Life on the Danube

Drobeta-Turnu Severin lies on the northern bank of the Danube River. This historical city is home to more than 100,000 people. Drobeta is the name of the ancient Dacian and Roman towns that once resided here. The modern city of Turnu Severin received the additional name of Drobeta during Nicolae Ceaușescu's communist dictatorship as part of his national myth-making efforts.

Nine hundred years ago, one of the Roman Empire’s most famous bridges crossed the river nearby. Trajan's Bridge, as it was colloquially known, was the first bridge to be built over the lower Danube. It’s 20 masonry arches spanned 1,135 metres (the Danube is now 800 m wide in that area), was 15 metres wide, and sat 19 metres above the waterline.

Although it was functional for only 165 years, it is often considered to have been the longest arch bridge in both total span and length for more than 1,000 years. These days, all that remains of this impressive structure are its two ruined entrance pillars located on either side of the river.

I spent eight days in Drobeta-Turnu Severin in late June 1990. At the time, I was travelling with a group of 12 as part of a YWAM Christian missionary program. We arrived in town on Tuesday, 26 June, before departing again on 3 July. As had been the case elsewhere, our group was warmly greeted and hosted by families from a local church.

Our time here was a highlight of our month in Romania. We were welcomed by an enthusiastic and well-organised Baptist church, which scheduled a hectic itinerary for us. For the next eight days, we visited five regional churches and conducted daily street performances that drew large crowds. Romanian television and newspapers even reported on our presence in the area.

However, it was the scenery that I remember most vividly. The Danube was at its most dramatic here, and the villages we visited in the surrounding hills were easily the most scenic we encountered in all Eastern Europe. A few kilometres upstream from Drobeta-Turnu Severin are the Iron Gates. This is the name for a series of narrow and dramatic river gorges winding their way east for more than 50 kilometres. It forms the border between Serbia to the south and Romania to the north.

The Great Kazan (kazan meaning "cauldron" or "reservoir") is the most famous and the narrowest gorge along the route. Here, the river narrows to less than 150 metres. Elsewhere, steep rocky cliffs soar to 500 metres and are almost impossible to reach by land. In other words, the scenery is truly spectacular.  The images above, pulled from the web, barely do it justice.

One afternoon, we drove along the Danube to a small village called Dubova, about an hour west of Drobeta-Turnu Severin. At times, you felt as though you could reach out and touch the Serbian shoreline. The middle image above includes Dubova in the background. However, it wasn’t the scenery that created the most memorable experience.

 
At one point, we stopped to inspect an abandoned watch tower overlooking the gorge. With us were several youths from our host church. They’d joined us for the ride in part because they’d never travelled this stretch of road despite living nearby. During the Ceaușescu era, this section of the Danube was off-limits to all but a few local villagers who required a special permit to reside here. The narrow gorge was considered far too tempting for illegal border crossings, mainly Romanians trying to escape the oppressive regime and its increasingly harsh austerity programs.

As a result, the road was heavily guarded by a chain of watchtowers monitoring it and the river day and night. Alison Mutler, a freelance journalist in Romania, published this harrowing story of one man's experience swimming across the Danube in the dead of night. She also took the image above near Orsova, a town we passed through on our way to Dubova.

As one youth told me, he’d seen photos of the gorges but never the real thing. It was hard to imagine living just a few kilometres from such scenic beauty and having never seen it with your own eyes.  This fear of the past came to life during one scenic stop. We pulled over to take a closer look at one of the abandoned watchtowers. A couple of us, including me, climbed the guard tower ladder for a better view. Our hosts were visibly uncomfortable with our excursion. Such an act, just six months earlier, would have been a death sentence.

The threat of death was brought home to me by the family that hosted three of us. The couple had two children. However, the wife was considerably older than her husband. He seemed too young to be the father of their children. We later learned that he was her second husband. The first had been shot and killed trying to escape across the Danube in search of a better life for him and his family.

One day, we ventured up into the surrounding hills to visit a string of famous spa resort towns. This included the historic town of Băile Herculane. In the photo above, you see us performing in the town square surrounded by the region's spectacular granite mountains. Perhaps the town's most iconic complex is the ornate Neptune Imperial Thermal Baths, accessed by a graceful arch bridge spanning the local river. Sadly, this spa complex has fallen into disrepair in recent years. The image of the complex above was sourced from the web.

However, we weren’t here for the town’s geothermal waters; instead, we trekked up into the foothills to visit a small gypsy village. The locals greeted us warmly, cooking a meal on an outdoor wood oven (a gypsy BBQ, so to speak), before gathering to watch us perform our missionary outreach street drama in the middle of a field.

The entire experience was extraordinary. We were immersed in a completely untarnished view of gypsy life exactly as it had gone on for centuries. Equally, despite their poverty, they were among the happiest people we encountered in Eastern Europe.

We finished our day in the mountains with a quick dip in a local thermal pool. It was a popular venue. Hundreds of adults and children were soaking in the main pool. However, its hygiene standards were rather dubious. The water was rather murky, and at one point, a distinctly firm and clearly identifiable human turf floated past us. Then, shortly after we exited the pool, the complex started draining it.

We later learned that the facility lacked any form of filtration or sterilisation plant. Instead, the pool was drained, scrubbed clean and refilled once a week. It was just our luck to arrive in the final hours before a week of human scum, urine and turds were flushed away. However, we enjoyed a more sanitary swim in Drobeta-Turnu Severin. One of our host families boasted a backyard pool – a genuine rarity in Romania. We spent several relaxing afternoons here, swimming and lounging in the Romanian sunshine.

From Drobeta-Turnu Severin, we travelled inland to the mining town of Motru and the regional mining city of Târgu Jiu. Follow this link to learn more.