Swimming over Trees

One night on Wigwam we moored in an underwater forrest swamped by the swollen danube. Breast stroking around the boat, weaving in and out of the visible treetops and being careful not to venture out to far into the current was a sundown I will remember. We tried fishing but inevitably got the hook stuck and were licky to get the anchor back.
The previous night we came into the scruffy marina at Ruse on the Bulgarian side. The Marina manager,for want of a less formal title, was a softly spoken chap who had revolutionary ideas about sailboat design. His half built boat next to ours was 6m long and 4m wide and looked like nothing I had ever seen before. It was also fitted with a jet engine. He was either a fool or a clever fellow and I hope the latter as he had put alot of work into the project.
On the other side of us was a 26ft tatty looking yacht with an equally soiled US flag hanging limp at the stern. The Captain and crew was a short, wide, bearded, nicotine moustached, bald bespectacled, drunken, arrogant, belligerent, brave and pensioned Polish national on his return from Chicago after 30 years which began in exile. His proud claim to be the only man to attempt a trip from America to Warsaw by boat is probably correct. Through his viscous Polish accent, slurred by vodka it was hard to understand his English. How could it be so bad after 30 years in the United States. When he blamed our difficult communication attempts on our too strong German accents, (I had done most of the talking for our team), we decided to head below. The mosquito hour was upon us anyway.
But we had no water. Anja Gondola and I made a run as none was to be had at the dock and the boats tank was empty. Four Jerry cans and three people meant someone had no hand to defend himself from the little bloodthirsty fiends. Over the side to the narrow pontoon, duck under the bowsprit, walk the rocking plank over a sunken boat to the dock. Gate is locked. Find the hole in the fence, clamber through some bushes, slip round the sagging end of another fence then run the gauntlet of the bush lined 150 yardmosquito reserve to the second building behind the little chandlers. Down the ramp, onto a temporary, made from driftwood gangway, jump over 2yrds of angry plastic bottle Danube, lean over a decaying concrete wall and turn on the fire hydrant tap sticking out of the side barely a foot from the waterline. Let one of the girls splat your quota of mosquitos while you fill up. Reverse route to boat. Pour water into boats tanks taking demossie breaks every 20seconds. Dive inside and hunt down all followers. Just like they do it in St Tropez.

One sees not so much of the country from a boat, meets no-one all day and the landscape rarely changes. There are not many towns along the way. This watery woodland goes on seemingly forever and coul be described as boring. So could the great plains or the desert. The interest is in the vastness. Though we missed many things we would have seen on the bikes we have at least experienced from waterlevel the power and scale of this river and in an unusual year. Also the vegetation and wildlife along its banks. Pelicans, Egrets, ducks and cormorants fly past the window as I write but of fish we have seen almost none. Big fish must be here. We saw 2m catfish in the Soane in France and that is but a stream that would be swallowed unnoticed were it a tributary of the Danube.
There are barges heading upstream here, nine bound together pushed by chunky, confident tugboats, each of the nine holding 4000 tons of ore, gravel or coal. We saw one back in Austria with 250 cars and a couple of trucks on deck and probably the same number below. Slow but powerfully steady they churn their way upstream and I ponder over half recalled figures of carbon emissions of boats compared to trucksand Imagine how it was here before the diesel motor or steam.

Buildings along the banks are half underwater. I see pigs with their feet wet and their sties awash, caravans which have floated to new locations and rest there half sunken and askew. We have followed floods from the beginnin of the Danube to the endand have become familiar with the unusual border between water and land; sometimes cleancut where sloping meadows, fences traks and all run uninterrupted into the water. There is no official end to the land, no brown stripe of bare earth and treeroots. In other places it is hard to distinguish the land from the water. Islands on the chart are just forrests in the river with boats emerging from between the trunks.