Letea, Danube Delta, Romania
The Romanian Danube Delta is probably one of the most interesting places in Europe. So remote and undeveloped, the Delta is an oasis of old world in a fast changing Europe. Visit till it does not change. I was before twice in the Delta during the communist time and in most of the places the only things changed are the boat engines, from Vostok to Johnson showing the geopolitical game… Wild horses, remote villages, canals, birds and a quietude that you won’t encounter in many other places.
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After a quick chat around a beer at Bookfest, a book trade show in Bucharest, my friend asked me if I would like to join him in a quick tour in the Danube Delta leaving in two days. I made up my mind on the spot and on a Tuesday morning we left around 7:15 am to Tulcea. Last time I was in the Danube Delta probably 30 years ago. It was laid back like the entire country in those years but this was an attraction because it meant also far from the propaganda and the stupidity of a regime that was smothering everything around it. Boats were rare so you had to plan well in advance and the accommodation of choice was in local houses where you were offered also beside a bed, lunch and dinner. Hotels were rare but enough at the number of tourists that were coming there, all were relatively well maintained with basic restaurants that were serving mainly fish, the staple food of the Danube Delta.
20 years after Romania’s switch to a democratic society I was really curious to see what happened in the Delta. Around Bucharest the signs of a prosperous society are obvious. New office buildings, malls, cafes, restaurants and villas for the nouveau riches, luxury cars driven through potholed roads by all sort of dubious characters, casinos at every corner and sex shops on the main boulevard. Leaving Bucharest you start driving on the newly built Sun Highway but soon you exit and continue through the countryside, realizing that not too much has changed. Same villages, with the same houses with the same water pump on the street inhabited by Turks or tatars. In Tulcea sign of the new economy are flagged by the rumors that the new hotels on the promenade are built and owned by a rich ex-waiter from the local ex-Communist party center who is now an important businessman of the town. It looks like the Delta is a major tourist attraction but there are no large tour groups to be seen, neither the small group and independents. Just locals moving back and fro inside the Delta. The boats going to Sulina, the free port at the Black Sea, are now running often and, as the rumors go, are owned by some known football players.
We were supposed to leave Bucharest earlier and catch a fast boat at 11:00 am but that boat and the following one were canceled and we boarded a 1:30 pm boat that for $15 brought us in one hour and 15 minutes to Sulina with a stop on the way at Crisan. Our guide is waiting for us in Sulina harbor. He is welcoming us and together with my friend they go to buy food for the trip. I am left by the boat to guard the cameras, the videos and tripods, etc. and meanwhile I get the first assessment of the town with its pretty promenade and some new buildings interlaced with old style local architecture. My friend returns victorious telling me that we will be fine because they bought wine and also they were able to buy fish. “What the hell is he talking about? Fish? This is the staple food here. What does he expect to buy? Veal? Of course he bought fish….It is the Danube Delta” We load everything in the boat, the same boat as 30 years ago that sports, like most of the boats on the water a Johnson engine. After spending two days in the Delta I sadly remarked to our guide that the only obvious change that happened in the last 20 years of “prosperity and democracy” were the boat engines, the Vostok being replaced by Johnson to underline the new geopolitical environment.
We leave Sulina on a large canal. The Delta is still beautiful. After about 20 minutes we start riding on small canals, surrounded by water lilies. Our guide cuts the engine and it is quiet; only the wind swishing through the marshes and the occasional wing flopping of the birds passing by. We take pictures and shoot videos. It is paradise. My cell phone rings. It is my wife. She is in Long Island Rail Road going to Manhattan. Her daily commute. I describe her my commute. She laughs. She is surrounded by people who are either on computers or on cell phone with bluetooth headphones attached to their ears trying to be completely disconnected of their environment. Two worlds apart. In the Delta we are fully connected to the nature, connected with the canals with saw grass, marshes, birds, and the swish of the wind. Or are we? Maybe we just wish to be… It is great for tourists coming here to relax and enjoy pristine nature but life is as hard as it used to be in the past. In locals’ opinion nothing was done in the last 20 years. Politicians show up only before election to garner votes, make some unfulfilled promises and go away not coming back till the next election. People are fed up and are nostalgic of the time of the Communism when the Party secretary under pressure from the center was forced to deliver at least the minimum. Listening to these people I could not but fully agree with them and their predicament. Many left the area if they could. They work in towns outside the Delta or if they can, go and work any job in Spain or Italy. When they are laid off they return and live off their unemployment benefits or social security in the village being the richest men in the entire region. We met one of them nicknamed the “Spaniard”. He was driving an 18-wheeler in Spain till the economic downturn came and he was laid off and now enjoys the benefits of the European Socialism in the Delta. The village has nothing except a church and a store that duplicates as pub so all day you see the benches in front of it full of men drinking beer. I try to take some pictures and shoot some video but they refused saying that I may be a spy trying to sneak out secrets. However the secrets are gossiped by everybody and all are more than eager to share them with us. And the most important secrets are related to ownership of the Delta land and waters that was parceled by politicians in their own interest in the last 20 years. The Communist government hotels, the only in the area, were given almost for free to a rich ex-Securitate businessman from Bucharest in cahoots with Social Democracy Party politicians. The hotels are in disrepair, the windows are broken and the doors are shut with plywood like in the abandoned buildings in Harlem. Probably they are preserved for a future when the Danube Delta will be a major tourist destination for large tourist groups but at the pace of present development, I doubt that their current owner will live to see that day. Latter we go to a fish hatchery basin, completely dried out and full of grass. Without asking we find out that is owned by one of the pillar politician in the same Social Democratic party but because he cannot show so much wealth the place is owned on paper by a local politician and operated by a French guy married to the daughter of a Securitate colonel. These are typical byzantine connection of a country that was not yet able to find its pace. But we are not here for an investigation, less me who I have just vague clues who these new owners are. Everything else is pristine beauty.
Alone in the forest, around marshes, with deers running in the sunrise, and pack of wild horses running loose the Danube Delta is an amazing place to contemplate the nature. We walk the village street, poke in people’s gardens and start conversations. Women tender the gardens fetching water from the well and telling us about their children departed to the city or far away to Europe. Men take the goats to the field and tell us stories about their past better life. Nobody complains. There are just facts of life. In the golden light of the sunset the atmosphere is magic. In the evening our host found us a place to sleep at a local relative and we sit around a table completely covered by the fish bought in Sulina prepared with mashed garlic, mujdei as is called in Romanian. The wine, chilled in the well, is well received by all of us. The dinner is a tradition here and is self served with lots of wine and talks. Now I understood why they were grateful in finding fish in Sulina. In the Danube Delta does not exist fish anymore! It sounds like an oxymoron but is a fact caused by extensive poaching. Naively I asked if they used extensively the net with leads at its end that catches everything when is thrown. They laugh and say that the poaching is done way more sophisticated, with electrodes, sold cheaply in Ukraine, just across the water. You just put them in the water, start the current and the fish of the entire area come up dead at the surface. It is an outrage but is hard to catch the poachers as long as they are connected with the local mafias and politicians. Now I start to connect the dots. Several days before I met at a dinner a woman who had a contact that could be called at any hour of day or night and in half an hour can bring any quantity of FRESH fish or fish product you imagine to your door. She said that his contact has connection with the Russian mafia that through its Romanian counterparts and obvious, the local politicians, have full control of the supply. The incredible direct result of the poaching is that the locals go on the lakes outside of the Delta to fish or to BUY fish. So the next day when we saw the only fisherman who was throwing the net we had to direct him how to sit for the camera not to show, the obvious, that the net was empty with just several small fish in it. In the good old days, funny but during the Communist times, after dinner the entire left over fish was thrown back in the Danube and a new fish would be collected for lunch the following morning. But not during the democracy; all the left over fish was saved and eaten the next day for lunch.
Old Light House Sulina, Danube Delta, Romania
Next morning at sunrise after a quick breakfast with strong Greek coffee we are taken to the forest where we will spend about 4-5 hours to take pictures and look for a plant that my friend has to photograph. Just to be there is a treat in itself. You can get lost in the dunes but eventually you can find your way back. Around 10 am, the heat is overwhelming but our guide comes to pick us up and we enter a Romanian jeep full of horse flies that luckily do not attack us and go to see the wild horses. More pictures and video and after a break at home we start riding back to Sulina on the Mosora Gulf covered completely with water plants and birds sitting on their eggs in the nests on the water. Before reaching Sulina we stop at a pelican colony that fly away, picture perfect, against the setting sun and to Sulina’s old lighthouse, extremely picturesque in the sunset with birds flying lazily in front of it. In the city, we walk a little the old streets still aligned with the old merchant houses and try to imagine the hustle and bustle of the this city during the free port time before the communist take over. The houses still preserve a style characteristic for the Balkans similar with houses built in Turkey or Greece.
We book a room for the night in a tiny local hotel overlooking the Danube and the promenade and for dinner we go to the main restaurant of the promenade, that has a name but everybody calls it by the name of a local who owns it. During dinner we try to figure out how much to pay our guide, because in Romania everything is based on: “you pay just how much you would like to pay”, but this does not mean that the expectations are low at all, it only leaves the higher level of negotiations open for business. Coming from the settled prices of New York I am always at a loss in such a situation so I leave the decision to my friend. Before going to sleep I stay on the balcony admiring the slow flow of the Danube and remember that I have to call my wife. She just got off from a cab at Newark International airport where she will board a plane bound to Bucharest to meet me the next day. The two worlds apart are somehow coming closer. In the night I have the feeling that somebody entered our room over the balcony. Maybe it was just a bad dream like many things that happen in Romania.
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