Cruising Through the Balkans

Bucharest is an interesting old city. It has a long history and experienced a pretty bad time under the Communists. In the city is the worlds second largest building, just marginally behind the Pentagon. It was built by Ceausescu, the dictator as a palace and a memorial to his magnificence.

We toured the city by bus and then did the art gallery that had many items of historical significance as well as art. We got quite a view of Romanian history and it was a surprise to learn that Dracula (the dreaded vampire of myth and movie) is deeply revered here. It just shows us the power of Hollywood to destroy culture and truth in the interest of a buck.

We ate all of our meals at the Athenee Palace Hilton – our hotel. It was really very nice. In the afternoon we boarded our buses and headed to Oltenita and our boat. We were greeted with champagne and then taken to our room. Our bilge based quarters are definitely upscale. One must say this trip is definitely five star.

This post is getting there on the late side and we are behind on our e-mail because of the odd way the internet service works. Gwen & I are among the very very few who are going the whole way. As a result not all rules work in our favour. Then on top of everything the moment we signed up for the internet the ship satellite system crashed.

On Sunday we went to Varna, a Bulgaria city on the Black Sea. It is a big beautiful city but on the way we went through a lot of the countryside of Eastern Bulgaria. It is definitely showing some economic strain. The locals blame it on the Communists but the party still has the strong support of about 40% of the population. This is agricultural land and should be prosperous because the land is very good. But then farmers throughout the world are having some problems.

The next day we travelled inland to Veliko Tarnovo and Arbanassi. These are ancient towns that reek with medieval history. Arbanassi is just a small village of about 200 people but those were very influential in the early days. Maybe even so today! On the other hand Veliko Tarnovo is larger and at one time was the capital. The two are only 20 minutes apart by bus.

We continued upstream but we held up at the locks. The smallest and slowest was in Bulgaria where an uncompleted ocean ship came through. It didn't have an engine so it was under tow. The second lock was at the Serbian Bulgarian border and we got through that quite quickly.

Unfortunately it was night when we reached the Iron Gate and we missed a spectacular part of the river.

The next morning we docked at Belgrade and did a city tour in the morning. We went to the old fort. This dates back to Roman times but probably could not be considered dependable. It was destroyed 44 times but rebuilt 45. Now it is a park area and tourist zone.

Later we visited St. Sava Eastern Orthodox Cathedral that was started in 1995 and is still a work in progress.

Thursday evening we had a very interesting lecture (really) on Serbian modern history follow by a string quartet. It worked well.