the late 1940s, and how the peasants pleaded in vain to keep their land. As a child he used to take the sheep to the Kneeling Oak. ‘They liked to rub their backs under one of its knees, but the other knee was too high in those days – only my donkey was tall enough for that one!’
The homemade wine is red and potent, and Alexander refills my glass too often. ‘The grapes didn't ripen quite enough, so we added a little saccharine …’ I sip it a little more cautiously after that. ‘Life was better under communism,’ he says. ‘Everyone had animals, and work. There were three thousand head of sheep in the village then – now there are less than fifty. People had more children then too – between five and ten in a family.’He and his wife make a quick calculation to count how many children there are today in the ten houses between their own and the church. Only three.
‘Is nothing better now?’ I ask. He shakes his head for a while, then cheers up. ‘Just one thing,’ he says. ‘Under communism, the police would sometimes come to the village and beat us. They don't do that any more. They've been democratised !’ He uses the word with deep irony.
The delta region is as rich in Russians and Ukrainians as it once was in Turks and Greeks. Like the Serbs, they celebrate Christmas two weeks later than the Romanians, according to the old rite. But Easter is marked at the same time as by Romanian Orthodox and Catholic believers. The one year they held Easter later, a terrible hailstorm decimated their crops, and the villagers took it as a sign that they should leave Easter where it was. For all their physical and cultural similarities, there's an uneasy rivalry between Ukrainians and Russians. ‘They keep their traditions too, but they don't raise cattle like us.’
‘Fishermen came here from Volkovo in Ukraine to fish for sturgeon, and we learnt some songs from them,’ says his wife. She remembers one from school, and sings it to us, pausing first to wipe the fish scales off her hands. Even the cockerels fall quiet to listen. Old fishing nets hang on the wire fence, dreaming fitfully of fish. ‘The song is about a girl, harvesting in the fields,’ she says. ‘A young man rides by, and offers to help. “No,” she says, “because if you help me, all the boys in the village will want to too.”’
To reach Mahmoudia by motorboat from Karaorman is several hours ride, and we've dawdled too long to easily intercept the ferry from Tulcea to Sfântu Gheorghe. Adrian guns the engine through narrow channels over wide expanses of lake. We pass the first tourists of the year, barbecuing fish on the shore, and silent anglers like cormorants, wrapped up in their thoughts. A young couple paddle by in a canoe with a tent and rucksacks, hardy explorers in the late March cold. The water is shallow here, only a metre and a half in places. The wind whips up the waves and the boat skims over them like a stone. We make it to Mahmoudia with only five minutes to spare before the afternoon catamaran appears around a headland in the river. The Delta Express is twin-hulled, with a single, Cyclopean eye in the middle from which the crew steer the boat. Adrian sets out back north, all the way home to Crisan, standing in his seashell of a craft,bouncing across the waves. I set out for Sfântu Gheorghe to start my journey up the Danube again, this time from the southernmost tip of the delta.
Sfântu Gheorghe, unlike Sulina, has no pretensions to be a town. This is a remote fishing village, with its back to the land, its face to the sea, and its shoulder to the river. It seems to belong here among the sand dunes and the birds and the sea-horses, much more than to the interior of the continent. In summer it boasts a film festival, and its internet pages brim with images of tented youths silhouetted against the sunset. 10 For the rest of the year the wind, the water and the fruits of the deep provide the main entertainment.
High on an
The homemade wine is red and potent, and Alexander refills my glass too often. ‘The grapes didn't ripen quite enough, so we added a little saccharine …’ I sip it a little more cautiously after that. ‘Life was better under communism,’ he says. ‘Everyone had animals, and work. There were three thousand head of sheep in the village then – now there are less than fifty. People had more children then too – between five and ten in a family.’He and his wife make a quick calculation to count how many children there are today in the ten houses between their own and the church. Only three.
‘Is nothing better now?’ I ask. He shakes his head for a while, then cheers up. ‘Just one thing,’ he says. ‘Under communism, the police would sometimes come to the village and beat us. They don't do that any more. They've been democratised !’ He uses the word with deep irony.
The delta region is as rich in Russians and Ukrainians as it once was in Turks and Greeks. Like the Serbs, they celebrate Christmas two weeks later than the Romanians, according to the old rite. But Easter is marked at the same time as by Romanian Orthodox and Catholic believers. The one year they held Easter later, a terrible hailstorm decimated their crops, and the villagers took it as a sign that they should leave Easter where it was. For all their physical and cultural similarities, there's an uneasy rivalry between Ukrainians and Russians. ‘They keep their traditions too, but they don't raise cattle like us.’
‘Fishermen came here from Volkovo in Ukraine to fish for sturgeon, and we learnt some songs from them,’ says his wife. She remembers one from school, and sings it to us, pausing first to wipe the fish scales off her hands. Even the cockerels fall quiet to listen. Old fishing nets hang on the wire fence, dreaming fitfully of fish. ‘The song is about a girl, harvesting in the fields,’ she says. ‘A young man rides by, and offers to help. “No,” she says, “because if you help me, all the boys in the village will want to too.”’
To reach Mahmoudia by motorboat from Karaorman is several hours ride, and we've dawdled too long to easily intercept the ferry from Tulcea to Sfântu Gheorghe. Adrian guns the engine through narrow channels over wide expanses of lake. We pass the first tourists of the year, barbecuing fish on the shore, and silent anglers like cormorants, wrapped up in their thoughts. A young couple paddle by in a canoe with a tent and rucksacks, hardy explorers in the late March cold. The water is shallow here, only a metre and a half in places. The wind whips up the waves and the boat skims over them like a stone. We make it to Mahmoudia with only five minutes to spare before the afternoon catamaran appears around a headland in the river. The Delta Express is twin-hulled, with a single, Cyclopean eye in the middle from which the crew steer the boat. Adrian sets out back north, all the way home to Crisan, standing in his seashell of a craft,bouncing across the waves. I set out for Sfântu Gheorghe to start my journey up the Danube again, this time from the southernmost tip of the delta.
Sfântu Gheorghe, unlike Sulina, has no pretensions to be a town. This is a remote fishing village, with its back to the land, its face to the sea, and its shoulder to the river. It seems to belong here among the sand dunes and the birds and the sea-horses, much more than to the interior of the continent. In summer it boasts a film festival, and its internet pages brim with images of tented youths silhouetted against the sunset. 10 For the rest of the year the wind, the water and the fruits of the deep provide the main entertainment.
High on an
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