outside wall of the church, facing west, away from the predations of the winds, are paintings of Christ as a fisher of men in the Sea of Galilee. In an alcove by the gate is an icon of a youthful Saint George, hardly old enough to be a patron saint, spearing a monster of the deeps. An oil lamp flickers in front of him. The alcove is designed to protect the flame, whatever the strength of the winds off the sea or the river. Inside the church, people kneel in a semi-circle round the priest, their eyes tight shut, singing with him in a service in memory of the dead – all the dead, not just the recently departed. People mostly stand in Orthodox churches; few sit or kneel. In another Orthodox country, Greece, I have seen old ladies struggling up steep hills or wandering far from their villages in the last light of day, to light a candle or an oil lamp in front of a shrine. There is still an instinctive, blind faith in God in eastern Europe, from Finland to Greece, which neither the material faiths of capitalism or communism have quite managed to erase. There is a stubborn insistence on contemplating the mystery of one's own existence and its conclusion. In the words of the Bosnian poet Mak Dizdar: ‘And in the deepest depths of death the colours will be clearer then.’ 11
The beach in March is a great bow of sand, embedded with millions of shells, on to which huge trunks of trees have washed up like heads, some still wearing strange horned helmets. This southern mouth of the Danube is more tangible, simpler than the one in Sulina and uncluttered by piers or lighthouses. Offshore, the sweet waters of the Danube merge boisterously with the salt waters of the Black Sea, like a rugby scrum first making progress against a bigger adversary by the sheer energy of their charge, thenfinally slowing to a halt as the home team digs in its heels, flexes its muscles, and drives them back. The most spectacular floods over the centuries have been caused by wind and tide combining to block the river, and then the Danube shrugs its vast shoulders on to the lands instead and drowns the villages.
This is the time of year, just before Easter, of the ‘howling’. It starts up like an orchestra rehearsing, a straining of strings and a gurgling and a crying and a longing, mingled together. Local people say it is the herring, tempting fishermen to follow them, further and further out to sea, never to return. Out over the sea a line of cormorants and a single pelican fish together. The pelican's long, humorous beak gives it a leisurely air, which makes even the movement of the cormorants seem hurried. Over the southern lip of the delta a single column of black smoke rises from burning reeds. I walk barefoot in the seawater for a while, then turn inland, upriver again.
According to Greek legend, Jason and the Argonauts, in their ship the Argo , sailed up the Danube to flee the wrath of King Aeëtes of Colchis at the far, eastern end of the Black Sea, in what is now Georgia. The Argonauts stole the Golden Fleece with the help of the King's daughter Medea. 12 ‘There are two ways back to Greece,’ Phrixus’ son Cytisorus told them. ‘One is the route by which you came. The other is via the Danube, a great, broad river we can sail up till we come to another sea, which will take us round to the Aegean in the West.’ Notwithstanding the dubious geography of the proposal, the journey was made, and the Argo must have sailed past this very headland.
There is also a Romanian folk story according to which Helios, the Sun, wanted to get married, but could find no bride more beautiful or desirable than his own sister Ileana Cosinzeana. 13 For nine years he travelled around the world in search of a bride, pulled in his chariot by nine horses, then came back and told his sister to prepare for her wedding. His mission had failed, and now he was determined to marry her. He found her in a shady glade, weaving at her loom in an argea , a hut used by the women
The beach in March is a great bow of sand, embedded with millions of shells, on to which huge trunks of trees have washed up like heads, some still wearing strange horned helmets. This southern mouth of the Danube is more tangible, simpler than the one in Sulina and uncluttered by piers or lighthouses. Offshore, the sweet waters of the Danube merge boisterously with the salt waters of the Black Sea, like a rugby scrum first making progress against a bigger adversary by the sheer energy of their charge, thenfinally slowing to a halt as the home team digs in its heels, flexes its muscles, and drives them back. The most spectacular floods over the centuries have been caused by wind and tide combining to block the river, and then the Danube shrugs its vast shoulders on to the lands instead and drowns the villages.
This is the time of year, just before Easter, of the ‘howling’. It starts up like an orchestra rehearsing, a straining of strings and a gurgling and a crying and a longing, mingled together. Local people say it is the herring, tempting fishermen to follow them, further and further out to sea, never to return. Out over the sea a line of cormorants and a single pelican fish together. The pelican's long, humorous beak gives it a leisurely air, which makes even the movement of the cormorants seem hurried. Over the southern lip of the delta a single column of black smoke rises from burning reeds. I walk barefoot in the seawater for a while, then turn inland, upriver again.
According to Greek legend, Jason and the Argonauts, in their ship the Argo , sailed up the Danube to flee the wrath of King Aeëtes of Colchis at the far, eastern end of the Black Sea, in what is now Georgia. The Argonauts stole the Golden Fleece with the help of the King's daughter Medea. 12 ‘There are two ways back to Greece,’ Phrixus’ son Cytisorus told them. ‘One is the route by which you came. The other is via the Danube, a great, broad river we can sail up till we come to another sea, which will take us round to the Aegean in the West.’ Notwithstanding the dubious geography of the proposal, the journey was made, and the Argo must have sailed past this very headland.
There is also a Romanian folk story according to which Helios, the Sun, wanted to get married, but could find no bride more beautiful or desirable than his own sister Ileana Cosinzeana. 13 For nine years he travelled around the world in search of a bride, pulled in his chariot by nine horses, then came back and told his sister to prepare for her wedding. His mission had failed, and now he was determined to marry her. He found her in a shady glade, weaving at her loom in an argea , a hut used by the women
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