April 26, 2004

The Ferry and the Canal

fpi_glasses.jpg The ferry from Silistra to Calarasi is... mm, did you ever go to summer camp? Remember the raft on the lake, where kids would climb on and off? Basically metal sheeting over some drums? Well, the ferry is pretty much like that. Just bigger -- enough to hold a dozen or so cars, or maybe fifty people. It wasn't half full when we took it, though. There's a rather flimsy railing around the edge, and that's it.

The ferry is pushed by a little tugboat. Not being streamlined at all, it kicks up a good sized bow wave. It was a perfectly calm day when we crossed, so that wasn't a problem, but I bet it gets pretty choppy when there's even a bit of wind.

It's a pretty crossing. The Danube is maybe three quarters of a mile wide there. The Romanian side is mostly reeds and forest. The Bulgarian side is the city of Silistra, and yes, there is an airliner parked in front of a group of apartment blocks, facing the river. It's an Air Bulgaria jet, maybe a 727, and it looks like it's been there for a while. What it's doing there I have no idea. (If anyone knows, please contact us.)

Alan loved the ferry ride, of course. Boat with a loud engine, kicking up waves, puff puff puffing smoke from its engine? Ooo yes. I kept him on my shoulders, well away from the railing. David charmed a nice old lady from Calarasi.

Oh: Calarasi. I visited Calarasi back in January. Not much has changed. We didn't have time to see the Museum of the Lower Danube, alas -- the kids were getting restless -- but we did take a detour to look at the siderurgical works, which are still huge, and still slowly rotting into rust and nothingness.

We also saw the canal, which I'd missed the first time. Holy smokes. That canal is about 4 kilometers long and over a hundred meters wide. I don't know how deep it is, but still: it was a huge, massive piece of civil engineering. And now that the siderurgical works has closed, it's a canal to nowhere. What were they thinking?

(Has anyone come up for a use for it? Speedboat races? Water-skiing? Fish farm? Right now there's nothing but a very few fishermen dropping lines off the concrete banks.)

Anyhow. It was a good trip, and we'd cheerfully go back again.

Tip for travellers: the Silistra-Calarasi crossing is much less busy than the one at Giurgiu-Ruse. Cheaper, too.

Posted by douglas at April 26, 2004 04:09 PM
Comments

I took that ferry route on a bus from Istanbul to Bucuresti a couple of years ago. We couldn't leave the dock until the assembled bus drivers ponied up enough extra grease money to induce the Romanian captain to leave. Another payment on the Romanian side at 4 in the morning and voila! - no customs checks!

Greeting from Budapest!

Posted by: zaelic at April 27, 2004 03:51 PM

One of my coworkers says she took a similar ferry across the Pruth at Galati, going from Romania into Moldova.

She says that when she and her friend arrived, the ferry was empty. After half an hour, it was still empty, and showed no signs of moving. They realized that the ferry would cross when it had a certain number of people on board, but not before.

So they offered to "buy the ferry". After some negotiation, the pilot agreed to make the trip for 200,000 -- about $7.

The Calarasi-Silistra ferry had about a dozen Romanians on it, BTW. Now I wonder what they were going to Silistra for.

Doug M.

Posted by: Doug Muir at April 28, 2004 11:44 AM