Halfway down the Danube

Down to the Black Sea

It wasn't black. At least, not when we visited it. A very nice dark blue-green color, and smooth as a duck pond.

The drive there has its interesting points. If you look at a map, you'll see that the Danube, after rolling along in more or less a straight line for 300 km, gradually swings through right angle turn 100 km or so before it reaches the Black Sea. It flows north instead of east for about 150 km. Then, quite suddenly, it turns east again, splits into three or four smaller rivers, and empties into the Black Sea through a vast, soggy delta.

(This delta is supposed to be a birdwatcher's paradise. Unfortunately, it's not easy to reach -- you need a couple of days with nothing better to do -- so I probably won't be visiting any time soon.)

Anyhow: between the river and the sea is a blunt-tipped wedge of land about the size of Connecticut. It's called Dobrogea (in the northern, Romanian part) or Dobrudja (in the southern, Bulgarian part).

It has an interesting history. Colonized by the ancient Greeks. Steppe tribes -- Alans, Bulgars, Khazars, Cumans. Part of the Roman empire, with Roman ruins all over the place. Then it was the Byzantine province of Scythia Minor, a borderland of the Byzantium for many centuries (unlike the rest of Romania, which was influenced by the Byzantine Empire but never really part of it).

Then it was Turkish. And it stayed Turkish right up until 1878; the modern Romanian city of Constanta began life as the Turkish port of Köstence. There's still a large Turkish minority in the region; more than half of Romania's Turks (there are perhaps 150,000 of them altogether) live in Dobrogea.

Anyhow: driving there from Bucharest, one crosses the Danube. And it's quite a crossing. There's a 20 km stretch of "highway" at that point -- you have to stop at a toll booth and pay 40,000 lei (about US$1.25). The "highway" is supposed to have four lanes, but two of them have been closed for construction, so it's really another damn two-lane road. And it's full of potholes.

On the other hand, the Danube crossing is pretty impressive; it's the very last one before the river blows up into delta mode and hits the sea, and there's a spectacular double road/rail bridge. (The rail bridge dates to the 1890s, and was the longest bridge in Europe at the time it was built.)

Then one drives past the Cernavoda nuclear power plant. Cernavoda is of Ceausescu's more memorable accomplishments. He lured the Canadians into building it for him by telling them they'd get to build twenty! new! nuclear power plants! in Romania. Then he gradually re-adjusted the deal -- ten plants, five, three -- until the Canadians were paying to build one plant, and participating in rather a lot of involuntary technology transfer too.

Cernavoda is still running; in fact, it's being expanded. But it's rather controversial, since it's built on an arm of the Danube that doesn't always provide quite enough water for cooling, and is also in an earthquake zone. More about this in a bit, perhaps.

[continued]

Posted by douglas at July 2, 2004 11:49 AM