A three hour cruise

When we awake it is raining. Today’s weather is the antithesis of yesterday’s: chilly, raining, grey overcast skies. It’s not the ideal day for a boat trip, but that’s what we want to do. I think we’ve seen everything the town has to offer, and I certainly don’t want to stay around at Dragiča’s place all day.

Before we head out we carefully pack up all our laundry and Neil writes a note in his very best Serbian to let Dragiča know that this is what we would like washed. This is what we believe we had set up via the tourist information office yesterday. We hunt down breakfast, which ends up being a pastry at a bakery and go the visitor centre to see what our chances are of the boat trip. Our helpful fellow of yesterday is not there, and his colleague shrugs his shoulders in a Serbian fashion. “Not looking good,” he says. “Come back later and we will see how the weather is.” Nonplussed, and out of things to do, we head for our usual haunt (we’ve been in this town for just over 12 hours and have a usual haunt already?) – Kafe Bar Teuta. After a bit of a wait when it seems the rain has eased, we go back to the visitor centre. The fellow there is very sorry to tell us there are no more passengers for the boat cruise. We tell him we want to go anyway. He now things we are very rich and that we’re throwing our money away. (Our accommodation is about 7 euro a night each; the boat trip is 120 euro.)

He tells us we must come back at 1pm. We go back to Dragiča’s and find our laundry, still packed in the plastic bags and with Neil’s very polite note still in place, untouched. Obviously she is not doing our laundry after all! We find her and ask her about using the washing machine. With little in the way of common language, we learn how to use the machine and we load our stuff in and ask if she will hang it up when it is done. She is a bit reluctant. “There is nowhere to hang it,” she tells us. But we have to leave so walk away thinking there will be clumps of wet clothes still in the machine when we get back from our three hour cruise. The sounds of the Gilligan’s Island theme song are still playing in my ears as we run through the pelting rain – yes, the rain has come back – to the visitor centre, and then down to the docks. Our dry and warm clothes are sopping wet when we reach the one tiny boat that has any activity going on today, and I think it is going to be a very long and verywet afternoon.

Our boat captain, Bob, sets about preparing the boat and we spy a park ranger (you can spot a park ranger from 500 paces as they stroll around in the park ranger uniforms) approaching. Bob says, “I think the ranger is coming with us.” Bob introduces the ranger as Aleksandr, and sure enough, he boards the boat with us and we set off, all tucked away inside the zip-up plastic panels of the boat cabin.

It becomes apparent early on that we have struck a winner. The ranger is not a ranger coming along for the ride. The ranger is  a ranger who has come along to be our guide. We start by chatting socially, about tennis (Novak Djokovic), about the country (Serbia), how are we enjoying it, how are the people treating us, then he starts telling stories about the park, pulls out books and shows us things, opens up the flaps on the boat’s cabin to let the wind in (it has stopped raining), and guides us out to sit on the front of the boat where we can get a better view of what is coming up.

We are out the front of the boat as we enter the narrowest part of the gorge, with towering cliffs on either side of us. This is Aleksandr’s country and he loves it. We see attractions along the river as he points them out, but we are grabbed and fascinated by Aleksandr and what he has to say, what he loves, what he thinks is amazing. There is a spot where you get the great views he says, and shows us a picture in a book of a woman posing, very high up, with a sweeping view of the gorge and the mountains around us. It is up there, he points. He thinks there are some Russian tourists up there today.

He points out the Mraconia Monastery on the left bank of the river (the Romanian side), has very little to say about the Rock sculpture of Decebalus, which, at 55m high is the largest sculpture made of stone in Europe, but he is truly excited about the Tabula Traiana.

The Tabula is a memorial to the Roman emperor Trajan who built a bridge over the Danube starting in 103AD and also built the “Roman Road” that used to lead from Belgrade to the bridge. (The bridge is a little further down the river from where we are – when we reach Kladavo tomorrow we will be very close to the site and remnants of the bridge.) The Tabula used to lie well below the level of the water but was raised to preserve it when the Djerdap I Hydro Power Plant was constructed in 1969. We express shock at something to ancient and significant being flooded and Aleksandr shrugs. “The people needed power,” he says simply.

Bob tries to manoeuvre us close to the tabula, but it is tricky as the water is rough. The Tabula is the turn-around point and we are now headed back. The weather has improved and sit up the top of the boat, feeling a bit like royalty, just he two of us on our trip. We are glad nobody else wanted to come. We are glad we had to fork out the €120 all by ourselves. We are having a great day.

When we leave the narrowest part of the river we go inside the cabin. Bob breaks out the rakija and some snacks which I devour. Neil gets to drive the boat. I am not offered the same opportunity. (I am a girl; I am obviously incapable or have no desire to drive it myself. I suck it up. Now isn’t the time to make a feminist stand.)

Aleksandr entertains us with his stories on the way back and it shows in everything he says how much he loves his country, and in particular his little piece of the country. He tells us more about the Roman bridge. It was built in the first century, and was apparently a remarkable engineering feat. There are only two pillars left now – one on the Serbian side and one on the Romanian side. Aleksandr’s delivery of the story is so infectious that we both resolve to visit it when we are in Kladovo.

With Aleksandr’s entertaining stories, we are soon back in Donji Milanovac. We bid farewell to Bob and walk with Aleksandr back into the town. He points out what he believes is the best restaurant in town and then heads home. He has a wife and young children.

We return to Dagiča’s place, and find that she has hung out our washing, under cover in her front porch. The air is damp and not a lot of drying is going on. We endure a little more time in her company, then go upstairs and bring in our washing, hanging it all over our room in the hopes that it will dry. (Note to self: never forget travel clothes line!)

Dragiča catches  us on the way out, and demands to enter our room. When she gets inside she freaks out about the washing, and we have to take down from all the places we’ve hung it. We scurry to placate her. It looks like we will be packing wet clothes tomorrow.

We have another false start in trying to get out, when she waylays us, and demands our passports. We don’t have enough Serbian to understand why she wants them, but then twig that maybe it is the damn white slips. I go up to the room and get our passports and white slips and bring them down. She grabs hold of the passports, and makes as if she is going to keep them. Our backs go up at this, and I manage to get the passport back, but she holds onto my white slip. She keeps saying, “No problem, no problem,” but it is a problem to me when somebody holds my passport.

We go into town and to the visitor centre, and ask our friend there to call her and ask why. It turns out she just needs our details to put into her record book. All is well, and I feel a little silly about making such a fuss.

We go back to Kafe Bar Teuta for a drink before dinner. When we arrive we find Aleksandr there with a friend and they invite us to join them. We pass time pleasantly with them, with Aleksandr again showing his love and passion for his town, describing how the Danube tour boats come here, how it was by chance/accident the first time, and the numbers of boats that come now. Personally, I can’t see why anybody would even get off a boat in this town, but Aleksandr certainly thinks the place is a drawcard. He says the women in the stalls make money selling their crafts to the visitors from the boats.

When he and his friend make to leave, we try to get the bill and pay it, but he will have no part of this. We are guests in his country, he says, and he will buy our drinks. We accept graciously, humbly. We must make many times more than this generous, proud man. He leaves us with an even sweeter taste of Serbia. He takes us down to his favourite restaurant, and advises us the best dish – a grilled cheese, which turns out to be like bbq’d haloumi (yum). We eat, then go back to Kafe Bar Teuta for a nightcap and then, with nothing else to do, go back home, to Dragiča, to our drying laundry and our vinyl couch beds.