That morning we have a tremendous wind coming from the north and we are riding due east. In order to stay on the bike I have to ride leaned over about 10° into the wind. Wind like this I have experienced only in the Bretagne, at the sea. It makes the riding hard and by early afternoon we are wrecked. Looking for a picnic location we go up and down the woody beach bordering the Danube, but the wind is so strong and constant that any attempt at eating would be futile and result in eating more sand than food. We head away from the water and after a time we find a picnic table next to a store, buy cheese and beer to accompany the kilos of fruits and vegetables and bread we had been given by Ioanna before our departure, eat a huge lunch and fall asleep for a well-deserved rest. The night before we ended up sleeping in the small house of Ion and Ioanna rather than in the tent but I had had a rough night because Ion, just a few metres away in the next room, snored like a machine all night.
In the late afternoon we arrive in the Lipoven town of Mahmudia, from where we hope to catch a ferry boat the next day through the delta to the sea. We meet a little girl on the street who tells us that her babuschka has a room to let and we walk over with her. The old woman has a lovely little house on the main street, a comfortable room for us and a garden with a pergola covered by grape vines full of fresh grapes. The room is very inexpensive and we gladly move in. It seems that she takes in visitors more for the pleasure of having people in the house than for the few RON she earns. She busies herself making up the room and asking what we would like to eat that night. In the evening we sit together at the table outside, eat a nice dinner, drink a bottle of wine I bought at the store and also her homemade wine.
The next day at three in the afternoon we have – allegedly – a ferry boat to Sft. Gheorghe, which lies at the end of one of the three main river branches of the delta. I write allegedly, because accurate information here seems impossible to find. One hears things from others, then tries to substantiate it by checking again with others and if one is 80 or 90 percent sure, that is already something. At 2 o’clock we walk the bikes down to the port to see what we can find out. There is a large group of people waiting for a boat, so it seems that our info was indeed correct. At about 3 a large ferry turns up and it is a chaotic scene of passengers disembarking and embarking and loads of food being carried aboard for transport into the delta towns. We manage to get the bikes aboard and are directed toward the stern of the boat. My bike is so wide with all the bags mounted on it that it is hard to maneuver it but I get a hand from another cycling tourist who grasps the handlebars while I take the back of the bike and we manage to wedge it into a corner in the stern of the boat. The man is named Costi and is planning to ride his bike from Sft. Gheorghe to another town in the delta from where he hopes to find a boat going to the Ukraine (he is not sure if there is boat but will wait at the docks for a few days) from where he will ride home to Kronstadt (Brasov), Romania. His bike is ancient, maybe from the 1970s, but he has managed to ride it all over southeast Europe, the Balkans, even to Istanbul. We talk for a while, then go to explore the boat and buy tickets. In regard to the tickets we are told we can pay RON 56 for the two of us and receive tickets, or we can make a “gift” of less than that and not have tickets. You get the idea. This is how everything works around here. We are on a budget tour and choose the gift option and spend much less than the normal price.
We slowly cruise three hours down the delta, relaxing on deck, drinking cold beer and watching the nature drift past. It is an old boat, beaten up, but fits perfectly into the scene. A trip like this should be done on an old beaten up boat. Arriving at Sft. Gheorge, which is located at the end of this branch of the river about 2 kms from where the river meets the Black Sea, the local taxis our out en masse to meet the visitors. The local taxis are horse-carts and a dozen of them are waiting. We see Costi at the quay with three others. He is visiting friends here and we are invited to go with him to visit the friends. Costi is a professor of violin and the friends he is visiting are both in the Transylvanian Symphony orchester. Aurora is an oboist and Lenu is flautist. Again, despite being simple bicycle tourists, we have the great fortune to arrive among intellectuals. On the boat Costi also met Alex, a young man from Tulcea who studied engineering in Constanza and is now doing a master degree in marine engineering in Norway and his girlfriend Ina, from Stuttgart, who studied ship building in TU-Harburg (Hamburg) and is now also doing a master in marine engineering in Norway, and they are there also with us in the garden. It is quite a colourful group and we sit for a few hours in the garden drinking home-made wine and talking.
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