Enchantment of Eastern Europe

I woke up at 6 and remembered we were passing through a lock so I hurriedly dressed and went to the top deck. This was a series of two locks; Iron Gate 1, the largest lock on the Danube river. The captain was standing on the starboard side monitoring how close we were to the side. At times our ship was 5cm from that wall of cement! There was a lot of creaking and groaning as our ship moved up within the lock.

We learned that things that don’t need to move quickly are shipped on the river, like animal feed, corn, scrap metal. There is a big difference in price! Price by ship €0.2 km vs price by road €2.50 per km.

We also were advised to put our clocks back one hour as we were passing into Serbia and the Central European Time Zone. However, the clocks kept jumping back and forth because I guess we crossed the line several times!

Everybody was on the sun deck to get a glimpse of this iconic carving, as we sailed through Kazan Gorge, advertised as the most beautiful stretch of the Lower Danube.

Cruise director Igor gave a talk about Life Behind the Iron Curtain. Following are my notes (without referencing the internet, so if something is incorrect, it’s because I heard or recorded incorrectly.

Satellite states of Russia -Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Estonia

Yugoslavia aligned with USSR, but they were Influenced from east and west, meaning they could travel and had access to things like Blue jeans, coka cola…

• ⁃single party
• Distribution of wealth based on needs
• Property owned by government in Romania, but in Yugoslavia you could own your own home
• Classless society
• Full employment
• Emphasis on mass education and literacy (no truancy)
• Control of media
• Brainwashing to be in the party
• Not a lot of crime except for small theft
• No homelessness
• Fixed prices
• Shortage of goods, queues to buy things
• No freedom of speech
• No freedom to travel (except Yugoslavia)
• Limited career opportunities
• Living in fear
• Harvest trips – work for free (we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us)
• No entrepreneurs
• Favouritism
• Religion was not allowed, but now 96% are baptized, but only 3% go to church.
• mature generations miss it

1989 Czechoslovakia – velvet revolution where country was divided

1991 to 1993 Yugoslavia civil war divided into Serbia, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Slovenia.

Serbia is not part of EU or NATO and in Igor’s opinion, likely won’t be because they have business connections with communist countries. Igor was a truck driver during Covid times, so he has an idea how things work as far as moving goods between Western Europe and Eastern Europe!

Igor doesn’t like tennis player Novak Djokovic, but admits he is doing good for the country

I need to research more about Kosovo??? full of natural resources, so wanting to be independent.

Viking Lofn was tied up beside us in Donji Milanovac, Serbia.

Once the ship cleared customs, we were able to get our passports back and go for a walk in the sleepy little town.

We met a man and his father who were from Newcastle and were biking to Istanbul! It was going to take about 10 weeks and they would cover about 2000 miles. They often used an app called “free couch”, which let them couch surf in the homes of other cycling enthusiasts!

We were back on the ship at 1:30 and then Dean, Sharon and Dan joined the excursion to an archaeological site, while Gary, Luanne and I stayed on the ship. I took advantage of the time to catch up on this blog and get some pictures uploaded; the internet is incredibly slow!

Eventually we got a drink and went up to the sun deck with Luanne. We caught a glimpse of an interesting structure, which turned out to be Golubac Castle.

It was 5 o’clock and the four buses from the excursion pulled up so Dan, Sharon and Dean rejoined us. I got off the ship and made a quick walk to the castle, although I didn’t have a ticket, so didn’t go in.

I was happy we were near the top of the list to join the bike tour of Belgrade on Monday. We attended Igor’s port talk and went to dinner. After dinner Sharon, Dean, Gary and I spent a few minutes in the lounge, but then packed it in. I think the activity and beverages are wearing us down!

Dan had gone to Igor’s talk about the other itineraries offered by Emerald and came back with information about a deposit bonus. If we pay €500 while on the ship, Emerald will match that amount and it has to be used within three years. I would really like to do the cruise in the south of France, so maybe we should jump onboard this offer? TBD!