Day 9 - Saturday, August 30 - Golubac, Serbia

Going into Serbia we had a time change to Central European Time so we gained an hour, 7am became 6am.

Around 6am we came into the Iron Gates Lock, the first lock of the Danube and one of the largest. The total height of the lock is 35 meters, around 105', and needs two stages to get to this height. The ship pulls into the first chamber which closes and the ship rises to the top of the chamber. Then the gate between the two chambers drops down and the ship moves into the second chamber which then raises the ship to the top so that it can go further up the Danube. Each chamber is just long enough for the Viking ship but looks like there is room for two side by side.

There is a set of locks on the Serbian side and an identical set on the Romanian side with a large dam for hydroelectric power and a road over the top. This was only built in 1972 and flooded a huge area upstream, flooding numerous towns, roads and Roman ruins. Towns had to be relocated and new roads constructed along the Danube on both side.

The Danube had been famous for the best black caviar which came from the Danube sturgeon. The dam interrupted the migration of the sturgeon which migrated from the Black Sea to the Danube and had a catastrophic impact on the sturgeon and the caviar. Fish ladders were not considered at the time and would be very difficult to add now. A few sturgeon make it through with the ships but the impact is insignificant.

The dam was created because the Iron Gates were famous for the intense rapids in this section of the Danube where the river is very narrow and made commercial navigation very difficult. Ships were led through the rapids by donkeys on paths along the side. I don't know when this ended or what river commerce was in more recent times.

Our ship program director told an interesting story about the myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece. When he fled the Black Sea, he went up the Danube but was blocked by the mountains. Hercules was on his ship and used his hammer to break a path through the mountains which is why there is a wedge for the river to go through that looks like a tree chopped through. Apparently there is some historical significance to the Golden Fleece as fleece could be used to trap small particles of gold in the streams.

There is a very famous carving in the mountainside of the Emperor Trajian that was done fairly recently by a German millionaire and this is now a popular tourist attraction. The Viking ads for the Danube cruise feature a photo of this carving.

The ship docked for a short time where we got off for a hike into the huge Iron Gates National Park which exists on both the Serbian and Romanian sides for many miles along the river. It was a nice peaceful walk of a little over a walk through open forest to an overlook with an expansive view of the river in both directions. Our tour guide described the various flora and fauna which the park is famous for but we didn't see any. Photos there showed the islands that no longer exist after the flooding.

On the way back we stopped at an eco-reserve where the owner served us honey brandy he made and a number of treats including fried nettles (!), a plum and some pastries. He spoke about the name of the reserve which was that of a ship captain in the 19th century dealing salt and deer antlers. He was a kind man. The owner didn't wear shoes in order to keep his spiritual connection with the earth. He also had many outdoor wooden sculptures that he created.

After another bus ride we came back to where the ship was docked in Golubac and adjacent to the Golubac Fortress where we had a short tour. During archeological explorations adjacent to the fortress, Roman houses and an Ottoman Bath were uncovered. The fortress was originally constructed in the 13th century to guard the entrance to the Iron Gates and had passed through many hand along the way, the last being the Ottomans. In the early 20th century when a road was being constructed, they made it right through the fortress, taking down some walls and passing through some of the gates of the fortress! Through European cultural grants it has gone through a huge restoration and is quite spectacular now.

Serbia did not suffer as much from the communist regime under Tito as Bulgaria, Rumania and other eastern bloc countries but then suffered terribly from the dissolution of Yugoslavia that resulted in a long war between Serbia and Bosnia that killed tens of thousands and displaced many more. It seems relatively more prosperous and western oriented. We saw few abandoned buildings and the road signs were in Cyrillic-Serbian, latinized-Serbian and English. The tourist attractions had signage that included English which made our life much easier.