Summary of the year 2012

If I had to briefly summarize the year of 2012 from the point of view of the Danube Islands, I would only say: it was very good. However, as not even the most withdrawn school director would say a one-sentence speech at the year closing celebration, let us see more in detail what happened in this year on the hungarian version, the Dunai Szigetek.

 

We climbed up the Megyeri bridge, Budapest

85 posts have been written, which means that a little more than four days had to be waited for a newer one. After the 86 posts of the past year this is a small setback, but maybe not so much. 13 posts has been translated to english for this blog version.

The Donauinseln blog is still in an embryotic stage comparing it to the Hungarian version, so please let me introduce my work on that one for the first yearly summary:

This year we managed to get to a lot of interesting places in person. I am pleased that I no longer need to visit the fields, as an enthusiastic team has been assembled, to whom you can of course feel free to join! We were in the Beliczay Island next to Érd, then Adony, Lórév, Szigetbecse and Ráckeve followed, then we climbed up the pylon of the Megyeri Bridge, visited the Zebegényi Island, crossed the Danube through a tunnel between Visegrád and Nagymaros, and in Neszmély it was due to half inch of mud that we could not see the ship museum. We finally reached Gemenc, then we passed along the Danube in canoa from Esztergom to Göd. We spoke about the Margit, Helemba, Luppa, Senki, Nép and Kacsa Islands. We have seen the flood marks in Esztergom and the Harbor Fort Museum in Dunakeszi. We milled flour in Ráckeve and fished in the nearby Angyali Island.

 

A newborn island in the Dunakenyar

The most important event of 2012 was the launch of the Danube Islands blog for foreigners. Fortunately, the translations are being continously prepared for the Donauinseln. We have prepared the first moving image (.gif) for the Esztergom and Altmühl-Danube posts. It is a bit time-consuming, but similar ones are to be expected. To the early summer post writing contest four articles were sent by the enthusiastic readers (now already authors), for which I am especially grateful. We have started to collect the St. John of Nepomuk statues, we have already a beautiful collection of them. We have received several external requests, which gave birth to a great many articles, such as The Danube is Blooming!, Cleaning the Ipoly river, or the collection of the river kilometer signs by the Külker rowers, and in turn, Imre Kurdi’s photos were lent to us on my request.

The shipmill of Ráckeve

 
Our blog was again regularly quoted in the hvg.hu, mandiner.hu and greenfo.hu portals, while, thanks to Zubreczki Dávid, our participation is constant in the Daily Links section of the Urbanista blog. This year we managed for the first time to get on the időkép.hu site with the blooming Danube. What is really surprising, we also managed to feature on szánalmas.hu, which at first might seem intimidating, but if there was only one person who fell in love with the Danube Islands for this, then it was worth. This year, by jumping about 40 places further, we were 14th in the GoldenBlog contest (we will never know with how many votes), while the bad news is that next year it will be impossible to repeat this jump: anyway, we will be satisfied with a 13-place jump :) In the summer I was invited to Tilos Rádió for a 1.5-hour interview, and I appeared for a few minutes in the broadcast of sziget.hu on the Shipyard Island.

This year, our most popular posts were (measured in the number of clicks):

1. Danubian archipelago on fire – archive pictures on the bombing of Hungary 1944 (5961)
2. Is the Shipyard Island the work of Roman engineers? (5554)
3. Blooming Danube. The Danube Is Blooming! (two separate posts, 1096+5292)
4. World heritage from the cellar of a family house? Late Roman Harbor Fort Museum in Dunakeszi (3479)
5. 35 storeys above the Danube – Panorama from pylon nr. 7 of Megyeri Bridge (3172)
6. Tunnel on the place of the dam between Visegrád and Nagymaros (2699)
7. The ship mill resurrected from its watery grave now mills again in Ráckeve (2323)
8. An old man on the Danube – The Luppa Island is 80 this year (1374)
9. The mysterious disappearance of the Great War Island in Belgrade on the spring of 1941 (1247)
10. Three interesting indicators of stable Danube banks on an example of Káposztásmegyer (1069)

The Black Orawa valley in Poland

I, however, am more proud of the following ones, due to the work invested in them:

• Poland’s umbilical cord to the Danube – The valley of the Black Orava
• Is the Shipyard Island the work of Roman engineers?
• Farewell to Veránka
• Were Herodotus and Strabo wrong? – In the search of the Danube mouth of Maros river
• The peach orchard of Archbishop Robert – Traces of a global climate change in the Helemba island?
• The memorial plaques of the 1838 ice flood in Esztergom
• The Horányi Inn still could be saved!
• The Danube-Rhine war
• “Bed correction from river hydraulic aspect” – not only a dam is being bult on the Római coast
• Geography of St. Florian

Many of them are only available in Hungarian on the Dunai Szigetek blog, but soon all will be translated into not only english, but as I proceed in my Gereman lectures, deutschsprächige posts will also be available.

Simulation of the 1838 flood in Esztergom

 
As it is not bad to be aware of our readers’ demands, I prepared a short survey. You are invited to fill it out, if you want, thus helping my work. You can also mark more than one answer.

survey solutions

Finally I would like to say thanks to everybody who helped our work in 2012: Dávid Zubreczki from the Urbanista for his enthusiasm, Tamás Sajó from Poemas del Río Wang for the translations, Éva Bugya and Balázs Nagy (Földgömb magazine), Bálint (Időkép) for sharing posts, Imre Kurdi for the photos, Évi Diószegi, Tibor Horváth, Ádám Selmeczi Kovács, Márton Palotai for their posts, Balázs Pásztor for the possibility (I’m still in debt with the post), Annamária Jankó for the military aerial photos, Villy for the Esztergom infos, KT for the excursion to Érd, Zoli Seprényi for the Megyeri Bridge, Zsolt Márki for the Angyali Island, Bence Berecki for Zebegény, the waterfront development girls for the link, for the commentators, letter writers and to those 466 persons who honored me with their confidence. And last but not least, to my wife for her patience, enthusiasm and hard work. (And of course for the Danube Islands T-Shirt I got for Christmas!)

The Luppa Island (postcard)

 
I wish to everybody a very happy New Year in 2013!

Daniel Szávoszt-Vass

Alsógöd

Hungary

translation by: Tamás Sajó