Le pietre di Bölcske

MAGYARUL

scritto da Gergely Schell
 

Bölcske e Madocsa sono due comuni sulle sponde del Danubio, entrambi tra le città di Dunaföldvár e Paks. La ferrovia (che ai giorni d’oggi non svolge trasporto pubblico), e l’autostrada (oggigiorni meno in uso per via della strada numero 6), entrambi sono abbastanza distanti, dunque preservano l’isolamento dei villaggi. Gli storici, archeologi, antropologi, etnografici ed altri numerosi intenditori fanno tesoro di questi siti, per cui ne vale la pena di assentarsi dalla via maestra.

 

Revitalization of the Wienfluss

MAGYARUL

19th-century urban development involved the development of sewerage. Until then, the rivers were the main collectors, and the smaller streams served as channels. The Ördögárok stream in Buda, and the Rákos stream in Pest exuded unbearable stench before being eradicated. The second capital of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy partly buried, partly forced underground the putrid channels which emanated putrid stench and usually also served as garbage dumps. Few people know that at that time the capital of the Monarchy also faced similar problems. There a firm and drastic intervention was necessary because of the floods and disease risk of the Wien river, which gave the name of the city. 

The Wien river being covered, ca. 1895.

The rapid improvement of the water quality after the installation of sewerage confronted Vienna city planning with new challenges. The river is no longer considered an enemy, and they slowly take the first step to the figurative and literal rehabilitation of the Wien river. The river, which not only gave the name of the city, but during its history also defended it from the enemy.

The case of the chicken and the egg – Which Wien was before?

The name of Wien was first used in the Salzburg Yearbooks of 881, in the form “ad Uueniam” (ad Weniam), but it is not clear whether it refers to the city or to the river. In Lower Austria it is quite frequent that a settlement along the Danube is named for the local tributary river (e.g. Enns, Ybbs, Aggsbach etc.), thus historians and etymologists think it likely that Vienna was named after the Wien river.

The Wien river as the natural line of defense of Vindobona

The river had a special importance for the development and progression of Vienna. It played a strategic role in the city’s southeast line of defense. In ancient times the legionary camp of Vindobona was surrounded on two sides by the Wien river and the Ottakring creek, forming two natural ditches around the settlement. In Roman times, the ramose side-branches of the Danube created a veritable archipelago on the widening floodplain, and the Wien poured into one of these branches.

The mouth of the Wien river (right), and the city walls of Vienna in 1686

Just like in Csallóköz – the Schüttinsel to the south of Bratislava/Pozsony/Preßburg –, the main branch of the Danube in Vienna was not suitable for navigation. The Donaukanal known today started to take shape in the Middle Ages from a side branch of the Danube, where the sailors could approach the imperial city, like they did on the Moson branch of the Danube in the Hungarian section. The Wien poured into the Danube at the easternmost bastion of the city, where above its mouth it formed a section of the moat called Graben.

The river bed before regulation

Ulmer Schachtel

MAGYARUL

"Die ersten fanden den Tod,

die zweiten hatten die Not,

und die dritten erst das Brot."

Ulmer Schachtel auf dem Weg nach Plintenburg

  

A view on Pressburg

MAGYARUL

The members of the German ethnic minority ousted from Slovakia could have not found a better site for their memorial than the hill of Braunsberg, rising on the Austrian side of the “Porta Hungarica”. A particularly funny fact is that this is one of the favorite Austrian site of excursion of the inhabitants of Bratislava, a point with a great view on their capital. Those who want to take the best picture of Lamač/Lamacs/Blumenau, Devín/Dévény/Theben, the Kamzík/Zerge-hegy/Gemsenberg, or the castle hill of Bratislava/Pozsony/Pressburg, must climb up to the memorial. With many Slovaks already the name “Felvidék” (Upper Region), the historical Hungarian name of their country beats off the fuse. What will they think about the country of “Nordkarpatelnand” and its German-speaking cities?

A view on Preßburg

Lost islands of Budapest

Once a friend of mine, who is a history-geography teacher just like me, told me there was a competition in their school. One of the questions was: How many Danubian islands are there in Budapest? He told me what he tought the correct answer would be, which was an irrationally big number, and asked me if it is true. I told him: it depends. What do you call an island? 

In my opinion, island is a peace of land, which is completely surrounded by a body of water all the time. Not just a few months of the year, but the whole year. I told my friend, there are a very few islands in Budapest meeting this criteria. 

We have to wind back the clock till the dawn of written history. By the Budapest section it means the time when the first Roman legionaries settled down next to the Danuvios river. Until this time there was no human impact on the Danube valley. No dredging, no locks, no stone embankments and no bridges.

Disappearing high-water marks in Budapest

MAGYARUL

"And shall your children ask ye tomorrow  
what this stone is in your temple,  
thus shall ye say unto them:  
Let the last generation hear  

that the waters of the Danube reached this high.."  

   

The last comprehensive study on the high-water marks of Budapest was completed in 1977. György Rajna’s “Flood tables in Budapest” was published only two years later, in 1979, in the 21st volume of Tanulmányok Budapest Múltjából (Studies from the Past of Budapest). This short span of time was enough to force the author to add a short addendum, that during these two years two flood tables of 1838 disappeared from two buildings in Ferencváros, and two other were demolished together with the house in Újpest. 35 years have passed since the publication of this study. What has been the fate of the carefully collected and documented tables? This is what I tried to survey. 

A nice example of the rescue of a flood table: Ferencváros, Bokréta utca 32.

The third window on the left

MAGYARUL 

Patrick Leigh Fermor has arrived exactly 80 years ago, in late january, 1934 to the Austrian town Persenbeug. After having supper in the town inn and filling his journals for the day he made a sketch of the innkeeper's daughter. And he's been talking to an old polymath aristocrat till late night. About the Danube, its fish, especially the catfish, the kraken of the Danube, about hydroelectric dams, Romans, Markomanns, archaeology, flora and fauna, about Hans, ritter of Ybbs, the Tartars, Schubert, Wagner and about the Dodo bird of Mauritius. 

  

...The others had stolen away to bed hours before. The third bottle of Langenlois was empty and we stood up too. He paused in front of a glass case in which a bright-eyed and enermous stuffed trout was swimming urgently through a tangle of tin water-weed. It's a pity you didn't go on over the hills from St. Florian,' he said. 'You would have got to the little town of Steyr, and the Enns valley' - this was the green tributary I had watched curling out of the hills opposite Mauthausen - 'It's only half a dozen miles. Schubert wrote the Trout quintet there. He was on a walking tour, like you. 

 

He whistled the tune as we strolled along the snow-covered quay, with Dick bounding ahead and sliding comically out of control on the concealed ice. The steeple of Ybbs stood clear above the roofs and the tree-tops the other side. Above the roofs of our own shore, almost inevitably, a large baroque castle soared into the starlight. 'You see the third window on the left?' the polymath asked. 'It's the room where Karl, our last emperor was born.' After a pause, he went on whistling the tune of The Trout. 'I always think of streams running down to the Danube,' he said, 'whenever I hear it...

Patrick Leigh Feromor: A Time of Gifts. On foot to Constantinople: from the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube.

The second inhabited island on the Danube

MAGYARUL

is situated in the town of Neuburg an der Donau, Germany. „Second” means space and not time in this case. It would be quite difficult to trace back the first inhabited island On the Danube in time. It is concievable that island had been washed away since then. In terms of space we have an easier task, because if we do not count the more or less artificial island of Regensburg, the Leopoldineninsel is the only inhabited island with the Neu-Ulmer Island on the entire German Danube section.

 

Between the woods and the water - From Orsova to the bridge of Traian

MAGYARUL

Patrick Leigh Fermor's entry on the Iron Gates gorge will guide us between Orsova and the bridge of emperor Traian in Turnu-Severin. This is the place where the Danube leaves the Carpathian Mountains, and flows on the Walachian Plains until reaching the Black Sea. You won't recognise anymore the landscape Fermor has seen. Since the Iron Gate dam was built in 1972 most of the landmarks mentioned in Fermor's journals are under water now.

The duck of Linz

MAGYARUL

In the City of Wien, the people still remember the greatest flood along Danube, from Regensburg to the Kingdom of Hungary. They still remember, despite it happened 500 years ago, and the chance it would happen again is very low. In July and August of 1501. the heaviest rainfall hit the forehill region of the Alps in Austria and Germany causing a flood never seen before. North from the Danube basin, along the Elbe and the Oder vast deluge flooded the lands, just like back in Noah’s age.

High water mark collection in Passau (photo: cruises.about.com)

 

Makovecz’s wooden mushroom at the Vác ferry

MAGYARUL

Aunties – like my grandmother used to be – are slowly dying out from our modern world. They used to rebuke without hesitation and fear the young vandals, those who swear, litter and drop their cigarette stubs. They used to notice immediately if a tile was missing from the church’s roof and the y hurried to the vicar to have it replaced. This entry is for the memory of these aunties. I hope one day we will be able to grow up to them from this recent „this is none of my business” mentality.

From zingel to pipefish - Tack diary of the 3rd Joint Danube Survey

MAGYARUL

We got to the end of September and the Joint Danube Survey 3 was also finished. The researchers have already gone home, the samples have been taken into laboratories and the ships have been navigated into their harbours. Then the work will continue within the four walls and the results are expected by the next year. On the one and a half month voyage new friendships, contributions of knowledge were born and there was a great pleasure for the Donau Inseln was shared in the researchwork. I have been thinking a lot what I should finish this expedition with, and at last I was led to the conclusion that I will end with the results of the concretest and the most spectacular project: the fish. Anyway they are hardly represented on this page, but in the gallery of JDS3 webpage many different types of fish can be seen which got in the boat and I have heard of them mostly from books.

Almost everything about the Danube

"From the Black Forest to the Black Sea" and second part "Between Flood and Frost" represents almost everything the Donauinseln blog is about. Sediment crisis due to hydroelectric power plants, life on the floodplains, the Delta, the Iron Gates, fish, game, birds, urban landscape, river history, geology, the debate on the source of the Danube, the Rhine-Danube war over the catchment area, mayflower swarming, the Wachau, etc. I must admit that not every post had been translated yet from the Hungarian Dunaiszigetek blog, but until I am finished with the remaining 200 posts please enjoy this two nature films, the essence of my two blogs.

 

 

 

The ten largest Hungarian island on the Danube in 1878

MAGYARUL

I happened to came across the catholic priest and Hungarian Academy member Tivadar Ortvay's (Theodor Orthmayer) decription on the islands of the Danube. This article was published in the 15 th volume of the "Mathematikai és Természettudományi Közlemények" (Bulletin for Mathematics and Natural Sciences) in 1878. The relation of the shape, direction, area and the height of the banks of the Hungarian Danubian islands was written in the style of the mid 19th century geographical view, with a lot of  statistic descriptions. This article became obsolete almost in the moment it was published! It had been written before the large regulation works started on the Danube naming almost all (!) of the Danubian islands. This time islands still moved, changed their shape, direction, area and the height of their banks. Despite all, this work gives us a priceless snapshot on the state of the Danubian islands in 1878.

 
In this post we only discuss the most interesting part: the aspects of the islands area.

Between the woods and the water - The cauldrons of Kazan

MAGYARUL

Patrick Leigh Fermor started his journey in december of 1933, from the Netherlands to Constantinople on foot. He was only 19 years old then. The young englishman arrived to Hungary at Easter, 1935 when crossing the bridge near Esztergom over the Danube. Thanks to the sympathy of the pro-British Hungarian aristocracy he had spent the time of his life. He was wandering through Hungary and Transylvania from castles to mansions. He was warmly welcomed everywhere, and he was really surprised that he could have spoken to everyone in his own mother tounge.  He wrote his journals during this trip in which he mentioned the life in the Buda castle as well as sleeping with nomad gypsies. He visited the cemetery of Segesvár (Sighișoara, Schäßburg) and watched the eagles soar above the Carpathian mountains. He did not know, but he described a condemned society which had less then ten more years before it completely disappeared. With all the rural beetle collecting aristocracy, just like in Agatha Christie's novels.  Mr. Fermor tells also a tale of a long lost view of the Lower-Danube, which we present you on the Donauinseln blog.

Between the woods and the water - Rose-petal jam of Ada Kaleh

MAGYARUL

One of the most important parts of the journals of Patrick Leigh Fermor is describing Ada Kaleh between the two world war. This little island, drowned in the name of 'progress' comes alive once more. Turkish language fills the summer air with smell of coffee, they linger together on the narrows streets, we can hear the hodja's voice from the minaret stuck in the ground like a sprear, while the old river - the Danube gently embraces the fortress island. This ethereal view can only be observed through Fermor's lines.

After the bridge at Turnu Severin, the doctor travelled on to Craiova and I caught a bus back to Orsova, picked up my stuff, bought a ticket for the next day's boat, then walked a couple of miles downstream again and found a fisherman to scull me out to the little wooded island I had my eye on ever since rejoining the Danube.

I had heard much talk of Ada Kaleh in recent weeks, and read all I could find. The name means 'island fortress' in Turkish. It was about a mile long, shaped like a shuttle, bending slightly with the curve of the current and lying a little closer to the Carpathian than the Balkan shore. It has been called Erythia, Rushafa and then Continusa, and, according to Apollonius Rhodius, the Argonauts dropped anchor here on their way back from Colchis. How did Jason steer the Argo through the Iron Gates? And the the Kazan? Medea probably lifted the vessel clear of the spikes of magic. Some say Argo reached the Adriatic by overland portage, others that she crossed it and continued up to the Po, mysteriously ending in North Africa. Writers have tentatively suggested that the first wild olive to be planted in Attica might have come from here. But it was later history that had invested the little island with fame.

Between the woods and the water - Ada Kaleh, the drowned island

 IN HUNGARIAN

It has been 40 years ago the Romanian authorities flooded dozen Danubian villages upstream the Iron Gate gorge in the name of „progress”. Patrick Leigh Fermor returned here once more, and devoted the epilogue of his book ’Between the woods and the water’ to this appalling devastation. Ada Kaleh, this little island with the Turkish inhabitants were forced to move to Simian Island downstream the hydroelectric station. Thier mosque has also been moved with the old fortress, but just like the old trees, their community did not survive. They disappeared in every corner of the world. Everything has fled.

Thoughts at a Café Table Between the Kazan and the Iron Gates

Progress has now placed the whole of this landscape underwater. A traveller sitting at my old table on the quay at Orsova would have to peer at the scenery through a thick brass-hinged disc of glass; this would frame a prospect of murk and slime, for he would be shod in lead and peering out of a diver’s helmet linked by a hundred feet of breathing-tube to a boat stationed eighteen fathoms above his head. Moving a couple of miles downstream, he would fumble his way on to the waterlogged island and among the drowned Turkish houses; or, upstream, flounder among the weeds and rubble choking Count Széchenyi’s road and peer across the dark gulf at the vestiges of Trajan on the other side; and all round him, above and below, th dark abyss would yawn and the narrows where currents once rushed and cataracts shuddered from bank to bank and echoes zigzagged along the vertiginous clefts would be sunk in diluvian silence. Then perhaps, a faltering sunbeam might show the foundered wreck of a village; then another, and yet another, all swallowed in mud.

He could toil many days up these cheerless soundings, for Rumania and Yugoslavia have built one of the world’s biggest ferro-concrete dams and hydro-electric power plants across the Iron Gates. This has turned a hundred and thirty miles of the Danube into a vast pond which has swollen and blurred the course of the river beyond recognition. It has abolished canyons, turned beetling crags into mild hills and ascended the beautiful Cerna valley almost to the Baths of Hercules. many thousands of the inhabitants of Orsova and the riparian hamlets had to be uprooted and transplanted elsewhere. The islanders of Ada Kaleh have been moved to another islet downstream and their old home has vanished under the still surface as though it had never been. let us hope that the power generated by the dam has spread well-being on either bank and lit up Rumanian and Yugoslav towns brighter than ever because, in everything but economics, the damage is irreparable. Perhaps, with time and fading memories, people will forget the extent of their loss.

Simian, the "new Ada Kaleh" island

Wild Szigetköz

MAGYARUL

One of the most beautiful nature film of Hungary was introduced two years ago by Zoltán Török. Wild hungary is also available in English language, and there was a teaser of it on the Donauinseln blog. The co-director and cameraman of Wild Hungary, Szabolcs Mosonyi now made his own nature film about one of Europe's largest Danubian floodplain area, the Szigetköz. This alluvium is situated in northwestern Hungary, near the Slovakian border. This film has mostly plants and animals as main characters, but humans and their effect to the enviroment could not have been ignored. The director also captured the effect of the changes in the environment of the last two decades which was caused by the Gabcíkovo hydroelectric dam. I hope you will like Wild Szigetköz as you liked Wild Hungary before. Do enjoy these two trailers, hopefully they will be narrated in English or other languages soon. The premier will take place at Uránia cinema in Budapest on the 3rd of October 7 p. m.

Good news, Zoltán Török has started the second part of Wild Hungary!

Information on the Wild Szigetköz (Hungarian language only) on facebook and Szabolcs Mosonyi's webpage.
 

Danubian mayfly swarming, 2013

MAGYARUL

Last year finally the media also noticed blooming is not only the privilege of the Tisza river, the Ephoron virgo may-flies started to swarm on the banks of the Danube. Some may thought this was only an unique and unrepeatable event. They were not right. Despite the record flood this June we will not miss the little may-flies this year. Good news: the Danube will bloom this year as well.

We have already received pictures and description from Tahitótfalu and Budapest, but we expect more from our readers. It is worthy to take your camera with you when taking a walk next to the Danube!
 

 

A day with the 3rd Joint Danube Survey

MAGYARUL

I got the opportunity to join the 3rd Joint Danube Survey (JDS3) for one day almost in the last minute from Béla Csányi, leader of the core team. This was going to be a freat chance to experience altt the samplong and preparation that is going on board of the two ships, Istros and Argus. The expedtition took off from Regensburg, Germany twoo weeks ago, and after an unscheduled stop at Göd (two of the hungarian members are from this town) we were taken to the ships at seven in the morning. The destination was the Deák Ferenc bridge downstream Budapest, which was the 22nd sampling site out of the total 68.