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jackdaws at Iron Gates
Friday, March 30 2018
location: room 311, MS Joy, navigating east of the Rock Sculpture of Decebalus on the Danube River between Romania and Serbia
This morning our boat passed the "Rock Sculpture of Decebalus," which the Scotts at dinner last night had been talking about as though it was some relic of an ancient people. But it's actually something that was hewn into the Romanian cliffs above a Danube tributary in the 1990s and early 2000s. We'd set our alarm, but somehow we missed it anyway. It didn't much matter; we were approaching something much more dramatic: the highest of the two Iron Gates hydroelectric dams. Getting past that would require passing through two locks, the first locks of this adventure.
The locks on the Danube are about twice as wide as those on the Rhone, so our boat (which was about the same width as the one we'd taken up the Rhone) had to hug one side as we were lowered. It was a nice day for being out on the deck, so I was up there paying special attention to the birds building nests in the upper parts of the various slots in the sides of the lock mechanisms. These birds were black and grey and were often flying about with sticks in their beaks. I recognized them from nature books as being jackdaws.
We had so many miles to cover today that there were no dockings at all.
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This evening was the first night of Passover, and Gretchen brought her kiddie wine and the big box of matzo to dinner. She quickly befriended a youngish Australian couple, and they joined us in the eating of the matzo, though they weren't familiar with the ritual of Passover at all. They told us in detail about their travels so far, which have involved large parts of Asia, Europe, North, and South America. They've both taken a year off work to explore the world, which is evidently something that Australians like to do.
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At some point in the meal, we were joined once more by Carrie and Boris, who joined Gretchen in the drinking of her kiddie wine.
I was excited that dinner tonight included a curry choice, and when it arrived it came with a spectacular rigid sail of papadum.
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