The Danube

The Danube is the second-longest river in Europe, (2,850 km) after the Volga in Russia. It flows through Central and Southeastern Europe, from the Black Forest south into the Black Sea. Along its course it passes through 10 countries: Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine. A large and historically important waterway that flows steadily eastward and then suddenly turns south it was once a frontier of the Roman Empire and has been a traditional and important trade route in Europe since ancient times. To this day, 1,501 miles of the river’s length is navigable, by both river and ocean ships in many parts. (Wikipedia)

They say its most beautiful stretch starts from Visegrad in Northern Hungary where it suddenly and spectacularly “bends” ninety degrees and starts to flow in a dead-south direction toward the Queen of the Danube, Budapest, forty kilometers downriver. (The present-day U-shaped loop is probably the result of an eruption of the volcano stretching over the whole area some 15 million years ago.)

Budapest, the Capital of Hungary – an architecturally stunning city,  often referred to as ‘The Paris of the East‘, comprising, as it does,  of post-modern design, Roman ruins and Gothic and Baroque style buildings – straddles the Danube in the magnificent natural setting where the hills of western Hungary meet the plains stretching to the east.

I fell in love with the river (by the way the Hungarians call it Duna) at the age of ten when my parents first took me to their “boathouse” where my father kept his  rowing shell (‘skull’) on the Danube in Ujpest, a suburb of the Capital.

That’s where, on weekends, I learned to swim, and, then, to row.

Wonderful adventures that ended abruptly in 1944 when the Germans invaded Hungary and the Duna turned vicious.

But the river was never always kind.

It regularly flooded Budapest before Count Sechenyi tamed it in the 1800’s by strengthening its banks with stone walls.

Then, in 1944, it disgraced itself again when it carried the bodies of thousands of dead Jews to their final resting place.

Was it always malicious or is it just us, humans, that makes it so from time to time?

As I am writing these lines on September 18 I  glance out the window and see that the Duna is at it again:  it’s slowly flooding the east bank’s lower promenade thereby threatening the basements of the buildings along the river, including the Parliament’s.

The flood crested Sunday at dawn and started ebbing away on Monday. By Tuesday noon the promenade was open again.