Journey Through the Iron Gate

On Saturday morning, Denise took a walk with the group to the nearby castle. Here are some of her pictures from that walk.

On Sunday, we took a 1 hour bus ride from our ship's dock in Vidin, Bulgaria to the Belogradchik Rocks and Fortress. Our bus driver's name was Georgia and our tour guide's name was Albania, and she quickly pointed out how both of their names are also names of countries. Along the way, we stopped at a [very] small town that had little more than a 4 star hotel, a schoolgirl, and a sign that said it was 176 km to Sofia, the Bulgarian capital. I think the schoolgirl needs a little explanation: it was a rock outcrop in the shape of what appeared to be a schoolgirl, knapsack and all. When I learned we were going to the Belogradchik Fortress, I thought oh, great, another fortress where we listen to narration of how the town built it to defend themselves against an attack - and another attack, and another attack, and.... But not so. This "fortress" was mostly natural rock surrounded by unbelievable scenery. The rocks consisted of limestone and conglomerates that, d...

On Saturday, we took the Journey through the Iron Gate! There were no stops or excursions planned for today. It was strictly to be a day of cruising and passing through some of the most beautiful scenery. We started off with idyllic scenes of the quiet countryside, occasional towns with the church steeple in the midst, and then we cruised into the area known as the Iron Gate. With the Carpathian Basin on one side and the Balkan Mountains on the other side, this part of the Danube River forms a spectacular narrow gorge. At one time, the river here was not passable. So the engineers came up with some kind of construction thingy (notice as the cruise goes on, my technical terminology gets more sophisticated), and now we have arguably the most beautiful passageway on the Danube River. With the gorgeous, warm, sunny weather, most of the passengers were on the sundeck for this portion of the cruise. On both sides of the ship were towering white limestone cliffs that majes...

On Friday, we started the day with a tour of Belgrade, Serbia. Our tour guide's name was Milan. The name Belgrade means "white city" and comes from the white limestone walls of the fort that was built to protect the city when it was founded. During the years, the area has been taken over by different groups, and has endured so many wars, that it is hard to remember it all. Serbia has a very complicated history. Our tour guide Milan has been a tour guide for 15 years. His father was a tour guide and his grandmother was a tour guide. Before being a tour guide, he sang for the Belgrade Opera for 16 years. He also has a PhD in Art History and is an Art History professor at a local school. Some of the facts Milan shared with us during the bus ride portion of the tour:  - Serbia was once attacked by Attila the Hun (not to be confused with Attila the Hungarian, our former bus driver)  - there is a large Russian influence here, and the Serbian language is very close to the ...

After our house visit in Vukovar, we traveled about a half hour down the road to the town of Osijek (pronounced oysik). We first went to Holy Cross Church. The church is run by the Franciscans. There are four Franciscan monks still active here. In addition to the main church, there are six side altars, the most popular of which is the St. Anthony altar. We were treated to a piano concert in the church that lasted about 15 minutes. After the concert, we went outside into a small courtyard. In this courtyard there was a crucifix, not an unusual thing for a Catholic church. What was unusual, however, was the materials the corpse was composed of: machine gun clips, shellcases, shrapnel, grenades, and barbed wire. Marko told us that the message here is "Forgive, but don't forget." After leaving the church courtyard, we continued our walk through the town. We eventually came to the town square, called Holy Trinity square, which contains another monument of the Holy Tr...

In the town of Vukovar, they divided us into groups of ten, and we each visited a local family to learn about their daily lives. Our family actually consisted of one lady, Mrs. Durisic, and an interpreter, Mirjana. When we arrived, Mrs. Durisic had a table prepared for us with food (apple streudel and a pudding/almond layered dessert) along with coffee, tea, and juices. While we ate, Mrs. Durisic and Mirjana told us about what life in this town was like in the past, and what it is like now. At one time, Mrs. Durisic was at home when Serbian soldiers came into her house in the middle of the day with their guns, telling her to get out. They allowed her to only pack a small bag. At the time she had 2 small children. She was not allowed to pack clothes for the children. She left Vukovar and went to a refugee camp in nearby Osijek. After the occupation ended, she returned to her house to find it badly damaged, and needed to repair it in order to live in it again. It is a small ho...