Last Exit: Black Sea E-Book

Kai Althoetmar

• Herausgeber: Nature Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The Danube delta, the largest reed area in the world, is one of Europe's most impressive natural phenomena. ‘Europe's Amazon’, a green paradise of reeds and water, is not only a nursery for countless rare animal species, but also a multi-ethnic landscape that was once a refuge for persecuted minorities. The delta has been through a lot under communism: brutal industrialisation, draining of large areas, overfishing and unchecked water pollution. Since the fall of Ceaucescu in 1989, the people in the delta have been left to their own devices and the many new regulations. Corruption is flourishing, ecotourism is a fragile plant, only the fish feeds in times of need, and the red past appears as rosy as the beautiful nature. A journey through a labyrinth at the end of Europe that no one wants to leave. Plus: basic information for travellers. - Illustrated eBook with numerous photos.

Leseprobe

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Last Exit: Black Sea

Kai Althoetmar

Last Exit: Black Sea

Travelling the Danube Delta

Imprint:

Title of the book: Last Exit: Black Sea. Travelling the Danube Delta.

Year of publication: 2025.

Publisher:

Nature Press

Kai Althoetmar

Am Heiden Weyher 2

53902 Bad Muenstereifel

Germany

Althoetmar[at]aol.com

Text: © Kai Althoetmar.

Cover photo: Great white pelicans in the Danube Delta. Photo: Goliath, Wikimedia.

The research for this book was self-financed and without grants or benefits from third parties.

Danube Delta in a map view from 1901. Image: Wikimedia.

If only Saint George, the dragon slayer and patron saint of the southern arm, could see this: a monotonous water motorway on which a speedboat with haute-volée in a party mood whizzes by, plastic bottles and drinks cans bobbing in the channel and banksters decimating the fish stocks every fifty metres, where people camp wildly and bonfires smoulder in defiance of official order. Hotel boats are moored at the entrance to the George Canal, a few minutes by boat from Tulcea - a motorway service area would not be a worse choice. There, a motorway sign: thirty-seven kilometres to the Black Sea, the last of 2,857.

Around the next bend, everything changes. From the dragonslayer's branch stream, the route turns left into a labyrinth of lakes, tributaries, riparian forests, reed zones and carpets of water lilies. The reeds rise wall-high out of the water. Dragonflies dance, mosquitoes buzz, little egrets stalk here, white storks there. Later the frogs will invite you to an open-air opera, everything green to the left and right, a European Amazon River.

The first pink pelicans circle above the trees with their beaks full of food. Fishermen with rowing boats inspect their traps. A son proudly presents his catch. A cormorant colony appears on the water, a spoonbill in the reeds, roe deer on the land, then over a hundred pelicans thirty metres away on Lake Uzlina. Engine off, peace and quiet above the treetops. As the engine of the ‘River Lord’ howls again - it was bound to happen - the birds fly away.

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