'89-'22

Of course, if I were to come now for the first time, I don't think the Delta would impress me enough to stay.
Both the settled way of life of the locals and the attitude of tourists and investors towards the nature of the place have changed.

I'm Dragoș Olaru, an engineer by training but now a tour guide and beekeeper. I came camping in '89 and '90 as a tourist and, bewitched by the magic of the place, I settled permanently in the Delta in '91. Spending most of my time in the middle of nature, with local fishermen and specialists, I was able to understand very well the needs and the prospects in this land surrounded by water. Over the years, I have felt the transformations in the local culture, architecture and economy, which have erased the specific features of traditional society.

The concession, take the blame

From my earliest years, I saw how isolated villages were depopulating, many of the young people I was teaching math were eager to leave, the Delta seemed to offer them nothing but a tortured life as fishermen or, at best, clerks. Because it was an opportunity in the area, some wanted to become sailors. Unfortunately, poor education with unqualified substitutes and limited financial possibilities meant that few dreams came true. Left alone and powerless, the elderly could hardly resist the pressure to sell until around 2006, after which, increasingly aggressively, larger and smaller properties were bought up and vacation homes and guesthouses were built. The authorities leased and sold everything they could, land, fishing and non-fishing assets, in a word EVERYTHING. Anyone passing through the villages in the Danube Delta can see how it was built, but the most striking thing is the layout of the village where Ivan Patzaichin left.

Mila.No.

When the ship Rostock ran aground, I came from Tulcea in a dinghy across the puddle. From the Șontea canal, Mila 23 looked out from behind the willows - a traditional village, with gnarled houses seemingly cast on yellow clay mounds and fishing nets stretched on reed fences. The old part of the village, with households strung along a wide street running parallel to the Danube, had been badly damaged by floods in the 70s. Each family was given 250-300 square meters (250-300 square meters) to build a house on the land that was later built. "The 'plateau' starts at about the jetty towards Crisan, with houses squeezed into narrow streets. Later, the tourist infrastructure developed unchecked, without any concern for preserving the specifics of the place: multi-storey buildings, wooden chalets, tin or wrought-iron fences, with stone or tiled boarding and posts. Often, with a bitter smile, I say to tourists that we're going to Milan... only the nets cast on the concrete jetty can still make you think it's a fishing village...

Once there was Crișan

Crișanul, where I've settled, has lost some of its former charm. I can imagine from the old man's stories what the sandy shore in front of the house looked like, with willows between which you pulled the wooden rowboat. Concrete parapets and stone dyking give the street a monotonous, rigid look. People have sold off plots of land and, worse, half plots of land on which hostels and vacation homes have been built that are alien to the traditional look. Without rules, without building criteria, architectural chaos is everywhere.

Flowers, girls, dunes, C. A. Rosetti

In the north-eastern part of the Delta, near the Chilia Arm, lies the commune of C.. A. Rosetti. Its isolation has made Letea, one of its villages, the best preserved in the Danube Delta. With minor exceptions, the Ukrainian-minority village has few elements of modernism. I don't think it looked much different a century ago. The fine sand of the Danube Delta's largest sandstone ^grind1 is everywhere: in the streets, in the courtyards, and in the Letea Forest there are dunes up to 14m high. The people here, condemned to hard labor, also raise animals to fatten the soil for their humble subsistence farming. Because most of the women are housewives, there is hardly a yard without flowers to add a little color to their culturally uneventful lives. The development of tourism in the area has halted depopulation, with young people, by cart or adapted vehicles, guiding tourists on forest trails, serving them traditional meals or raising animals, fishing, producing souvenirs. Almost everyone contributes to local hospitality. Whereas until a few years ago people bartered for goods and services for lack of money, today we see old abandoned houses coming to life and local entrepreneurs enlivening the community.

Back to the future

Let's take a look at the architectural specifics of a traditional household 40-50 years ago. The traditional house stood on a simple stone foundation, sometimes non-existent in older houses. The walls were made of ^adobe2 and especially ^thatch3 after the floods of '70-'72. If the water level of the Danube rises, either directly or through seepage, the first layer of clay gets wet and the house immediately collapses. So the people built their houses with posts of acacia or oak. The walls of thick reed were tied between the ^slats4 and glued in layers with earth and straw, then finished with clay or horse dung, and the same was done for the attic. The construction was also whitewashed inside. By the 1990s, the houses were still being built in a ^clacă5, the men from the village helped with the bridge, the finishing work, the women cooked the food, people drank and sang, and lived in harmony. The reeds were cut for the roof, then transported and sorted together with relatives or neighbors. If thick reed was used for the walls, thin reed was used for the roof, as it laid better so that no water penetrated, and was tied tightly. There are two styles of reed roofing: German and Russian. In the German style, the reed is tied in a thick layer, beaten into the stairs, loose, while in the Russian style, the reed ^strands6 are laid one on top of the other, slightly staggered, and fastened tightly with wire. On top, in both styles, a knotted reed coping is placed on top of which a wooden coping is placed for protection as well as appearance. The former is more expensive, but can last 50 to 100 years with maintenance, while the latter is simpler and cheaper, but lasts 10-20 years. The sun burns the ends of the reed sticks on the roof, which blacken and with moisture turn to humus on which moss and lichens get trapped. The material rots deep down, especially on the north and west sides. That's why, for a longer life, the sunburnt ends are beaten with a reed comb, swept down to the healthy part and, every few years, the top is replaced. Reed roofs and walls insulate the house, keeping it cool in summer and warm in winter. The courtyards usually averaged 2,500 square meters, although on the Letea and Caraorman Grinds they were more generous (5,000-6,000 square meters). They were fenced with a reed fence, with portions of wood or woven wicker, and protected by barbed wire at the street or branches at the back, to prevent destruction by cows and free-roaming horses.
Stufstock
The traditional house had an east-facing front with a narrow porch supported on simple wooden posts. The walls were painted white and the woodwork in blue or green. The entrance was positioned in the middle, a hallway, usually with two rooms to the left and right, often with an additional room at the back, which served as a storeroom. The gable roof was made of reed, with front and back gables of plank. Above the gable was a decoration with floral or zoomorphic wooden motifs, more elaborate towards the street and simpler on the opposite side, according to the owner's preference and, of course, his or her condition. Sometimes the year of construction was inscribed with wooden or painted figures. Now only guesthouses can afford such roofs. Although the raw material is plentiful, the cost is too high for the locals. Consider that a not very big house requires 1,000-1,500 sheeps of selected reed. In the old days, the house-builder used to go in winter on the ice with friends and relatives to pre-burned ^plaurii7, where the sciotca (brush, in Russian) was thinner and thicker. They harvested the reed with a ^creep8 and a ^cob9, bringing it home or storing it on high ground. Then they sorted it, pulling it from the piles so that the reed stalk remained clean, free of leaves or grass, then tied it into smaller malds, then built into a stack. The craftsmen skillfully laid and tied the dry reed on the house in hot weather to make sure it would withstand the penetration of water.

Traditional home, traditional memories

Next to the house, for cooking fish in the summer, there was a shed with a kitchen. Also in the courtyard, towards the street or at the back, was the ^dam10, built entirely of reed, used as a shelter for animals in winter, but also as a storeroom for fishing gear and tackle. The toilet was located at the back of the courtyard, next to the hay huts made of reed with grass, mown in summer on the boards.
A key building in the traditional household was the Lipovene bathhouse. If during the week people washed on the Danube, on Saturday the whole family would come together for Sunday service. Through this ritual, they were freed from the burden of a hard week's work, taking a day of rest and merriment, so that on Monday they could put on the clothes for a new week's work.
The Lipovene bath with sauna meant a room made of reed, often plastered on the inside with clay, with a wooden grate on the floor. Here you would see a large pot of water on a hearth with large river stones, a plank bed, a large jerrycan of cold water, a washbasin, a kettle and a bundle of oak twigs with leaves, a large bar of homemade soap and a piece of fishing net with small meshes. The fire was made outside with reeds and rarely with willow wood, until the water in the kettle was warm. Because there was no chimney, the door and window were opened, and the thick smoke (you could cut it with a knife) came out and the bath was ready. You went into the bathroom naked, and then you closed the window and the door.
After a hunt, I nearly fainted in the bathroom at Mile 23, for I had thrown too much water with the kettle on the rocks that I could not breathe from the steam. Someone outside yelled for me to splash cold water on my face. You put hot and cold water from the kettle into the basin, and with the kettle you poured the water over yourself and the stones; you soaked yourself well, rubbed yourself with the fish-net, then rinsed yourself, pouring the water over yourself, and at the end you beat yourself with the broom made of oak branches, until all the pores were open. You'd come out of the bath as red as a boiled crayfish, you'd get a big towel to wrap yourself in like a baby. Imagine what this sauna was like in winter, like being born a second time!
Inside, in the bedroom, there was a little ^bed11 with a stove to lie on in winter to warm your bones, although it's not recommended to fall asleep on it. Frequently in the hallway-kitchen was the cooking part of the stove, the body with the oven being in the bedroom. The chimney went through the reed loft through a bear and then through the roof.
A simple table, a sideboard with dishes, a couple of chairs, a bed, and a cupboard - that was about all the man's possessions. I remember how from Dorohoi came from Dorohoi the master builder Costică - a shabby storyteller, a man without a book, but with a golden hand and an extraordinary native intelligence, who built from the ground up and repaired most of the houses in Crișan and Caraorman.
The fishermen rowed for hours to the fishing grounds, where they had refuges, so they chose to sleep half their lives in the puddle, and in summer under the ^polog12.
Slowly but surely, the villages of the Delta are crowded with hostels, and here and there you can still see a traditional house, where, of course, the village elders live, the only ones who still know and can tell about the beauty of the peaceful life of yesteryear.

Sulina, mon amour

A special case in the deltaic landscape is the town of Sulina, which, like Constantinople, has experienced two downfalls. The first was the disbanding of the European Danube Commission after the arrival of the communists, which led to a change in its status as a free port. Only pale vestiges of former glories were left behind: a few historic buildings, old houses, most of them now in disrepair, and tales of foreign sailors, pirates, princesses, which are exemplified over time in the multi-ethnic cemetery on the outskirts of the city. The second downfall was with the loss of the ocean fishing fleet. There was hardly a man or woman in the Delta who had not gone to sea at least once. The fishmongers and freezing poles needed many skilled people: sailors, officers, cooks, cooks, maids, fishermen, cooks, preparers, electricians and mechanics. With no fleet of their own, only the prophets remained in the sea, the others saw, from the shore, how all their investments went ashore: The Sulina shipyard, the canning factory, the ^{cherhanalele13}, the reed glaciers, the fish farms have disappeared through plunder and carelessness, becoming ruins.
Unfortunately, none of the local authorities are concerned about the tourist aspect of the town they govern. Most of the guesthouses built by foreign tourist people are sold, and so are the vacation homes. The silence of the nights in the Danube Delta, when all you could hear were crickets, the concert of frogs or the occasional bird's cry, is now being assaulted by loud music in the big guesthouses and even fireworks. Who would have thought, when it was set up, that the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve could end up like this?

We still have a delta, what do we do with it?

First of all, we need a change in the authorities' approach, replacing the coercive system with an incentive system so that local people actively contribute to nature protection. Disband all institutions that have the same tasks or strictly limit their powers.
The central and local administration should declare the area as an eminently tourist area, everything should be subordinated to environmental conservation and sustainable tourism, with clear and adapted rules.
Projects with vision and short- and long-term objectives can revive traditional architecture as the main tourist attraction.
Local people to benefit from the local resource without restrictions and to be supported in practicing family tourism, with households specialized on services, especially the local fishery resource to be accessed directly by fishermen's hostels.
Only people with the relevant skills should be authorized to operate in tourism.
To promote sustainable, nature-friendly tourism through birdwatching, photography, nature discovery and knowledge. To set up study and monitoring centers, as well as research centers in the Delta, to give directions for development, so that the anthropic impact is minimal.
The renaturation, reinvigoration and refinancing of fish farms, the elimination of subsidies for agriculture and closer monitoring of polluting activities, including transport.
I believe that, first and foremost, the market will determine the mass tourism that is being practised and will slowly give way to specialized tourism, and that the majority of those who are passionate about nature, tranquillity, birds, photography, authentic local gastronomy will contribute to restoring the balance between man and nature in this land between the waters, and the firm involvement of the competent authorities can speed up this process.

NOTES

1 A small, elongated rise of land resulting from alluvial deposits of flowing water or the sea.
2 A brick-shaped building material made from a mixture of clay and straw, dried in the sun.
3 A system of construction of the walls of houses, consisting of a wooden frame with the openings filled or covered with various materials (reeds, braided wicker or slats plastered with clay, etc.).
4 Each of the long thin pieces of wood (parallelepiped) used in carpentry or joinery.
5 Collective voluntary work performed by peasants to help each other, often accompanied or followed by a small party, jokes, stories, etc.
6 A bundle made from bundles of grain/tufa (or other tall stemmed plants).
7 A compact, reed-dominated, aquatic plant formation floating on the surface of water.
8 A scythe-like tool used for cutting reeds and hemp.
9 A utensil with a metal blade attached to a wooden sled, used for harvesting reed on ice.
10 Cattle brush.
11 Clay hearth.
12 A special tent-like shelter, made of a sparse cloth, used against mosquitoes, flies, etc.
13 A building (and small enterprise) situated in the immediate vicinity of a water and intended for the reception, sorting, preparation and temporary storage of fish caught in that area.