Chapter 20
Practice on the Danube
It was a heavy winter that year. From 1956 when I came to the capital, I saw only twice the Danube frozen solidly: in 1957 and in that year, 1963.
After finishing examinations we had to come to the shipping company to get our assignments. It looked, as if on April 1 we could not board our ships, as they were still staying in the wintering harbour. But some days before that dead-line the mild weather arrived and the ice has broken up.
Uncle Louis gave me an assignment to the tug-boat "Kaposvar”. She has been one of the tugs built on the northern shore of the lake Balaton in a small shipyard in Balatonfured. Her two domestic main engines gave 800 HP to the screws. Otherwise she had the same propulsion and steering as any tugs at that time.
The boat was to go to an upriver trip to the German town of Regensburg. It was the upper navigational limit on the river, because a medieval stone bridge was only passable by paddle boats. A round-trip took two weeks. I have made two trips on that boat and between them took part in the oil change on the main engines. Such maintenance jobs could be done in a week.
Pack ice was still dense on the river, when we arranged the towage and started our slow motion up. At first our progress have been fine as, expecting a higher speed of the current in the Austrian section, the towage consisted of only six barges.
The upper Danube is completely different from its lower stretch. The river bed is narrower and, with the exception of a hundred miles, where the river makes the border line between Hungary and Slovakia, as well as the same length in Bavaria, the bank is always hilly.
That section had been tamed much earlier than the cataracts. The higher industrialization made it impossible to transport raw materials by surface means only, inland waterways had been created by taming rivers and constructing canals. At the time I write about the first dam on the Danube below us was a plan only, but in the Austrian section I have seen the fourth one in construction at Aschach.
Somewhere before I have mentioned already that shortage of goods had been a usual phenomenon in our country. That shortage had made the prices of sophisticated manufactured goods higher than sensible. For this reason people having jobs on international transport means as mariners, rail-roadmen, truck drivers, etc. had always joined the very old trade of illegal import, or call it smuggling. Of course, customs authorities knew that this activity cannot be annihilated and tried to regulate it.
All the employees of international transport companies registered in our country had special service passports and they were allowed to import a limited quantity of wares. They had their "Import Booklets” and so, they could take with them home the gifts, food, technical equipments they bought on their allowance.
Behind these goods in the booklet, there has always been a much bigger quantity hidden in proper caches that has not been for declaration. The customs authorities have had their informers among crews – mainly people whose fate on being caught would have been sudden debarkation, unless they undertook the role of informer – and it would have been dangerous to hide things with the knowledge of anybody on the boat. Trust in each other is one thing, business is another.
The main source for purchasing goods has been a certain woman living in the southern outskirts of Vienna. Her name was Frau Molnar, she left our country in 1956 and had been living there to become the most important factor in our mariners’ trade. We could not only get every kind of goods, but she took on her the risky business of currency change. The rate of change has been coded: it was said Frau M. was so and so many years old, it meant, she was giving so and so many Schillings for one hundred Forints. She has been a good saleswoman. Beer was always cheaper with her than with her competitors. Of course, she lost some money on people, who bought little beside beer, but she had her customers and prospered.
To get goods of unique properties, especially technical ones, you had to discuss every aspects with her, and on the return trip you could take it. But such cases have been rare, the bulk of her sales consisted of fashionable items.
There were three of them that days: nylon scarves, feather light impregnated raincoats and wrist-watches. The last one was the most risky business. Watches could be of different quality and they looked alike. Mariners have not been experts to choose the right ones. If you wanted to take a good-quality watch, you would have to avoid buying it from Frau M. But ordinary watches, dubbed "kilo watches” – they were sold by weight, not piece –, you could buy at her as there was no way of being caught by the end-consumer. Even if you sold it to somebody who knew you, there were enough spare ones to replace it.
For me joining this trade has been out of question: I had no capital to change it at any rate of Frau M.’s age. I had a good watch of Russian make and did not need any. But of the scarves I took a dozen – not a hundred dozen as others –, among my relatives there were women. And I tried to get my rain-coat, only I did not find the proper size. It had to wait for me a year more. The centre of the city I could not see in Vienna. It, too, had to wait for one year. But from the river I have not only seen the beautiful embankments, I have made many shots by my small Russian camera.
My friend Z. has had access to his father’s photographic laboratory and he made me possible to do the magnifications, as well as the chemical developing.
Returning from the second trip I was assigned to another boat, that time a freighter. It has been actually a barge with an engine room instead of Nr 3 hold. Also, around the upper shaft of the engine room a deckhouse has been erected. The two other holds have also been a little shorter, making room for a fuel deep-tank. Between the openings of the two holds has been another deckhouse with the bridge on top of it. Its floor on the main deck housed the common room for the officers and the commander’s cabin. The crew has not have any common room. In good weather a table has been put up on the cover of Nr 2 hold and the crew took their lunch at that. As the weather on board of a ship can be windy, especially during a turn, sometimes our soup has been blown out of the spoon before we could have sipped it.
All the officers and sailors, as well as the engine crew have been eccentrics. For a day or two it could cause me identity problems, but I remembered a case from my sister’s career. She had heard the backward children make a dispute with ordinary ones and one of the backward pupils say: "You imbecile normal.” Also, there is the joke about the ape. He thought, when he looked out between rods of his cage: "Poor people, they are so numerous and all are locked up in a large cage.”
It is always a question of view-point, who is sensible and who is a lunatic. Even among them the cook is worth mentioning. She had been an ordinary peasant woman – perhaps a parachutist –, never to have stepped over the limits of her village as long, as her son decided to take the job of a sailor on a river-boat. Then she went with him and was always working as a cook on the same boat as he was assigned. Her son was a fine young man not effected at all by the guardian role of his mother.
I have been assigned as a surplus crew member and for this reason my accommodation has been arranged with the sailors in the forecastle. My bed was small and asymmetric because of the lines of the hull in the head, but on no other ship could I sleep so fast for the pleasant sound of water hissing at my ears.