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Trains
were my childhood's fascination. Steam trains, that
is. Not because my grandfather was a railroad engineer and
director at the Department of Railroads - my mind of a
child never connected the two. I just fell for trains the
first time I saw a steam locomotive. Complex, huge,
dominating, vibrating under the pressure inside its belly, parts
moving, steam oozing out of it at valves and pistons, smelling of hot
metal, oil and burning coal, sounding a loud,
authoritative siren, and with the black-faced train engineer (my first
chosen profession!) leaning out from way up the in the window
of his cab. I was interested in everything about
trains and railroads - their blue signals, their
ever chattering Morse telegraph putting dots and
dashes on a long strip of paper, even the rails, ties, plates and
spikes. I was always looking forward to our family
summer sea-side vacation, for the warm and
friendly Black Sea with its sunny beaches, but also because it
meant two long train rides! And the high point of those rides was the
crossing of the Danube River on the "Cernavoda" Bridge! ("Cernavoda" is
Slavic for Black-water) I knew when and where during
the trip it should be, and waited for the already familiar but unique
experience. The sound inside the train would
amplify, like the sound of a waterfall, increasing and decreasing as it
was passing by the arches of the bridge, and I was sitting,
eyes glued to the compartment's window, looking at the
bridge's leaning trusses doing their criss-cross dance right
in front of me - up-down, down-up, up-down,
down-up - listening to the rhythmic clicking of the
wheels jumping the joints in the rails, and thinking of the strength of
this mighty bridge that could take in its embrace, without a shudder,
our heavy, long, speeding train, with its enormous and powerful steam
locomotive!
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On my recent trips
to Romania, whenever I traveled that route again, I attempted to take
photos of the bridge, disaffected since 1987, but none came
out any good. The old picture above, the best I could
find, is borrowed from this old weblog page, that, in turn,
borrowed it from a book. The page is in Romanian, but it has
more interesting photos of the bridge.
Named the "King
Carol I Bridge" after its instigator and
sponsor, it was built between 1890 and
1895. Originally it was supposed to be designed and built by
Gustave Eiffel, of the famous Eiffel tower in Paris, who already
designed and bult other railroad bridges for the Romanian Railroads
(CFR) but the negotiation with Eiffel fell through and the project
ended up being undertaken the by Romanian Engineer Anghel Saligny, son
of a French (Alsatian) educator, immigrant in
Romania. Anghel Saligny was also a founding member of the
Bucharest Polytechnic, in those times aptly named "The Roads and
Bridges School". At the time of the bridge's completion it
was the longest railroad bridge in Europe and also constituted the
point of entry into Southern Romania from the East, so the
bridge's "entrance" was graced with a triumphal type arch and
two giant bronze statues of Romanian soldiers named
"Dorobanţi" (pronounced "Dorobantzi") one standing guard on each side.
The bronzes were created by the French sculptor Leon
Pilet, paid in part by the French Embassy as a tribute to King
Carol I, and honoring the sacrifice made by the "Dorobanţi"
regiments during the Independence War. Pilet presented King
Carol with five different miniature soldier models, and the king
personally chose the model of the one we see standing today.
The statues, each made of three parts, were cast in Lyon, France, and
assembled on site. Two bronze Coat of Arms of Romania, also
by Pilet, were located in the niches high above the
soldiers. They were later ripped out by the communists and
probably used for scrap metal - they were never found
again. Thank God they left the statues alone! The
arch at the Western end of the bridge proper is smaller and
simpler. The King Carol I Bridge and its Dorobantz
statues are now inscribed in the country's List of Historic
Monuments. To get an idea of how huge these statues are,
notice the guard's shack next to one in the photo above.
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So, who were the "Dorobanţi? Unlike the rest of the army that were conscripts, the Dorobantzi were paid soldiers, much like the US National Guard, organized in regiments of mobile infantry. They would do their "soldiering" for one week in each month, unless deployed, and they paid for and supplied their own "uniforms" which were made, and decorated, drawing inspiration from the various regional Romanian folk costumes, so no two were dressed the same! But they had in common their patriotism and courage, and they were all proudly wearing turkey feathers in their fur caps, which earned them the nickname "Curcani" (Romanian for turkeys). Their official name "Dorobantzi" came from the German verb "traben" meaning "to trot" through the Magyar (Hungarian) "darabant". One single word, a verb, passing through three languages, three languages completely unrelated to one another, and becoming a noun, the name of an army corps, and of a street and neighborhood in Bucharest! Such are the linguistics in that part of the world. Chris -
2016 Update - This April I took a trip
to Constanţa and, on the way back to Bucharest, I was looking forward
to seeing the old Cernavodă bridge again, maybe snap some pictures for this page. The bridge was visible
in the distance as the train stopped at Cernavodă-Bridge station, but
once the train started again, the bridge seemed to disappear from the
side view. Slowly, the train was now actually heading for the
bridge, and, to my surprise and delight, we passed right on the
old bridge itself, as it was obvious that they were repairing someting
to the return line of the new route! The mighty old bridge is
still holding its own! And it appears that the Romanian railroads
are making use of it as needed. What these clowns didn't know is
that I would have paid extra money for the trip, if I would have known
this detail ☺ . Needless to say, I missed the photo op, so, if
any of you have a recent and interesting photo of the old Cernavodă bridge, please send it to me and
I'll publish it here, giving you credit. Chris Back to The Blind Stork
__oOo__
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