We paddled from Smederevo to Ram in Serbia on the 7th of May, 2024. This was our 60th day of kayaking the Danube. We are now entering the border area between Serbia and Romania.

Leaving Smederevo for Ram

We left the apartment in Smederevo and walked to the rowing club. Once there, we started unpacking Zucchini and inflating her. Some kids showed up in sports gear. And then more and more kids showed up. They’re probably members of this rowing club and they have a practice today.

We finished setting up Zucchini, and we even took our time by making a little vlog for Jonas. We had secretly hoped that they’d open the gate so we can sneak into the Danube via their beautiful slipway. But everything they did took an excruciatingly long time. We were gone and on the water before they opened the gate. Starting time to kayak from Smederevo to Ram: 8:13.

First, we had to get past some of the moored barges past the international passenger (cruise) terminal of Smederevo. There was a surprising lot of activity this early in the morning. One guy on a cargo ship indicated to us to go further out into the Danube because he was leaving or turning his ship around, also honking his boat horn. We did so until the coast was clear and we returned to the right embankment to paddle closely to Smederevo Fortress.

At the fortress, we took some photos on the calm water with the strong morning sun. It’s very cool to see the fortress from this side as well. Though our accommodation in Smederevo was just meh, we will have good memories of this city for its nice fortress and cafés. And little did I know: this was (probably) the last place in Serbia where I had craft beer.

Approaching Smederevo Fortress

After the confluence of the dead Jezava River (a former distributary of the Great Morava River), the industrial area of Smederevo began. There’s a large oil and gas storage facility and so many anchored barges. Jonas wanted to go around them all the way on the left in the shipping lane, but I thought we should weave between them carefully on the right. When one ship that was anchored started to move upstream, turn around in front of us, and plop into the shipping lane to go downstream, I knew he was right.

We paddled under the gas pipeline bridge at 8:53 and a little later under the road bridge between Smederevo and Kovin.

Gas terminals meet...

...gas pipeline

That was it, the last fully Serbian bridge across the Danube. Opened in 1976, bombed in April 1999, and reopened in December 1999. The section that touches the downstream tip of Smederevska Ada was dropped by the bombing. There’s apparently a plaque on the refurbished bridge that reads:

“Since the beginning of the world, people have been divided into builders and destroyers.” We remember only the builders forever.”

Kovin Bridge

Galați in Romania mentioned!

After the bridge, I also put on my sunglasses against the strong glare of the water. It still took a while before we’d left the biggest barge parking lot we’ve ever seen on the Danube. Seriously, there were even barges from Galați in Romania near the Danube Delta. Until 9:21, exactly, right before we got parallel to the city of Kovin on the other shore. Though it has an entrance via river, I never saw the town.

I moved a little in my seat to make myself more comfortable, but the upper part of my seat completely deflated itself. Shit. The embankment here is full of branches and no good places to land, so I adjusted my seat straps and kept paddling. A bee had landed for a long rest and I had to gently move her to my red dry bag as she was in the way of my strokes.

Sunken Barge + Great Morava Confluence

In quite some discomfort because of the seat, we kept paddling while the Danube turned from northeast to east. We’ve seen so many swans on the Danube. We’ve usually had friendly relations with them, but in this area, we weren’t even that close to one and it aggressively raced towards us to scare us away. We went more out onto the river and gave the swan some space. The swan wins.

It was now 10:00 and we were approaching the confluence of the Great Morava River into the Danube from the right. In the distance, we could see a weird object sticking out of the water. It was very large.

When we approached, I could see it was a sunken barge with the pointy end sticking up, like Titanic. Spectacular. We paddled quite closely to it, believing it to be firmly stuck in the Danube’s riverbed.

To our right, the Great Morava joined. If you’ve been on this blog a long time and wonder, wait, didn’t you already kayak the Morava on the Danube basin? Yes, we did. But that’s the Morava that flows between Slovakia and Austria and is a left-bank tributary to the Danube 352 kilometers long. The Great Morava is a right-hand tributary and it’s 185 kilometers long. Before that, it’s made up of the West Morava that’s sourced in Serbia and the South Morava which originates in North Macedonia. I know much less about the tributaries of the Danube after the Sava confluence. It’s kind of a blind spot for me.

After the Great Morava confluence, there were two anchored barges parked parallel. We decided to paddle in between them for some nice footage.

The Great Morava joins the Danube

At 10:35, we found a suitable landing spot in a place mapped as Margum. It was behind some houses, so we tried to keep the pause short, sweet, and silent as to not trigger any dogs. Jonas reinflated my seat for me. We continued paddling six minutes later. My nautical map says there’s also a ferry here, although it doesn’t say where it’s going. In real life, I did see some boat that looked like a potential ferry for foot passengers only.

I think this boat is a ferry sometimes

Only 1100 kilometers to the Black Sea!

We ate a protein bar in the boat and kept going while the kilometer signs on the right bank kept counting down. We were looking for the 1100 kilometer sign, which we encountered at 11:14. I can’t believe the next round number will be 1000 kilometers to go on the Danube to the Black Sea. I’m stoked, to say the least.

Paddling Past Kostolac + Weirdly-Shaped Islands

We were now entering the Kostolac area. Somewhere in Kostolac, the TID makes a one-night stop between Smederevo and Veliko Gradište. We paddle more kilometers today to get to Ram than they do.

In the distance, we could see Stojkova Ada. But before that, we encountered another sunken barge. This time, it laid on its side. Why are there so many sunken barges here in the Danube?

We tried to take a shortcut by paddling closely to Stojkova Ada. There was a lot of activity on the island of fishermen. To our right, the industrial area of Kostolac. There’s a power plant and a mountain of coal that nature tried to somewhat retake by growing plants on it. It also has a grassy aerodrome according to my map.

The area of Kostolac used to be Viminacium, the capital of the Moesia Superior province of the Roman Empire in the 1st till 4th centuries AD. It used to also host the Roman Danube Fleet. There’s an archaeological site and museum nearby Kostolac.

It was almost noon and time to eat our cheese sandwiches.

Stojkova Ada

Some giant coal mountain in the background

Arriving in Ram

We kept paddling until we saw the three towers that carry some major electricity lines across the Danube. There’s also a turn in the river here and an island, so it was hard to see where we had to go. One of the electricity towers stands on the island of Žilava, which is hollow from the backside. There are multiple islands like that in the area. I later learned the reason: the Đerdap I Dam raised the water levels and flooded the aft parts of these islands.

There was a bit of tailwind, so I deployed the kayak sail for a short while until it disappeared. We went right around the island of Žilava. The shipping lane also goes through here. We actually encountered a ship in this short section. It was a Dutch ship carrying four blades for windmills upstream, reading AquaBarging.nl on the side. My guess is that it will probably travel from the Danube to the Rhine via the canals. Very cool.

Aiming for the powerlines

For fun, I also turned on my OnCourse app to track us on Marine Traffic. Unfortunately, the app doesn’t run in the background, so I only tracked a short line.

At 13:37, we were on the final approach to Ram. The water here is quite shallow and I saw quite some plants in the water. The entire area before Ram is full of men in fishing boats on days like this. There were a few more weirdly shaped islands: Zavojska Ada and Chibuklija Ada.

We were quite tired at this point, though it was an under-forty day. We managed to chill a little by deploying the kayak sail again to catch that mellow tailwind.

Once in the wind shadow of the two islands, we could see the humble beginnings of Ram Fortress. This gave a boost in motivation. To our left, the island of Chibuklija Ada had several gaps to get to the inner lagoon as we’d seen on satellite view. It was a little tempting to paddle in there, but we decided not to. The small fishing boats, however, were comfortable doing that.

Ram in the distance

Tempting gap to enter Chibuklija Ada

Ram Fortress!

We kept paddling towards the impressive fortress until we were right in front of it. We took some more photos together with the fortress while floating a little. And then it was time to arrive and call it a day.

Around the corner of the fortress are the many ferries of Ram. These are pontoons with a ship attached to them. Most of them have planetary names such as Jupiter and Neptune. After some discussion, we landed at the spot where the ferry goes to Stara Palanka. There was just enough slipway available to us to squeeze in between. Arrival time: 15:13.

The ferry already had some cars on it, even though it wouldn’t leave for another 45 minutes. We carried Zucchini up the embankment and already saw our first cats of Ram.

I stayed with Zucchini while Jonas put on shoes and went up to the Rooms Ram some 50 meters away to check into the room. We’re staying here for only two nights. There’s not much in town. The ferry filled up while I was waiting. And then, two fellas in a yellow canoe landed in Ram.

Colleagues in a canoe

I dried Zucchini enough for her to be packed away for two nights. It doesn’t have to be perfect now. Jonas returned with a key and some pictures of a cat he’d met inside the hallway of the accommodations. Are we staying in a cat-friendly place?

Stara Palanka + Ram Fortress

Two Nights in Ram: Fortress + Stara Palanka Ferry

Tuesday: after packing up Zucchini and checking into the room, we asked if the restaurant was open today. Jonas mostly communicated with the host via Airbnb messaging. She wasn’t here on site.

The restaurant was closed, and the other restaurant in Ram was also closed. Are we cooking our emergency food?

No, there’s one shop in town past the fortress mapped as Rani Grom. We went there and got some basic goodies, like beans and soup with some pasta. We bought a lot of things, actually, including some wonderful Vojvođanska štrudla sa orasima. It’s a strudel with walnut. The shop owner is a delightful man who also knows which of his products are vegan. Very unexpected!

I was hoping for a beautiful sunset over the Danube, but it started to rain pretty hard. We sat on the shared balcony, watching the rain and lightning when the two canoeist guys decided to depart and cross the Danube. We used our stove to heat up the food and drank some beers. There’s no kitchen or shared fridge at this place for us to store some food.

The canoeists are leaving in the worst weather (don't mind the dead pigeon)

Ram Fortress at night

We showered and went to bed quite early.

Wednesday: though perhaps we could have worked on the balcony or in the closed restaurant down below, we decided to just take the day and have fun. First, we made some instant coffee on our stove. Then we went for a little walk along the Danube embankment to some mapped beach with the 1077 kilometer sign. This wasn’t a whole lot of fun, because there were at least three dogs following us, starting fights with other dogs along the way. There was a lot of dog shit on this brand-new road that’s also a Serbian coastal cycling path. There was also a marina with some of the loudest frogs I’ve ever heard.

We took the ferry from Ram to Stara Palanka at 10:00 with a lot of our least-favorite street dogs of Ram. The price per person return is 900 RSD. One-way it’s 500 RSD. It’s rather expensive for pedestrians, which certainly means that we’re sponsoring the cars also boarding this pontoon.

The ride itself was very pleasant. There’s little sitting space and no shelter whatsoever. One friendly old lady was trying to strike up a conversation with me, but I told her I didn’t speak Serbian. She then asked if I speak russian. I said no again.

There were also two Swiss long-distance cyclists. They were going to Romania via the inland road on the other side of the Danube. They’re also going to the Black Sea.

Dogs hitchhiking the ferry to Stara Palanka

In Stara Palanka, we walked via the front of several restaurants to the start of the embankment cycling path to the mouth of the Nera River. We first came past the accommodation we didn’t stay at. It’s Riblji restoran “Dunavski cvet” that also has a few rooms. There was plastic tape over the door. I translated to “tax administration”. Someone’s been naughty. Also, Jonas checked if the place was still bookable online. It was. Imagine we’d booked this place, showed up, and it’s just not real? I’m very pleased we chose Rooms Ram on the other side of the Danube.

We walked past fields of poppies on the embankment to the border river between Serbia and Romania. First, we stumbled upon the Serbian flag sign on the embankment. We’ve seen three of these now.

We then walked via the river mouth parallel to the Nera to see if we could get close to the water. There was one fishing spot down at the river that was quite nice. And there was also one old rusty border tower. I decided to climb it despite my fear of heights and I’m happy I did it, but the views weren’t that much more amazing. I could see a bit what was coming up for us on the Danube tomorrow. The hills on both sides of the Danube are rising! Aye, we are approaching the Iron Gate…

Across is Romania!

The Nera confluence at the Danube and the start of Romania

Jonas and I returned via the excellent cycling path to Stara Palanka, where we walked to Riblji restoran “Đela”. I’d called this place in the morning to ask in Serbian if they’re open today, just to confirm we can get food on the other side. The lady on the phone said they’re open. Stara Palanka has something like 17 buildings, of which 5 are restaurants. Minus one because of the tax fraud.

Upon request to vegetarianize a few items, we had the most excellent lunch there: two cheese omelets, Šopska salata, fries, and some lepinja bread. We overordered, so I decided to turn our lepinja into a sandwich for tomorrow. We asked for another bread and Jonas did the same. So we are now food secure!

While waiting for the return ferry at 13:30, we met some nice cats from the town. We fed them some Dreamies while the Serbian military drove some vehicles to the water to the Danube-Tisza-Danube Canal. I have no idea what they were doing. The sweet black cat was very cuddly, but like all good things, a dog needs to show up and the cat becomes spiky. One of the dogs we’d ferried over returned with us.

Back on the other side, we repacked our day bag and had a coffee at the restaurant in our building. Jonas didn’t really know what to do for time, so he agreed to hike up the mountain with me to go to the remains of the Roman fortress Lederata. There was also a nice view of the absolute end of the Danube–Tisa–Danube Canal. The hike itself was very pleasant and it was good to use our legs again, but the ruins are not much.

Lederata Hill + the end of the Danube–Tisa–Danube Canal

Chibuklija Ada's horseshoe shape from the hills

On the way down, we walked past the shop in town to eat some ice cream. We also went to the church in town, which is built inside the old Ottoman caravanserai. And then it was time to do what we came for: visit Ram Fortress.

For 300 RSD, we could enter. It was now 18:34 and the sun was low in the sky. I had an absolutely wonderful time at this renovated fort. From there, we could also see the ferry depart at 19:00 with so many barking dogs once again. This fortress was built up mostly by the Ottomans, of which one familiar name came by: Sultan Bayezid II, who we mostly know from his social and health complex in Edirne.

Inside Ram Fortress

Thanks for sticking with this post, y'all

We watched the start of the sunset from there before we left the Ram Fortress. On the way out, I looked at the restaurant we intended to eat at in the evening, Biser Dunava, but it said it would close at 20:00. Shit. We asked the staff from Ram if there’s another restaurant, but he only had suggestions reachable by car. In the end, we still managed to eat something at the restaurant below our accommodation. Jonas had a pljeskavica while I ate salad and fries. Nothing else was available.

The sunset intensified while we waited for food. We also met the two sweetest cats of Ram: a tuxedo and a tabby. They’re both very friendly to humans and each other’s best friends.

In the evening, we packed up our dry bags for tomorrow’s kayaking to Golubac. The packing was quite a lot of work because we had to unpack so much. We will go without coffee tomorrow morning. The end of Serbia is near!

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