Blue River, Black Sea (edition 2010)

This is my third book by this author and the geographical region of this book has certain echoes of his book on the famous Orient Express;The 8:55 to Baghdad (http://www.librarything.com/work/41869). This time however the author is motivated to follow some of the route of the famous writer, Patrick Leigh Fermor, who went this way in the 1930s and wrote the classic works of “A Time of Gifts” and “Between the Woods and the Water” with a promised third and concluding volume to be published posthumously in 2013. Inspired by these works Eames decides to travel and narrate a trip from Germany through the ”Iron Gates” to Instanbul, following – indeed partly traveling on – the “blue” Danube River.

It is 70 odd years since the famous “Paddy” journeyed through these same lands and, of course, much has been changed by World Wars, communist domination and neglect and viscous ethnic cleansing and pogroms, but Eames still discovers treasures and even peoples from those times. The author even manages to find his own aristocrats to welcome and awe him, staying in castles and Hofs with surviving descendants of fabled families of the Austrian Holy Empire.

But it is with his own generation that he most relates, the Serbian peasants and the gloriously mixed crews of the working Danube fleets as he walks, trains, drives and floats to his successful conclusion, the Black Sea.

This gloriously satisfying read is one of the best travel narratives of recent decades.

Andrew Eames follows the Danube from its source to the delta on the Black Sea. This has everything you want in a travel book; it is well written, entertaining and gives the reader a real sense of place. Eames also a facility for using the life stories of the people he meets to introduce the history of an area. ( )