PEOPLE IN THE DELTA
According to the existant data, the first traces of civilization from the Danube Delta are the ones left behind by the Greeks from Millet who began the colonization of the Dobrudja regions 2600 years ago. At present the big majority of the Delta inhabitants is represented by the Russian community from Lipova and the Ukrainian community who came in successive waves. Thus, in 18th century, the Cossack around Nistru came to a clash of opinions with the Ozarist power, which didn’t use respect their rights and freedoms, a part of them looking for another homeland.
They penetrated the Delta in 1709, under the rule of the Cossacks from Zaporoje province. The Turks agreed with these well-organized and hard tried warriors that, in exchange for assistance offered in the likely wars with the Russians, these ones were to receive a relative independence, land and their right to free fishing. During years numerous disorders lasted, matter that didn’t still determine these ones to leave Delta’s regions. The Russians from Lipova removed from the Czarist Russia in more waves, haven taken refuge of the religious persecution on territories that at that time were under Ottoman mastership. These ones arrived at the Delta around 1772, obtaining, after an agreement with the Turks who were governing Dobrudja at that time, a total religious freedom, instead of armed support against Russians.
The both communities, the Lipovenians and the Ukrainians, preserved mostly their language and customs in such way that here still can be listened to the Lipovenian and the Ukrainian old songs with the concertina and the drum, instruments common to both communities. We must add that these ones are under the influence of the old ritual church, where, as a specific feature, the religious calendar is with fourteen days behind the lay one. Alongside of these ones live other nationalities as Romanians, Turks, Greeks, etc. the Danube Delta inhabitants deal especially with fishing, breeding animals, and, latest, with tourism. The number of Delta’s inhabitants is 14000, these ones living in villages and a part of 5000 inhabitants live in the single city of the Delta - Sulina.
The Danube Delta - Gastronomy
The pensions from the Delta serve culinary dishes prepared after autochthonous classical and international recipes. Let’s remind especially the specific menus: carp bortsch, spitted carp, fried fish (with corn mush and garlic juice), "plachie" (fish prepared in the oven with a sauce of onion, tomatoes and lemon), boiled cray fish, roe and caviar cooked differently, etc. In the people’s farmsteads fish meat is used also as minced meat (minced-meat balls, mild peppers filled with minced meat, "sarmale" (leaves of grapes or of cabbage filled with minced meat and boiled).
One can get more information about the Danube Delta from ARBDD site (the Administration of the Reservation of the Danube Delta Biosphere).
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