Shining like a National guitar

Three towns ago, I happened upon someone's Romania guide book and I happened to open it to a page telling me that I must go to the Danube delta. So, I did. It was kind of a pain to get here, and it looks like the bus schedules will make leaving suck as well, but it's definitely worth it. Riding around here in a boat is really, really cool. (Why I will never make it as a travel writer, or any other kind of writer: I write sentences like the previous one.) Once off the river's main drag, you're in this maze of river and lakes and islands and trees growing up out of the water with birds and frogs and fisherman. (And tourist boats.) There were egret-y birds and heron-y birds and diving birds and ducks and geese and these medium-sized bright blue birds with reddish beaks that never stayed still long enough for me to take a picture. There was this super thin gauze-y layer of cloud cover that made the trees and sky look like an impressionist painting. And the water was this shiny blue-grey-green-brown-silver color that you kind of wanted to touch, but kind of didn't want to disturb. It even smelled good. Well, a few parts were a little fishy, but mostly it smelled fresh and clean and green and like flowers.

I noticed that part of the sky had turned black about four minutes before the lightning started. (Wasn't someone telling me recently that Europe doesn't get thunderstorms? I've been in three so far this trip.) We were back on the main drag and not too far from home by then but still, we were on a boat in a thunderstorm. Isn't that bad? The 'captain' of our little boat, with his handlebar moustache and fixed, sternish expression, exuded a certain competence and seemed unphased (unphased is a word, right?) by the weather. And there was nothing I could do anyway, so I watched the light show and hoped not to get electrocuted and by the time we got back to the dock the storm was mostly over.

I've been singing river-themed songs in my head all day (there are a lot of them) and I was all motivated to get back to playing harmonica. (For no good reason whatsoever, I haven't played in like a week and a half. I suck.) And then it thunderstormed again. Fuck. I did play in my hotel room, but facing my fear of public performance remains on hold.