For more than two weeks now the icebreaker MS Eisvogel has earnt its keep smashing up the ice in Vienna's Danube River harbours. It's an attempt to keep them free for any ships which need to move about. However, few are moving and the main stream of the river is eerily quiet. Captain Johannes Kammerer, has spent the day at the wheel of the Eisvogel, a day on which the mercury finally climbed to near zero. 

“We saw today in the harbour where the ice breaker was working that the ice was about 30 centimeters thick. In other places it was bit thinner - 25 to 30 centimeters,” he told DW.

Captain Kammerer works for the Blue Danube Shipping company, one of the oldest on the river. His regular job is shuttling tourists and commuters between Vienna and Bratislava - the capital of neighbouring Slovakia. Now, after two weeks of river ice, he's wondering when the Danube will again hear the sound of powerful diesel motors.

“Yes it will take some time yet,” he said looking across the white expanse of what is better known as the Blue Danube. “It won't disappear overnight. It will take days or even weeks before the ice leaves Vienna.”

Big melt follows big freeze

Vienna experienced twelve consecutive days with the mercury below minus 10 degrees Celsius. Locals say that's the coldest spell they can recall in almost three decades. Further downstream in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria conditions are even worse and flooding now looms as a major threat to river-side communities and to the early resumption of river transport.

“It can be quite dangerous especially for the older vessels,” said Edgar Martin, who heads the Central and Eastern Europe office of Infospectrum Limited, a shipping consultancy. He was referring to the danger posed by large ice floes to vessels keen to get under way after weeks of inactivity. 

 “Perhaps the greater danger though, overall, is of flooding” he said. “Not only the ice melting and directly causing flooding but build-ups of ice blocking the stream.” 

On average ice will shut down shipping on parts of the Danube once in every five years. However it's rare for it to last as long as three weeks. The current freeze began at the end of January, and it is unclear when the river will open again.

More than just a river

The Danube is part of a major European water transport corridor running through nine countries and linking the Black Sea with the North Sea via canals and the Rhine River. It is 2,872 kilometers long and a crucial link for countries like Ukraine that use it to export raw materials such as coal, iron ore and fuel into central and western Europe. These are cargoes not easily transferred to road transport, and any closure is costly for shipping companies.

“There is data for the last fifteen years which talks about 359 days of the availability of the Danube river for shipping transport,” said Bettina Pepek, head of communications at via donau, the Austrian body responsible for Danube River shipping infrastructure and for warning ships and barges about dangers such as ice. “So you see it's only a small percentage of time when you can't use the Danube”.

Those statistics also highlight the severity of the big freeze of 2012 with more than two weeks of closure already in February. Bettina Pepek believes the impact on long term shipping growth will not be great, especially as the European Union, the Austrian government and other countries along the river are keen to see more freight on the waterway.

“The objective is to convince more and more industry partners, logistic partners and others to use the Danube as a transport route.” One major advantage, she said,  is that carbon emissions “are less than those for road transport.”

But with hundreds of ships and barges tied up or iced up along more than a thousand kilometers of the river, crews have had to make the most of their enforced winter break. In Serbia a number of ships have been frozen midstream with their crews unable to reach the shore. “We've seen a number of vessels trapped for one or two weeks. That's pretty serious. On the other hand the vessels have supplies. Obviously they generate their own power,” said Edgar Martin.

For Johannes Kammerer it's a chance to do some maintenance on his passenger ship the Twin City Liner.  “Of course we're working on maintenance and repairs”, he said. “Just on our two catamarans 138,000 passengers a year create some issues and before the new season starts there's lots to do.”

Author: Kerry Skyring, Vienna
Editor: Gabriel Borrud