Future Primitive

Timm Kruse is the first man to stand up paddle the entire river Danube alone, from the Black Forest in Germany to the Black Sea in Romania. 2000 miles through ten countries in fifty days. Here is his story.

- Timm Kruse

I started windsurfing around 8 or 9 years old, and every summer I spent all day with my father Michel and my sister Alice (pro sup and wind-surf . The first questions people ask me typically enquire as to the toughest part of the adventure, or the most extreme situation I found myself in. I usually tell them the story of a thunderstorm in Hungary, when lightning was striking the river every second one bolt after another, while I was seeking shelter under a row of crooked trees watching the awesome display. Or how at the finish I dived into the Black sea, crying so hard that I thought I would drown. Or at the Iron Gates in Serbia when I couldn’t paddle another stroke, and a German sailing boat picked me up in the very moment when I was ready to quit the whole goddam thing.

But to be honest, these moments were not the most profound ones. What really remains in my memory forever is the feeling of becoming a primitive man. Somewhere in the former Eastern Bloc this sensation struck me for the first time, after about two or three weeks. Suddenly I knew that I was at home on the river. That it wasn’t me who was afraid, but rather the others who should be afraid of me. I wasn´t one of them anymore. I wasn´t civilized, tamed or social. I had become a river man.