Just as Paris has the Seine, London has the Thames, Budapest and Vienna have the Danube, so Timișoara has the Bega. Thrown across the city map like a piece of string, the construction of the Bega Canal began in 1728, under the supervision of the military governor of Banat, Count Florimund de Mercy. Today, the river is a defining element of the city, the joining of the words “Bega” and “Timișoara” is as natural as the words “Banat” and “frunce”.

Upon entering Timișoara through the Crișan neighborhood, the wild Bega lets the sun rise from its left, from behind reed fields with bowed heads that seem to worship a god known only to them. Below, on the right, a cemetery appears, ready for the twilight of the days. On both sides of the water, gardens and pontoons begin to line up, with boats hanging in unnatural positions, for those who are still navigating through life. And dogs condemned to chains to guard all these ephemeral fortunes.

At the other end, at the exit from the city, is the Freidorf neighborhood, the place where the monoliths of the Ceausescu era guard the river, surrounded by garbage, abandoned dogs and cats. Nature tries to annihilate the concrete, and hops spread like a merciless disease over the walls and fences, invading everything in its path.

Between these two landmarks, the Bega flows slowly and listlessly as if after a double dose of morphine, competing with the clouds that crawl across the sky above it and harass the sun. This state of lethargy is occasionally broken by a vaporetto that moves forward wearily, while small waves gurgle behind it, nervously licking the banks.

Some pigeons scatter scaredly in the air like confetti, after a few moments before they had bathed in water the color of a smoked bottle, only to see the solar eclipse through it.

Old people with faces torn by time and work, haunted by pains known only to them and over which political regimes and monetary reforms have passed, pull pharmacy carts after them on the bike paths on the banks and evoke the nostalgia of youth, reminding themselves of how short life really is. On a bench on the bank, a woman leafs through a Lidl catalog with the humility of a believer reading the Holy Scripture.

For some, the banks of the Bega are a place to run, pulling the morning shadows after them. For others less fortunate, the shores have been home for many years, dragging the shadow of the days behind them. Because human beings need a place to settle down.

Mariana sits in a concrete cube planted in the riverbank, near Badea Cârțan Square. She speaks slowly, as if her tongue were a piece of plank attached to a hinge. A stroller that may have carried a child is now anchored to the shore, like a retired ship, filled with Mariana’s belongings, as if she had kicked homelessness out of her “house”, wanting to bankrupt her poverty. Some clothes are hanging out to dry at the entrance. From time to time, the local police throw her agony in an attempt to take her to a homeless shelter, but she always returns as if from a deep amnesia.

Ion, another refugee of misfortune, embalmed with tobacco, sits on his mattress like a castaway on an island and looks out over the water, watching the boats from the nearby nautical club, which seem to compete with his own years spent under the balcony behind the medical school. A scar lines his nose, a sign of a conflict with others or with himself. He has problems with his legs and moves with difficulty, only with the help of crutches. He is periodically visited by gypsies who take his money, and when he has nothing to give them, they strip him completely naked to control him. Several times they took his crutches to sell them at the flea market. Since then, he no longer keeps them near his sleeping place, but hides them.

Adi had a house in a former CFR cantonment, where he had lived for almost twenty years with his wife, Cristina. She was suffering from diabetes and asthma, but she still smoked, puffing and hissing as she blew out the bluish smoke. She had dark circles around her eyes, and her voice rasped like an out-of-tune double bass. In February 2024, her house caught fire, burning some of the tools (chainsaw, brushcutter, etc.) with which Adi supplemented his income, and in the summer of 2024 the canton was bought and Adi was kicked out, and in September Cristina died.

The lives of these people contrast sharply with the effervescent life of the terraces that border the Bega or with the events hosted in the central area of ​​the city, along the water. Sports competitions, weddings, parties or classical music concerts in the Rose Park are events intended for a different audience.

As you move away from the central area of ​​the city, the activities, but also the landscape bordering the water, become different, as if making the transition from urban to rural, from bar terraces to all kinds of annexes (added to the houses) in a Babylonian mess. Only the fishermen remain a constant like navigational signs.

This is Bega seen by me, as a living entity, together with those who give it heart and pulse, from entering to leaving the city, and the images presented in this book are nothing more than rails that over time have the role of preventing the derailment of memory. Some illustrations of an always transient immediacy.