The Bega in summer: swimming, boats and riverside cafés

The Bega is not a river in the usual sense. It is a canal, straightened in the eighteenth century, and in summer it becomes a 12-kilometre swimming pool with a café strip on one side and a railway on the other.

At seven in the morning the Bega is already busy. Rowers from the university club slice through the mist near the Mihai Viteazu bridge, their cox's voice carrying flat across the water. By nine the rowers are gone and the first swimmers arrive — retired men with canvas bags, women in floral caps, teenagers who have cycled from Lipovei. They hang towels on the railing and lower themselves into the river at the concrete steps behind the cathedral. The water is 22 degrees in July, 24 in August, green-brown and slow.

The Bega is not a river in the usual sense. It was straightened, deepened and locked in the eighteenth century to float barges and drain the marshes that made Timișoara feverish. What is left is a canal: six metres deep in places, embanked in stone, fed by the Timiș and the Surgani. It does not flood, it does not dry, and it does not have a current worth the name. In summer it becomes a 12-kilometre swimming pool with a café strip on one side and a railway on the other.

The official swimming spot is at the Strand, the municipal lido on the northern bank just past the Podul Modoș. Entry costs 12 lei on weekdays, 15 at weekends; children under seven free. The Strand has been there since 1968 and looks it: cracked blue tiles, a high diving board with a padlocked gate, a snack bar selling warm Fanta and covrigi. The water is drawn from the Bega and chlorinated. Locals call it "the pool" to distinguish it from "the river", which is free and unregulated.

Where the city swims

The free spots are informal and move with the water level. The most popular is the concrete shelf underneath the Podul Mihai Viteazu, where the canal is wide and the shade holds until noon. Another is at the end of Str. Josef Baconsky, near the rowing club, where a sloping ramp lets you walk in without slipping. Neither has a lifeguard. In August 2023 a 19-year-old drowned near the Podul Decebal after jumping from the parapet; the city put up warning signs, then took them down again after complaints that they ruined the view.

The water quality is tested by the local environment agency at three points — upstream of the city, at the Strand, and downstream near the Fântâna artesiană. Results are posted online, usually weekly. In July and August, E. coli counts occasionally exceed the limit after heavy rain, when storm drains overflow. The agency advises against swimming for 48 hours after a downpour. Most people ignore this. The river is wide, the sun is hot, and the Bega has been swallowing Timișoara's sewage for three centuries.

Boats are the other summer ritual. The rowing club on the southern bank, Clubul Sportiv Universitar, rents out single sculls by the hour — 30 lei, or 50 for a double — but you need to show you can row, and in practice that means a member vouches for you. Easier are the pedal boats at the Strand: 25 lei for 30 minutes, 40 for an hour, life jackets included and compulsory for children. In August the queue for pedal boats stretches past the ice cream stand, and the man who runs it, Mr. Popa, has been doing it since 1992.

Cafés on the water

The café strip runs along the southern bank from Piața Libertății to the Podul Decebal. Most places are open from May to October, with terraces built out over the water on wooden platforms. At D'Arc pe Bega, a glass of lemonade is 10 lei, a coffee 8, and the wi-fi password is written on a slate by the bar. The clientele is mixed: students from the nearby engineering faculty, families with prams, the occasional tourist who has read that Timișoara is a design city and is surprised to find the river quite so brown.

Further along, near the Podul Mihai Viteazu, there is a cluster of three terraces that share a floating pontoon. The oldest is called Ponton, which opened in 2009 and has been rebuilt twice after winter ice damaged the platform. A bottle of Timișoreana is 7 lei, a portion of ciolan cu fasole 28 lei. The kitchen closes at 10 pm, the bar at midnight. On Friday and Saturday nights there is a DJ, and the bass carries across the water to the Orthodox cathedral, where the priests have complained.

The northern bank is quieter. The path from the Podul Modoș to the Podul Centru is lined with linden trees and benches, and there is one kiosk, at the corner of Str. Gheorghe Lazăr, that sells coffee and fresh lemonade from a converted Dacia camper. It opens at 8 am and closes when the owner feels like it. There are no toilets. The nearest public facilities are at the Strand, 600 metres east, or in the Iulius Mall food court.

When the water drops

By late August the Bega begins to smell. The combination of low flow, high temperature and the occasional overflow from the city's combined sewers turns the water opaque and the banks fly-blown. The city council usually responds with a dose of hydrogen peroxide, which clears the smell for a week. Swimming becomes less appealing. The pedal boats are still out, but the queue is shorter. The café terraces stay open until the first cold rain in October, when the platforms are dismantled and stored for winter.

For all its flaws, the Bega in summer is the only place in Timișoara where the city relaxes. The squares are for politics, the parks for jogging, the malls for escape. The river is for nothing in particular: for sitting, for swimming, for drinking a beer while watching a heron stab at the water. It is not clean, it is not safe, and it is not beautiful in any conventional sense. But on a hot afternoon in July, with the rowers gone and the lindens in flower, it is the best place to be.

You do not swim in the Bega because it is clean. You swim in it because it is there.