notamermaid

The Danube valley and Bavaria as a whole have now joined the West in showing temperatures over 30 Celsius in some areas. Splendid weather that will bring thunderstorms eventually. Tonight in the Rhine valley, followed by the Southeast of my country into the night. The level of the Danube will rise but past Regensburg not substantially so. For Passau it looks as if the level will rise not much above 600cm. In Austria in the Nibelungengau region people are celebrating the summer solstice event today. Tonight, for the fireworks, there is a temporary river traffic ban. The event: https://www.donau.com/en/sonnenwende/ notamermaid

Christmas markets - that is an interesting thought. Thank you, will keep that in the back of my mind. notamermaid

The lock accident reports tend to put the damage at the lock gate and the ship within the lock chamber. Oh well, I will leave it at that and return on the map to the spot of the first incident. Neustadt is between Lohr and Wertheim, it looks a nice hilly region at the river. Certainly a small place one can easily overlook. On marinetraffic.com I have spotted this boat docking at Neustadt today: The guys on Binnenschifferforum happened to draw my attention to this small vessel and the fact that there is a Hafenfest at Neustadt this weekend, meaning today and tomorrow. Celebrating a small harbour with a festival sounds fun. I was wondering though why this boat being at the festival may be special. It turns out that the MS Willi is a historic vessel, 115 years old this year! "She" is a peniche of Freycinet size for the French canals and is lovingly looked after by a Swiss club: https://www.historische-binnenschifffahrt.com/schiff/ If you happen to be sailing past you may see something of the event and spot the "Willi". notamermaid

Are those back in fashion? Errhmm, I see them being given a fab, fun, young people makeover online. They are practical but they are not something that I would buy. I think they would struggle to sell with the potential buyers I meet. They look really like something typically British or American. But I have seen them in regular shops here, or at least something that is similar. Really practical is the design with the air holes. For a souvenir I do not think they could work for my purposes but personally I like those. Straw hats have kind of come back. The problem is the price. So from what I have seen over the last few years is that they are usually not real straw. I myself own a straw hat, I bought it in Bavaria many years ago. It has ripped but I will try and get a hat maker to have a look at what can be done to keep it going for a few more years. notamermaid

Brief update. Thunderstorms so far not having a real impact. Maxau gauge high but looking relatively stable over the next three days. notamermaid

Yes, it is actually. It is a tough market, the years 2020/2021 were certainly bad years. But there were also specific problems with the company. Sad to see it go. But there are other beers in the area, Bitburger from the Eifel, i.e. Bitburg, is a bit omnipresent unfortunately (unless you like it of course) so try and look for others or encourage your cruise company to look beyond offering that one. I know these are big company deals and not normally changed by two river cruisers saying "we want a different beer" but you can always try and play the beer sommelier. Full disclosure: I did not know such a job existed until about five years ago. notamermaid

Now that is a nice roundabout expression I had not heard before. 😊 Makes a hat even more important for sure. I say hat, but it could be a cap of course. For me baseball caps are a modern thing, I do not think any male person in my family wore one before 1990 and I struggle to recall many occasions since then. We have hats and those caps that are more similar to the British type. Thanks. I have the suspicion that most of the ones in Europe all come from two factories in you know where. notamermaid

Thank you. Hmm, I also see that today that the heavy showers are focussing on Bavaria and Thuringia rather than the Elbe basin where the water is needed, i.e. upstream of Bad Schandau. The clouds should give Saxony a bit more rain tomorrow but it being so hot I am sure you are right in that this may prove too little. notamermaid

Speaking of cooling down. I was wondering if I could ask for a bit of input. As part of my job I meet tourists but not that many and souvenirs - or as we in the trade call it, merchandise when we want to make money from it - are of interest to me. In this heat specifically baseball caps are a good thing to have to keep your head cooler. Is that still a thing to buy, you know, name of town x or a special place of interest printed on or sewn on it. It is regarded as a US-American thing mainly but other folks may buy the odd one, too. Do Canadians like them? British? Only men? What do you think? Is there even a collector among you folk? Would be nice to hear from a few people out there in the Anglo-American world. Australians welcome of course as well. notamermaid

This sounds about right from what others have said of their docking locations. One note: in Rüdesheim as far as I know Viking docks too far away from town, the area is not picturesque. For once, other companies have the better locations there. However, Rüdesheim being so touristy it may be accommodating with wheelchair use. If the CD cannot help you could ask the tourist information centre: https://ruedesheim.de/en/contact-tourist-info/ From Rüdesheim to Koblenz you will have the scenic sailing, try and get onto the sun deck if you can, otherwise ask the CD for a perfect spot for your wife to sit and see the castles, before those seats are taken. In Koblenz you normally only raft with another Viking ship unless you are pushed out to the not so good dock at Ehrenbreitstein. It is only a few minutes into town from Deutsches Eck, but if that is too much she can take the wheelchair around to the Moselle embankment. All flat and tarmacked. There is a small tourist train in Koblenz, likewise in Rüdesheim. Do inquire if this could help with sightseeing. Koblenz tourist information centre: https://www.visit-koblenz.de/en You can see the Viking ships right there on the webpage, perfect location! For Germany you need to know that Uber does not operate there. Hope all goes well and you can all enjoy the cruise together. notamermaid

My pleasure. Have a good trip. And I extend that to @bootscooter. notamermaid

We will be getting thunderstorms later today and into the night, but for now this looks to only lead to significantly higher levels at the Upper Danube in Germany, for our purposes here I say upstream from Donauwörth. There is no river traffic that far up. I am working on some historic data, compiling a bit of a list (yes, more figures coming, ha! 😉). But that is for the cooler hours - I have no air conditioning... Hope you are all having a great time on the river and the evening will balmy, with cocktails on the sun deck. 🙂 notamermaid

It has certainly been hotting up and for today the authorities have put much of Germany on heat warning level 1. It is basically summer really. But they like to keep us informed. If you are out and about do have water ready and sun protection is a very good idea. During the day we will be moving towards thunderstorms. Those warnings are for the Eastern side of the Neckar and around the "young" Danube basin, etc.. So that water will at its Northern end of the band of clouds go to the Main, in the middle to the Danube and at the Southern end to the Rhine via the Eastern tributaries feeding Lake Constance. We will see how that develops. It looks to me as if the computer modelling has been amended taking into account that more rain clouds are moving East of the Rhine valley rather than feeding the Rhine and its Upper Rhine valley tributaries directly. So that is good for sailing. In other news: yesterday, the Olympic Flame came to France. It was carried over the border from Weil to Huningue on the Dreiländerbrücke, the "Bridge of three Countries". Here is a German report, you can probably find something in English, too: https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/suedbaden/olympisches-feuer-in-baden-wuerttemberg-weil-am-rhein-100.html notamermaid

So here are a few websites. Passau, Germany: https://www.hnd.bayern.de/pegel/donau_bis_passau/passau-10091008 Austria: https://www.doris.bmk.gv.at/en/fairway-information/water-levels Hungary: https://www.hydroinfo.hu/en/hidinfo/hidinfo_graf_duna.html Austria: https://www.doris.bmk.gv.at/en/fairway-information/fairway-condition Danube: https://www.danubeportal.com/en/waterLevel notamermaid

The Destiny is currently on the Main river I see online. More ships will likely not be in the right place yet. Glad it is working out for you. Have a great cruise. notamermaid

That as I have indicated above also depends on your specific ship. The easier measure in flooding is what the authorities determine to be too high for sailing for safety reasons. That includes avoiding damage to the embankments from the wash of the waves, i.e, the movement of river traffic causing this. This applies to all ships but is specific to a certain gauge and its section of river. This is a figure called HSW (höchster Schifffahrtswasserstand) for Germany and Austria, for example for Pfelling this is 620cm. This is its respective webpage: https://www.hnd.bayern.de/pegel/donau_bis_passau/pfelling-10078000/marken? The level now is 450cm. However, this is what the paper says, the authorities can in certain situations deviate from that. Skippers on the river are informed through notifications and radio. With the two bridges in flooding it is not possible to say if a figure is okay. Figures can indicate it but I can never know. The indicator for Passau gauge is 630cm, but it appears to be a "careful" figure. From what we have learnt over the years and recently is that most ships can go under the bridge at 640cm and some above. Your captain will know perfectly what is possible. Low water is again not easy to assess. There is no river traffic ban in Germany in low water. The most reliable marker is 290cm at Pfelling gauge. The authorities have given that as the figure that causes potentially problems for the river cruise ships with the deepest draft. Again this will depend then on your ship, its net weight, its weight when full and what "room to wiggle" your captain has with reducing the load (yes, this could mean having all the passengers off board, but mostly partly emptying water tanks). Also upstream and downstream directions have a small good or bad effect. So much for now. notamermaid

Thank you for saying hello and your kind words. I think you may be right there. 😊 It is fun to inform and advise and learn myself at the same time. But I also enjoy my real job. Have a great cruise traversing Europe. notamermaid

Monday I was asked about conditions on the river, as regards sailing on 1st July. With being two days closer to the date, let us have a look. The hot weather is already causing thunderstorms in the Vosges mountains and the Black Forest. With rain falling also East of Lake Constance, that is staying above 500cm. With no rain having fallen in the Upper Rhine valley, Maxau gauge is having a real dip, down to 660cm. It will not leave flood vigilance and is likely to go up again during the evening. The modelling for the next three days puts the Upper Rhine valley on high but manageable levels, with the thunderstorms having an impact that will be considerable but not substantial enough to cause problems. Note that the river is officially high on the High Rhine so there may be minor adjustments in the Basel area that I cannot know about. notamermaid

We have not talked about beer in a while. Not too much has happened but sadly one brewery has gone. We discussed Koblenz. The Königsbacher/Koblenzer brewery went bankrupt and has closed down. notamermaid

We should have a look at the French river and the Grand Canal d'Alsace. This is what the flood vigilance is showing tonight: The green line furthest to the right is the Rhine river. See that one section is on yellow still. A couple of days ago the whole green Rhine was on yellow, too. So that is better now. Running North almost parallel to the Rhine is the river Ill (capital I, two small ll). At the top in the screenshot it reaches Strasbourg before joining the Rhine a little bit downstream. The city is actually not on the modern-day Rhine, that is, the old town is not and no river cruise ships dock in town. Both rivers have been heavily engineered so both the Ill after it has left the picturesque old town and the Rhine with its harbour at Kehl on the German side, where a lot of river cruise ships dock. Strasbourg administration has of course harbours out of town and river cruise ships can dock in these (industrial/commercial) places. You can see it here on marinetraffic.com: The blue dots are either river cruise ships or excursion boats. The Ill is only navigable in a very small section for motorized vessels (excursion boats and those using the canals coming off the Rhine). Otherwise it can only be used by canoes, etc. notamermaid

Welcome to Cruisecritic. I will start with this question: Not too bad. The bad flooding has basically gone, i.e. it is close to the Black Sea or has drained into it already. For now, not too much water is coming from Germany. The river has still been a bit high but from what I have gathered is now closer to the long term mean. All in all looking pleasant, with a nice buffer for dry, hot days in July. There are several charts. Each country issues its own charts but for navigation also lists other countries' charts. It can get a lot to look at and a bit confusing, but I will happily provide them tomorrow. There is one website that lists them all. You do not say which direction you are going in, but no problem. Listing in a downstream direction from Kelheim (beginning of the navigable Danube) you have a few problem spots: near Straubing - low bridge in high water (depends on superstructure of your ship) at Pfelling - shallow in low water (depends on draft of your ship) at Passau - low bridge (depends on superstructure of your ship) at Danube bend just before Budapest - shallow (depends on draft of your ship) downstream from Budapest at a few stretches of the free-flowing river - shallows in low water that I have no details of (depends on draft of your ship) As we go along during the year I will more or less regularly keep posting levels. As I have done so in the past it may be helpful (or confusing) to go back in the thread a little. Apart from what the authorities stipulate as being too high for sailing (we are not close to these levels at all now) it is not easy to determine at times what is good for your ship or not. For some more info and to perhaps find people on your itinerary (same date or not), you could join a roll call or create one. Access via this link: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/546-all-other-river-cruise-roll-calls/ Have a great cruise. notamermaid

Good luck with the tickets. Have a great cruise. notamermaid

Thank you. I just do not want anyone to just wonder "who is that woman spending hours posting weird figures and graphs?" So, I am glad you asked. Happy to give some background to my posts. I never knew how my river or any other waterway "worked" before I went on my river cruise, did not give it much thought. As some others do on their first river cruise, I got hooked as well and cannot get the topic out of my head. To the river. Things are looking up on the German Danube. There are a few weather warnings in the Alps but overall the levels are down even further and Passau gauge has fallen to 610cm. notamermaid

Better than what it looked to be yesterday! The computer modelling has improved. The Middle Rhine valley has been fine for some time now and will continue to be so. My guess for the rest of your route is that things will be generally good. You are avoiding any difficult areas on the Danube by leaving from Nuremberg. The bigger problem on your route would be the low bridges, but I do not think the Main is high enough for any worry. The only area of concern on the Rhine is really upstream from Maxau. The conditions appear to have improved on the French section already so that is good for the next stretch across the border in Germany. notamermaid

She was certainly an amazing woman. When one digs a bit deeper into Medieval history one finds a - perhaps surprising - number of very influential women. But even among those she sticks out I find with her wide interest in so many areas of life. Here is a quick tip for travellers. If you have been to Rüdesheim before or even if you do not want to try out the wine-happy-old-world Germany in the streets of the small town on your first cruise, take the ferry and cross over to Bingen. You can take a photo of your ship if it is docked conveniently against the "skyline" (usually not Viking). And check out the museum there. notamermaid