notamermaid

Happy New Year to all. @Daisi Thank you for your wishes I saw your post just before getting ready to welcome my guests. One unfortunately did not come, but that meant more pie and and dessert for the others. We had a lovely evening, food turned out well and fireworks were plentiful in the sky. I managed to burn myself with a lighter but the pain subsided quickly (possibly helped by red wine intake...). Would like to babysit a cat some time. Sigh. After a lazy day without a long walk this time I am getting ready to round off the water level threads. I just could not remember the name of the village where I took the Eifel photographs but really wanted to leave you with a tip for the area so have looked it up again. It is here, outside a village called Wassenach (sounds Scottish to me, you know, like the sound in Loch): I have taken a screenshot with the Rhine and the town of Andernach. The blue shape is an "eye of the Eifel", The Maria Laach volcanic lake (Laacher See). The red marker is the Kapelle auf der Lay, which means Chapel on the Rock. You can access this area from Koblenz and Andernach well. Avalon Waterways has offered an excursion to there in past years, I do not know if they do in 2023. Famous beyond the region is Maria Laach Abbey, a Romanesque Church with monastery. notamermaid

Viva Cruises as part of their winter cruises programme visits the Scheldt. This is the itinerary, the first one starting on 23 January: https://www.viva-*****/en-us/cruisedetail?id=392&adults=2 It is a little short but from Düsseldorf you can always make your way to Cologne for a pub crawl as a pre- or post-cruise experience, i.e. adding another day or two. notamermaid

The food is in the oven, preparations for my little dinner party are progressing and I have a little time to reflect and post. Got2Cruise in another thread asked where we are going next year. Sadly I have nothing booked and little planned. In 2022 I did get away a little but plans had to be changed at the last minute, a trip to England did not work out and to my embarrassment I have fallen way behind in posting about trips and suggestions in connection with river cruises. The Idstein trip in Spring report still needs to be concluded. 2022 was somewhat a worse year than 2021 although life returned to almost normal after April. I can say that at least I scrapped my half-serious plans to emigrate. But there have been good short trips. The year started with a walk in the Eifel hills, up a path to a chapel. Spring came with exploring unknown areas of Koblenz, the trip to Idstein and a return to other places in my area. I had a nice stay in the Würzburg area in summer, when I spent some time in hot and interesting Wertheim. Autumn came and went unspectacularly. A revisit in November to the Moselle was pleasant. Christmas markets I largely had to ignore for time and a car problem. The plan for a trip to France went down the drain (pun intended) due to the hiccups in the kitchen and workmen visiting. Some info on the Christmas markets I visited will go in another thread. Perhaps some of the nicest hours spent in December (outside of my home that is) were in the Westerwald hills in the snow at a small do in a bed & breakfast hotel. Such fun with English tea, mince pie and bag pipes. It almost made up for my non-trip to England! Bittersweet it all is, but no more moaning now - well apart from me complaining about it being so warm that there is no chance of my fingers getting cold lighting fireworks. That is not on! The path in the Eifel: What may be behind the horizon in 2023? Hopefully much light among the clouds: Time to clean the sparkling wine glasses. Cheers! 🍾 notamermaid

I am delighted that, after all the setbacks in the last two years, you were able to go and that you very much enjoyed it! Sounds like a great Christmas experience that Tauck got together. I am wondering how you liked the landscape. This was on rivers and canals but mostly in the relatively flat Netherlands and only slightly more hilly Belgium. Was it varied enough for you? Did you sail much during the day at all, i.e. did it seem more or less than Rhine and Danube or about the same? notamermaid

Look towards the European lines, there are a couple that do not include long excursions in the basic product. You can buy the basic product and add excursions. You need to looked around a lot though to find a "sailing only" cruise. It is generally the case that excursions are included in the price even with European lines. But you do not need to go with an excursion of course. I tend to agree. The savings will not be substantial on an eight night river cruise that includes a walking tour for each port. Half day or even full day excursions are of course more expensive and that is were you could save money. Indeed. The excursions are great for getting to know a place and if you go with a line that guarantees walking in small groups you may find this to your liking. It is not like on ocean cruises I have been told. notamermaid

Earlier this month Riviera Travel revealed the Christmas time and New Year sailings for 2023. Itineraries are from five days upwards, so if you have limited time, the company may be an alternative for you to look at: https://travelweekly.co.uk/news/tourism/riviera-travel-reveals-christmas-2023-river-cruises The cruises may also be interesting if you prefer a different embarkation port to Amsterdam, as Riviera uses Cologne. You could fly into London and go by Eurostar to Cologne and have a stop in Brussels along the way - for example. Or perhaps look at their Danube sailings. notamermaid

It would be lovely. Thank you for rounding up the year and all your contributions throughout 2022 from the East of our fascinating country. I will be closing the season with a short graph of the river level in December at the beginning of 2023. Bis zum nächsten Jahr. Guten Rutsch! notamermaid

As you mention the Rhine - interestingly on the Main you have also the case that the train lines go along the river and not, depending on section. And there is also a difference between the fast track and the slower trains. But details I would put in the Main thread should this topic come about. The Rhine Gorge is great for transport hopping. You can get a train, cross over on a ferry, take a bike with you, take an excursion boat. The only thing you cannot do is cross the river frequently in a car or coach - there is no bridge and you need to check which is the car ferry and which is only for foot passengers and bikes. There is also no railway bridge, the crossover between the banks happens near Koblenz. The Moselle works slightly differently, it has more bridges but only one railway line that connects Koblenz with Trier, while the Rhine Gorge is served by two distinct lines, one on the left bank (fast and slow trains) and one on the right (regional trains). As we are on the subject of trains, everyone: if you book a river cruise from Trier or a Luxembourg port but you start the pre-cruise in Paris you can consider not taking the coach from Paris to your ship but take a train. A couple of companies also offer train ride instead of coach within their package. Or indeed fly straight into Luxembourg if you prefer that. notamermaid

That is indeed the case. There are bus lines along the river where the train line goes through the hills and there is a short stretch of a train side line that connects to a section of the river. This the layout of the main train line: https://www.moseltalbahn.de/freizeit/strecke-moseltalbahn Between Cochem and Wittlich is Bullay from where trains head down to the Mosel and end in Traben-Trarbach, the line is the RB 85: https://www.moselwein-bahn.de/de/fahrplaene-strecke/fahrplaene The main line is the 690. To give you an idea of the frequency of trains, both fast and slow, here is an old timetable: https://winningen.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Fahrplan-DB-Trier-Koblenz.pdf notamermaid

Yes, a more normal year would be nice. For me it will start busy with family commitments and the car going into the workshop to finally have the windscreen replaced. The crack in the windscreen has got bigger. I have actually been busy more with family than work but thank you for thinking of me. Work has been back to normal for several months and all in all, winter and Christmas markets have been less disrupted than we anticipated would happen in September. Now I have got a week off work, the office is closed, or let us say my team is not working office hours as tourism is quiet here now. No winter sports in my mild valley, although above 400m altitude we do have a little not too far from where I live (just not right now, too warm). It is good that I have time off. The pipe has been fixed, hooray, praise to the fact that we have a couple of people ready to work at short notice. Now I am clearing up things after them but have had to phone the plumber to have the hot water boiler serviced which means clearing junk out of the small boiler room... Work in the yard continues after New Year so more days of walking over muddy cobblestones. Oh the fun! But all in all life is good around here, hope with you water cooler visitors and other river cruising friends and folk, too. notamermaid

I return to the Main thread briefly for a report of the saving of a cow on the river at Würzburg. The cow is made of metal and carries the name "Mainkuh". The stationary excursion boat is a restaurant and was in danger of being hit and most likely badly damaged by a barge whose steering failed and turned sideways. It happened over Christmas. It was quite dramatic but the barge has been turned and the river is free, traffic is running again smoothly - if you have been on a Christmas river cruise you may have been delayed by the incident - and the restaurant can greet guests again. A German news report with sped-up video: https://www.tvmainfranken.de/querliegender-frachter-ist-weg-main-in-wuerzburg-wieder-frei-308712/ notamermaid

We are now back on high water, which is basically what is considered to be a level quite a bit above the mean water level. Flooding always sounds a bit dramatic but it is obviously a multi-faceted scenario, I mean a wide range of river level figures and in mild form is a normal occurrence every year with little impact save for subways and a few streets lining the river bank (and some unfortunate people with deep cellars in their houses, the consequences of which owners and long-term tenants are aware of and reckon with). Flooding has official statistical values divided into occurrence like once every year, every two years, every five years, etc. It is mapped, highly monitored and posted online, announced where applicable, etc. in 15 minute updates so that everyone who works with the river or lives along it can plan accordingly. But what this looks like on paper will be clearer when I post a monthly report of what the Kaub gauge looked like in December. Still a few days to go. As I have kind of hinted at, a few river cruise ships sail beyond New Year's Day but by 10 January virtually all itineraries are over. Viva Cruises was the first company to offer specific long river cruises in winter in Western Europe, i.e. actually not having a winter break, they have proven popular according to the company so will happen again in January and February 2023. Both CroisiEurope and Thurgau Travel (Swiss company) have a few themed cruises in February for Carnival. So if January is the only time when you are free to have a river cruise and do not fancy the Nile, rejoice, you now have the choice and can go to Germany instead. I actually like this following itinerary. Beer! Return trip Düsseldorf through Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands: https://www.viva-*****/en/cruisedetail?id=392&adults=2 notamermaid

Now that looks certainly inviting! I see you spotted and captured the "Stadt Bonn" on camera. I was not sure so I looked it up, she sails for Personenschiffahrt Gebrüder Kolb, that is the big excursion boat company on the Moselle. Here are the ships: https://www.moselrundfahrten.de/trier/unsere-schiffe You can switch to English language to read about the trips they offer. If one fancies DIY a trip on the Moselle as an extension to a river cruise - I mean throwing in an excursion boat rip and exploring a stretch of the Moselle - is a nice idea especially if your river cruise is relatively short like the ones offered from Frankfurt to Basel (which would a be pre-cruise Moselle trip in that case) or something ending in Cologne. Trains are so easy to use in the area, which adds to the appeal. notamermaid

In short: doable certainly, a couple on my river cruise did it. In long and with the caveat added by previous posters: I would say it is advisable to inform the ship before you start cruising, there may be logistics you are not aware of when you book beyond the fact that on the Rhine an itinerary often involves a move of the ship to the next port during the day, i.e. during an excursion . If you miss the vessel due to issues like docking, low/high water, etc. you could face a problem. No ship waits or docks for you specially as far as I know. River cruising may seem laid back but the details of schedule and docking are more intricate than they appear (think locks, rafting, organizing docking location and change at short notice). Fully agree. It is also important not to rely on a taxi driver to know or find the docking location straight away. notamermaid

As anticipated, neither the gauges at Kaub nor Koblenz reached flood mark I and the level at Cologne has now peaked also. Everything going okay. No further flooding suggested for the rest of the year and into the first two weeks of January. By that time all ships that are having a winter break (almost all in continental Europe) will be in winter harbours, that are Basel, Strasbourg, Cologne, Duisburg to name but a few big ones. I have spotted a couple of ships making their way to Cologne (I checked, they have arrived there in the meantime). In other news, BASF chemical company is getting new special design ships that they will charter which means their logistics should run more smoothly in low water conditions. This is all in German but perhaps the photos and video give a good impression of the attention to detail that was necessary. One new thing is that the propellers are smaller that standard: https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/rheinland-pfalz/ludwigshafen/niedrigwasserschiff-der-basf-100.html Remagen Bridge has been in the news also as a new Rhine crossing there is in pre-planning stages. Sounds a greater deal than it is. I may get back to that topic some time. Another new crossing between Bonn and Cologne is being debated. notamermaid

That is a good idea! I looked up the German version of your trip next year, the Fluvius sails the itinerary as a charter by SE Tours, you are obviously going through a different operator: https://www.se-tours.de/de/reisen/rad-schiff/fluvius-amsterdam-bruegge As we are in the Moselle thread I wanted to post this to also show that this company offers tours in English on the Olympia as a bike and barge tour. The Olympia has the plus that it is not as small as a barge. She is an older and renovated small river cruise ship. This trip is similar to what gnome12 did but longer in distance: https://www.se-tours.de/en/tours/bike-and-boat/olympia-koblenz-saarburg This is one of the few itineraries that are not on the Rhine and Moselle on a river cruise ship, although in 2023 I believe the choices for the Moselle-intensive itineraries are bigger in number than they were in 2022. notamermaid

Problem now apparently in the large pipe between my neighbour's and my flat. Builders hopefully coming tomorrow to dismantle a plasterboard wall section. Buckets and wash basin are my good friends today. As my elderly relative with strong Rhenish accent said in that sentiment: "Et is ja Weihnachte, ne!" Today we recalled stories of other mishaps but have had laughs as well and watched a video sent per e-mail of my youngest relative meeting Father Christmas, the Weihnachtsmann (he is actually called Klaus which is short for Nikolaus so a really fitting name), she was not too sure what to make of him being less than two years old! Daisi, thank you for that story of the lovely dinner in the adversity of power cuts. So good to be able to find the good stuff in a bad situation and share, with happy memories being created. Wish I had a wood burning stove, one of the small German cast iron ones would do. Love English fireplaces though. The videos on youtube of crackling fireplaces are adorable and soothing. If I get round to it before New Year I will post a selection of photos from my day trips etc. I have just been too busy in recent days for fun at the water cooler. notamermaid

Thank you for the great photos. The Fluvius sails some great and unusual itineraries, have fun. And do post about it if you feel like it, we do not read much about the small river cruise ships and barges. notamermaid

Brief update: landslide and subsequent construction work mean that the left bank railway line in part of the Rhine Gorge will be closed at least till 1 January. River: flood mark I was reached at Basel on 24 December, it peaked during that afternoon and has since gone done substantially again. The wave has moved on and has peaked at Maxau, currently passing through Mainz. At Kaub and Koblenz it will probably not even reach flood mark I so this sounds all good. It has been raining in heavy showers but not for long. Blustery winds with temperatures still well above zero Celsius in the valley during the day. notamermaid

Well not smooth running here either, literally the kitchen waste water pipe is blocked, leaking through a pipe connection into the cellar. Cooking delayed and the dish washer is out of bounds, so everything is back in the kitchen sink bowl. The hole in the yard is going to stay for quite a few days longer and should the pipe problem get worse, I will have quite a bit of additional work till a company can help out on Monday. How they are going to get to the cellar with the yard being a building site will be fun to sort out... Oh well there are bigger challenges in life, like riding on a donkey and finding shelter in an animal shed. Merry Christmas everyone. notamermaid

It is as the British would say pi**ing down here in the valley. Temperatures too high for this time of year which puts me in a not so festive mood. I am very busy, just popping in to say take care in the US and Canada, friend from Charlotte reports power outages in the area and very low temperatures. Put your water pipes in a blanket and if that is not feasible turn the tap on often to keep the water from freezing. But you probably know all this. Quick trip/errand to Koblenz means I could take a glimpse at the market at Forum shopping centre. Busy with shoppers and nice lights everywhere. And a Viking river cruises coach passed by while I was waiting at a traffic lights. notamermaid

European River Cruising survey - the report for 2022 has been published. Short article, full version per download available: https://www.seatrade-cruise.com/news/european-river-cruising-new-survey-reveals-majority-report-2022-business-above-or-line notamermaid

@ganski Thank you for your impressions of your tour and the recommendations. You mention Beilstein, indeed a small gem on the Moselle. The town has been a favourite among German travellers for decades. We have talked about Beilstein here in a previous year but I am not sure if I have not posted the website: https://beilstein-mosel.de/en/ Some info on river cruise ships. Here is google maps: This is Beilstein with it castle, notice the marker in red, it indicates the landing stage for Viking (river cruises). I have not read about any international ships stopping there recently. If you know more do drop us a line here. From the German entries it appears that only 110m ships are stopping in Beilstein. notamermaid

Snow melt and rain are coinciding so the river is rising relatively fast. At Maxau in the the Upper Rhine valley we may see a level of over 600cm. This means that over Christmas river traffic could have to slow down as the high water mark I may well be reached (620cm). Call it pre-flooding, proper official flooding is at a higher level, river traffic ban even higher and not anticipated. A flood warning is in place for some areas of the Neckar river valley for example. A standard occurrence in winter really. A bigger problem that may affect tourists and will certainly affect a lot of train travellers is the closure of the railway line on the left bank of the Rhine. Deutsche Bahn and the authorities have banned traffic around Bacharach due to a land slide that is still ongoing. This means that likely due to the frost and subsequent thawing with rain, the slate rock face has come loose and stones are falling down. Currently this affects a railway yard and workshop areas but is in danger of extending to the main railway line. The road B9 had been closed as well earlier today and for safety reasons now will remain so. Here is the regional news article with video, all in German, but impressive is the recorded landslide: https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/rheinland-pfalz/koblenz/felssturz-bacharach-oberwesel-b9-bahnstrecke-gesperrt-100.html notamermaid

The snow has almost gone in the valley, the temperature has risen considerably. After the low at Kaub the level has risen a little. The snow melt will lead to a substantial increase in the next few days so that Christmas will see much higher levels. notamermaid