RDVIK2016

Yes, I agree with you that English does not have an equivalent word for "Heimat". I also think that the emotion you describe has cultural and social components and that is one of the reasons it is so hard to define. You know the meaning of "Heimat" when you feel it. Bavarian friends of mine would bundle the whole concept of "Hoamat" into the simple expression "Dahoam is Dahoam" / "Home is Home" - no further explanation needed as far as they are concerned.

Hello Notameraid, Thank you for this information, I am getting caught up tonight on my Cruise Critic reading and responding. You may see my response from and hour ago regarding the bombs found near Bingen where I mention a scene for the first Heimat series. On the other subject of the above comment: I first learned German where Niederbayern borders the Oberpfalz, partially by a beginners correspondence course, but mostly directly from the local population. Prior to my time in Germany I had a year of intense instruction in Czech, so the combination of my American/Czech/Bavarian accent when speaking standard German used to make tough to guess where I am from, although it has been so long since I regularly spoke Czech and German that I my American accent is surely quite noticeable now. The sentence I like to use to compare standard German with Boarisch is "Heute scheint die Sonne schon schön." vs. "Heit scheint d'Sun scho schee."

Jazzbeau, I live one street away from a golf course in CT and it is common to see coyotes and fox, but they can't seem to keep up with the geese population.

Notamermaid, On our recent trip we saw a lot of those Egyptian geese, especially in the Netherlands. I though they are quite colorful. The Canada geese that the writers from New York and Michigan write about are not common yet in Europe and hopefully you will not get invaded too badly with them. They are much bigger than the Egyption geese/Nilgänse, hang out in large flocks, and leave their dark green droppings all over lawns, sidewalks and golf courses. Sometimes people will put up mock coyotes that move in the breeze to scare them away, but they quickly get wise to that trick. RDVIK

In the second video the fire chief states the the fourth bomb had to be defused by some how blasting the fuse out of the bomb. (Correct me if I misunderstood that.) That sounds like a tricky thing to do. They think these may have been bombs from a raid on Bingen at the end of 1944. From now on I will imagine that it was bomb from that raid that killed Otto Wohlleben in "Die Heimat" when he tried to defuse it. (Although I think that episode supposedly took place earlier in the war.)

The linked article is a informative report from Reuters about water levels of the Rhine, the effect on industry, and how some industries are dealing with it. https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/german-industry-changes-tack-river-rhine-runs-drier-2023-07-26/

Notamermaid, the Rhineforcast.com graphs look like they are giving the Pegel, but are captioned as "Water Level". Have you seen the optional excel tables from Rhineforcast and if they are more detailed? RDVIK

Thank you for tagging me about the Günderodehaus that appeared in "Heimat".

Very nice old looking ship. It must be a side-wheeler?? Are there any side wheelers on rivers in Europe? It seems they could be appropriate for shallow rivers.

The numbers that you cited are called the Pegel readings. Pegel can be translated as "water level measurement", but it is NOT a direct measurement of the depth of the river in the navigation channel. The Pegel is just one of the numbers the ship captains need to know to determine the depth where he navigates. The captains need to know the so called Gleichwertigerwasserstand (GlW)/"equivalent water level" and the depth of the river below that level to the actual bottom of the river which is called the TuGlW or Tiefe unter dem Gleichwertigerwasserstand . You can subtract the Gleichwertigerwasserstand (different for each location) from the Pegel reading and add it to the TuGlW (which also can vary) to get the actual water depth in the navigation channel. The GlW at Worms is 9cm less than at Kaub, but the TuGlW is 20cm greater. If I figured it correctly the actual depth in the channel at Kaub when the Kaub Pegel is 151cm is 264cm and at Worms a Pegel reading of 133cm cm indicates a channel that is actually a little bit deeper at 273cm. Someone might want to check my calculations.

LACHS has pennant number L 762 and is a multipurpose landing craft of the BARBE-Klasse (520). Boats of this type can easily operate on the Rhine, but the Bundesmarine has taken most of them out of service or donated them to Greece. These boats are only 40 meters long and can draw less than 2 m. As of today LACHS is in Rotterdam. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klasse_520

notamermaid, Draken Harald Hårfagre is the largest Viking ship sailing in modern times and is currently located at a maritime museum a few miles from my home - Mystic Seaport Museum. Hårfagre not a replica of an actual ship as Saga Farmann is, but is a reconstruction of what the Norse Sagas refer to as a “Great Ship” based on historic documents, archeological findings, and Norwegian boat building traditions. A crew of 32 sailed the boat from Norway to North America in 2017. They rely on the facilities at Mystic because of their experience with many old and reproduction wooden ships. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb2HDL-tMq0

As you predicted there are videos on youtube already. In one you can clearly see how the wheels on the transporter modules are synchronized to rotate at varying angles to make a turn. They could probably spin the U-Boot in place. Some transporters have drive capability as well as steering and suspension, but these need (a) truck(s) to pull and/or push. The Germans are great a making these transporters. The shipyard where I worked here in the US used units from Scheuerle and I think acquired some later from Goldhofer. The units that Kubler is using here are from Scheuerle.

One of the more difficult maneuvers for the transportation of U17 has to be getting her off of the barge without a heavy duty crane, such as they have in big shipyards. The rig in Speyer to move U17 from the barge on to land and then to the museum is a 45 meter long 30 axle monster. Keeping the barge level with the ramp involves some pretty tricky use of ballast tanks to accommodate the changes in weight as the transporter is driven on and off the barge. Looking forward to seeing some video of this operation and the movement on the roads to the museum. https://www.rheinpfalz.de/lokal/speyer_artikel,-u-boot-auf-tieflader-wartet-auf-abfahrt-_arid,5508025.html

On Bergfex, webcam views can be advanced or backed up by 15 minute intervals. I found two views from Festung Ehrenbreitstein of U17 passing the Deutsches Eck at 18:15 CEST today. I am sure there will be better images posted soon.

A detailed description of the transport of U17 from Kiel to Sinsheim should to be the subject of its own exhibit! Especially the parts of the trip in around Speyer and Sinsheim. Please share if you run across an article about the barge trip that will take the submarine from Speyer and up the Neckar to Haßmersheim and then from there over the roads to Sinsheim. It will be fascinating to see how they rotate the U17 to get through the bridge(s) at Heidelberg and what kind of barge and push boat they used on the Neckar. Interestingly, in Speyer they are not off loading the sub at the usual industrial harbor, but at the natural harbor on an old channel of the Rhein. There they have had to clear a maneuvering area (to which some have taken great umbrage). The barge, Lastdrager27, is semi-submersible. I wonder if they will be making use of that capability and using spuds to stabilize the barge for the operation.

My wife and I decided to travel this year in April (just got back) thinking no way would we have low water in early/mid spring. However all through February and into March the water levels were looking quite low for that time of year and the low snowpack didn't look like it's thaw would help much. However the rains came and we had smooth sailing the whole way. It looks to me right now that there will very good water levels well into June. Worst case, if a bad drought occurs, is that your Viking ship might have to stop at Koblenz, downstream of the most likely low water spot at Kaub in the Rhine Gorge. Viking would then seamlessly transfer you to the same stateroom on an identical ship at the other end of the Rhine gorge to continue your trip to Basel. They would then give you a tour of the Rhine Gorge area by bus or a smaller local excursion boat if available.

There are already many videos uploaded showing them lifting the U-Boot onto the barge and the beginning of the trip through the Nord-Ostsee Kanal. Here's one short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3F4jvq2B6A

I have not looked at the precipitation maps, but it was raining heavily on Friday as I drove from Nürnberg to Flughafen München. You must have got much of that rain in the watershed of the Rhein also. I will be looking for photos and videos of U17 as she is barged to Speyer. Sections of submarines frequently come into or leave the shipyard in my hometown, although a complete nuclear powered submarine could not be transported that way. It will be quite a sight to see U17 on the Rhein. This is the way one of our shipments is done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WVFSmtezyI

After all my concern and discussion about what would be the water level at Kalb while on our cruise this is what we got today.

Question for Notamermaid and anybody currently on a Rhine cruise: Are you hearing about any labor disputes that might affect the operation of locks between Basel and Iffezheim in the upcoming weeks?

Thank you, notamermaid! That website has so much good information. RDVIK (Bill)

notamermaid, I am not sure if we talked about this before, but it appears to me that the numbers on the Latten are for 10 centimeter intervals. Therefore add a zero to each number to get the Pegel. Is that right? Are all the Pegellatten on the Rhine marked this way?

Well, after the discussion of the Roman Limes, I would have thought I was safe.

Notamermaid, The Boarische Wikipedia and Dahoam in Bayern do play along with the exaggerated stereotypes and friendly rivalries between Bavarians and non-Bavarians (Preissn). That puts me in the non-Bavarian category in way, because some of my ancestry traces back to the Rheinland-Pfalz. The memory of the ancestry was apparently lost by the time of my mother's generation, because she never mentioned it, but today's genealogy resources are incredible. Some of her ancestors emigrated in the 1730's from what are now the districts of Kusel and Südliche Weinstraße. My upcoming Rhine cruise is allowing me to really place those locations in their context. Recently I discovered that one of the families, named Riegel, had departed from Speyer and found a ship in Rotterdam bound for Philadelphia. What was river travel like in 1733?