RDVIK2016

T Lex It's not often that I see any Czech, complete with the diacritical marks on Cruise Critic. Are you from a Czech community in Texas? Praha did not get hit with the snow as badly as southeast Bavaria did it? You'll be able to determine that on the road to Regensburg and cruise downstream from there. At least my Third Division Fußball team in Regensburg was able to play their game today. Games were cancelled in Munich yesterday where almost all transport shut down. Schneechaos!! Snow Chaos they called it. RDVIK

A visit I made a few years ago to the Plzeňský Prazdroj (Pilsner Urquell) brewery in Pilsen was very interesting, especially the tour down in the old tunnels. I have to say that the bottled export Pilsner Urquell that I occasionally get in the USA is not quite the same as the oak-barrel lagered draught version I was first introduced to in a small town not far from Pilsen many years ago. Otto Versand is still in business? It's been a long time since Otto and Quelle widely distributed their Sears-Roebuck style catalogs.

TLex, Were you able to visit one of the Christmas markets in Prague (v Praze)? šťastnou cestu!

Truly a great view from the Oberhaus. I have heard good things about the Heilig Geist Stiftschänke in town, but it was closed when we tried to go there. Anybody here have a review? We had very nice lunch at the Hacklberger Bräustüberl on the left bank of the Danube.

I am rather late to reply to this post, but I wanted to mention when we were in Regensburg on a Viking Cruise we took the optional tour to Weltenburg Abbey, which involved an excursion boat ride through the Donau Gorge. They had buses take us back to Kelheim and made a stop at the Befreiungshalle on the hill above the town. Before getting back to the longship we made another stop for a wheat beer in the Schneider Bräiujhaus beer garden. All in all a very nice excursion and absolutely made up for not getting to the Walhalla.

I have not had a classical education so I can't say that I was intentionally using the Latin possessive. Because of the influence of the Roman Catholic church, that is what St. Martin's Day is often referenced in "Old Bavaria" and Austria. It's often not Martinstag there, but Martinitag shortened to Martini. There are many small towns with yearly "Martiniritt" mounted processions. Same for Leonhardi on Nov. 6 with its Leohardiritte. St Stephan's Day also becomes Stefani. There are probably others, but those are the only three I am most familiar with because they are very commonly used. (By "Old Bavaria" I mean Altbayern: Oberbayern, Niederbayern, Oberpfalz) RDVIK

St Martin's day has the richest list of old farmers' sayings predicting how hard the winter will be based on the weather that. So be observant of the weather on Martini, 11/11, and we'll see if the Baurenregeln hold up this year.

My wife's family used to have a Christmas tree farm. We grew several different types of tree. Some trees hold their needles longer than others, some of stronger boughs to support more or heavier ornaments, some of a stronger scent, and of course some species grow better in some areas than others. Fraser firs where our most popular tree. The big farms in northern New England grow mostly balsam firs to be cut and shipped south to be sold as pre-cuts. We had a variety of fir (Tannen) and spruce (Fichten) trees to be selected in the fields for cutting fresh. Even had a type of Kiefer (pines) for a while but they did not go well. There is almost always a topper used and will be an angel or a star. I'd like some time to get a Nürnberger Rauschgoldengel. The Kaberettist Toni Laurerer describes the selling of biologically safely grown "Tyrolean giant dwarf firs" (Tirolische Riesenzwergtannen). LOL. If you have 10 minutes and are not scared off by his Oberpfälzer dialect you might enjoy this story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfIvgkWkRtY&t=604s

My wife's family here New England used to have a Christmas tree farm. We grew several different types of tree. Some trees hold their needles longer than others, some of stronger boughs to support more or heavier ornaments, some of a stronger scent, and of course some species grow better in some areas than others. We had a variety of fir (Tannen) and spruce (Fichten) trees to be selected in the fields for cutting. There is almost always a topper used and will be an angel or a star. I'd like some time to get a Nürnberger Rauschgoldengel.

We had the engineer. He plays a British military engineer who has limited access to the fortress and its plans, but who learns more about its construction than his German hosts intend.

Our cruise ship, Viking Tialfi on a Rhine Getaway intinerary, docked at Braubach, as had all the others I had been watching prior to our cruise. Therefore we chose to sign up for the optional bus excursion to Ehrenbreitstein. After the fortress tour we took the Seilbahn across the river and the bus picked us up there and took us back to the ship. If the boat docked at Deutsches Eck we might have skipped a Viking excursion for a visit on our own of the Rhein-Museum. As it turned out the actor-guide who led our group at the fortress was very entertaining. RDVIK

Interesting that Viking Idun is docked just upstream of Deutsches Eck. I thought all of the Rhine Getaway longships docked further upstream and on the opposite bank at Braubach. Das Deutsche Eck would have been a great spot to tie up at. We enjoyed the Seilbahn/gondola from Ehrenbreitstein which I cannot make out in the photo.

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.