RDVIK2016

From the Bavarian perspective the Boarische Wikipedia explains: "es hoasst, daß nerdlich vo dera Grenz koa echte Weißwiascht gem dad und damit aa koane echten Bayern" [aba laute Breissn]. Kathi has a map: https://*****.com/yckt4k5x

Very interesting about the linguistic geography and the several lines linguists have drawn. But one should also definitely become aware of the Weißwurstäquator. RDVIK

The Museum der Bayerischen Geschichte in Regensburg had what I thought was a fun video introduction to Roman settlement there, however there are only a few artifacts of Roman construction around the town, mostly underground. Nothing compared to Trier, etc.

My in-laws were from Oels (today Oleśnica) near Breslau (now Wrocław). They fled the advance of the Russians in the winter of 1945.

Where I learned Umgangsdeutsch one would say (adding a couple of words to your example): "Heid hob I mei neies Auto gwaschn" - Today I washed my new car. "beim kochen" sounds more familiar to me that "am kochen". Anybody have a birthday today? Ois Guade zu deim Geburtsdog! (ois = alles).

Notamermaid, I really appreciate the time that you spend with patient explanations - especially of the water levels - and your many descriptions of interesting sites and towns. All that will enhance the experience of cruising the river. The continuum of dialects as one goes around Germany contains surprisingly vast differences, usually changing gradually, but sometimes changes are drastic. I hear Americans say it must be like going from Massachusetts to Georgia, but they have not idea. My German is a mixture of mostly classroom standard German and picking up some of the Bavarian dialect spoken in the area where Central blends with Northern Bairisch. My former mother-in-law and Oma and Opa where refugees from Silesia. A former brother in law grew up not far away near Nürnberg and speaks a deep Franconian dialect which I could barely make out what he was saying half the time. Unfortunately he is one of those who just does not like to speak standard Deutsch. Then there was my friend from Fehmarn in the Ostsee - just forget about trying to understand him if he said anything in his Plattdeutsch.

I gave an incomplete description of the location of the video I referred to. Within your link was indeed the French language video clip. Also at your link, towards the bottom of the page, was link to another page titled "Insel Rhinau, ein kleiner Dschungel am Rhein". In that one the is found a different video in which, starting at about 35 seconds, there is a man guiding some people in a small wooden boat. He is definitely speaking a German dialect that I had not heard before - I guessed that must be elsässisch. In English I would call the boat a "punt" and the boatman uses a pole to push the boat through the marsh.

There may be a Boppard in France, but we're talking about Boppard on the Rhine just a bit upstream (south) of Koblenz. It in the Rhine Gorge area quite a distance from where the Rhine marks the border.

Yes, I first watched Heimat long ago on US Public Broadcasting and I taped it then. It was in German with English subtitles. Last fall I found it on the German ARD network on line. They made the episodes available for a limited time. I watched them in German and it helped me to turn on the German language closed captioning. I could really identify with the Simons as some lived the old ways in Schabbach, while the world changed so much outside. Even the mundane things of everyday life were familiar to me and brought back memories, like when Paul catches a bad cold and the women boil the Kamillenblüten and have him lean over the pot with a towel over his head and breathe in the hot mist. I learned that treatment when my, at the time, future mother-in-law treated me that way when I was still a US soldier in the Bavarian Forest dating her daughter. (In her kitchen where she had a wood burning cooking/heating stove.)

It has been quite fun to learn the interesting geographical issues of this part of the Rhine. Is that the Alsatian dialect spoken by the guide in the short video found in the article at the link you provided? I agree that it can be called an odd language, but Swiss German is not like school German either. The characters of the series Heimat supposedly speak a dialect of the Hunsrück region. It doesn't seem so bad, but for TV they probably didn't give us a full immersion. There is a scene where I think it is Ernst when he is showing Lucie around his homeland where they are on a hill overlooking the Rhine. He mentioned that they can see Boppard(?) from there. Are you familiar with that? Maybe it was some other town, but it will be fun to pass through that area.

Your comment sent me on a search to learn a little about all the locks as far upstream as Basel. I was not very aware of the geography and did not realize that nine of the ten locks are French - on canals or canalized branches of the river that are on the French side of the border. Only Iffezheim Schleuse is German. It must be a pain in the neck for the Germans when river traffic gets disrupted for by a French labor dispute and for the French if the shoe were on the other foot. (Not to mention the Swiss who would not be able to do anything about it.)

We are about seven weeks out from our cruise so I am beginning to watch the 6-Wochen-Vorhersage für den Pegel Kaub. At least the current prediction does show a probable increase from this week's level, but I would be relieved to see that climatological based bar in the middle move up a bit. Hopefully there is more precipitation over the next few weeks. I guess some snow melt, to the extent there is snow in the Rhein watershed, will probably help provide water in the river by then. Fingers crossed / Daumen drücken.

I am getting a Server Fehler 404 at the url you posted. Was it supposed to link to a story about the Beueler Weiberfastnacht?

Notmermaid, I have been looking for you to start up a 2023 water level board. Your posts on the water levels and many other topics are always so informative. I certainly enjoyed participating in discussions on the 2022 board, but now is getting even more interesting with just over 70 days to go until we embark the ship in Amsterdam.

That looks like such a great place to visit! I like Art Nouveau. Our illustrator daughter introduced us to Alfons Mucha and we expanded our interest in other artists and architecture of Jugendstil from there. I hope our cruise next spring takes us past that area in daylight! Someday we will have to return to Königswinter for a visit. Some of the art exhibits shown in that nice looking museum remind me of Hudson River and White Mountain school paintings. And then there seems to be an opportunity to dive into the dragon theme connected with Fáfnir/Fafner from Wagner and Der Ring des Nibelungen. Is there any cave on the Drachenfels hill that legend holds to be Fáfnir's Höhle? My favorite dragon story is loosely connected with the 1431 Battle of Taus (Domažlice) from the Fifth Crusade against the Hussites. The people in that area on the other side of Germany have a "Drachenhöhle/Dragon's Cave" that is just a converted warehouse to display the huge robotic dragon that takes part in a yearly folk festival. (photo attached with the dragon slayer Udo - not St. George or Sigurd/Siegfried)

I love the colors of autumn. On our last trip to Germany we caught part of "Goldener Oktober" in Bavaria. Do you still call a return of warm weather in the fall "Altweibersommer"?

Thank you for this information. One of my sons was stationed in the USAF at Spangdahlem and told me about the volcanic character of the geology nearby and my youngest son has studied geology at university, so this is of much interest to us. CO2 is a byproduct of using carbon atoms from the burning of natural gas and combining them with oxygen atoms. With the cut backs in natural gas supplies from Russia to western Europe, I hear that there is a developing shortage of CO2 for the breweries. I wonder how much natural CO2 can be economically captured, although it could be brought on line in the short term.

Hi CPT, My DW and I have talked about setting ourselves up to take advantage of last minute deals. I just recently retired and her retirement is coming up at the end of the year. We have a cruise scheduled for this coming April. After that we will be keeping our eyes open for good deals. Cruises, flights, bus tours, international, domestic, whatever! Let's go!

Well, my wife is not of the same opinion and it is more important that my wife be happy than to save money on the the cabin. We have been on two cruises and have reservations for a third, all in staterooms with a veranda - I doubt that will change. I figure we could do maybe five cruises in "aquarium class" for the price of four or less in upper deck veranda cabins - especially if we would travel at non-peak times.

I smile every time I hear the phrase "aquarium class". I would actually like to try the a lower deck cabin sometime. It would save money and we try to out of our rooms as much as possible anyway.

Wow, that's a great find!

11 hours ago, Host Jazzbeau said: But based on all the maritime engineering education we have been getting here, whether she's being pushed from behind [= much greater than 135m length total] or the side [= much wider channel required] – how does this work in such low water??? (I apologize if this is a duplicate - I wrote this when I did not see my previous answer appear - Not knowing how long it takes for the comments to upload I just figured I would just send another version of my answer.) Even in the latest low water situation in the Rhine Gorge were not two lightly loaded cargo barges able to pass going in opposite directions? If the authorities were to limit river traffic to one direction then two vessels with shallow drafts lashed to together side to side could certainly transit the gorge. With a little further sleuthing I found that KV Johanna II, took over from SB Argo in pushing/tugging MS Alisa when she got to the Rhine. Johnanna was lashed to the port side of Alisa and tugged her along to the final destination. In photos I saw Johanna was also carrying a few containers, but was extremely lightly loaded. (SB=Schubboot/Pushboat or Schleppboot/Pull tugboat; KV=Koppelverband an integrated barge/tugboat)

Are you referring to MS Alisa being pushed from Serbia by the Schubboot Argo? Alisa's draft is given as only 1.41m on Binnenschifferforum. I wonder if that will be her draft when fully outfitted. Maybe she needs even less depth now as she just came from the shipyard. 34cm on the Pegel at Kaub should give them 1.46m in the channel - doesn't leave much safety margin. Argo is listed at 1.2m

Jazzbeau, I gave my guesses about the draft of Viking Longships on post #443 of this board on 2 Aug. Somewhere I had got the idea the these ships have a draft of 1.9m, Notamermaid, provided a link to a Neptun Werft page that gave the draft as 1.6m. Binnenschifferforum usually gives the Tiefgang/draft of Viking Longships as "2.0m" or "2.0m max", but occasionally does throw in a "1.6m" or "1.8" (or leaves the Tiefgang blank). I have concluded (guessed) that they operate normally at about 1.8m on the Rhein and 2.0 wherever they have to clear under low bridges (German Danube, Main, some canals). This is what I wrote to explain my reasoning: notamermaid, Thank you for finding that info. 1.6 meters must be a ship as delivered by the Werft. Anywhere else they're giving 1.8 to 2.0m. Binnenschifferforum has been starting a thread for each ship as they are introduced and in most cases they list the Tiefgang (draught) as 2,00 m. Sometimes they ad "max". On one ship I checked, Tialfi, they did use 1,60. I guess the standard way to report draught is to give the maximum draught which at the same time corresponds to the minimum air draught (Fixpunkt) to clear low overpasses/bridges. Once you get crew, passengers, food load-out, etc., on board you probably can't trim the boat any more shallow than about 1.8 meters. I found a couple of photos of Viking Hlin out of the water where the forward and aft draught marks were clearly visible. The 2 meter mark approximately matches that red bumper line just above the black anti-fouling paint on the lower hull. Any photos of Longships underway don't seem to show more than about 20 centimeters of black paint exposed so they must be cruising at about 1.8 to 1.9 meters of draught.

Just watched the BAW Profil video. If I had a chance I would visit the facility in Karlsruhe.