Rhine water levels 2024 and similar topics

[RDVIK2016]

6 hours ago, notamermaid said:

I just cannot resist - Happy Anniversary! It is a rock, an excursion boat, a ferry, a hotel, an asteroid, a rock band, a character in an American comedy! And the reason is this poem. A recital in German with English translation in text. I like it a bit dark and gloomy, so no Silcher music today:

 

notamermaid

 

 

This is a rather nerdy question that comes to my mind when I read along with this verse:

Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe
Ergreift es mit wildem Weh,
Er schaut nicht die Felsenrisse,
Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh.

 

Would Heine have spoken a dialect in which Weh and Höh rhyme? I mean like in Bavaria where Böhmen becomes Behmen and schön is schee.

 

I could even imagine "bedeuten" rhyming with "Zeiten", like in Bairisch Deutsch/Deitsch

Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten
Daß ich so traurig bin;
Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.

 

RDVIK

 

 

[RDVIK2016]

 

Harkening back to our discussion of "Dolphins" and "Starlings".  Dolphins came up in the reporting of the Baltimore bridge collapse.  The protective structures at the bridge pylon that was struck are totally inadequate.  There actually are dolphins in front of the pylons, but there are woefully small and not positioned to block or deflect a ship coming towards it at the angle that DALI did. Some say nothing could have stopped a ship that massive at the speed she was going, but it that is case they need to have tugs accompany the ship under the bridge. 

Edited March 27 by RDVIK2016
add photo

[Canal archive]

Difficult to decide as if all reports are correct the ship ‘simply’ lost all power and with it eight lives! Using tugs may or may not help but even they can lose power with no notice. I doubt there is a Dolphin in this world strong enough to deflect that size of vessel she is huge and already travelling at speed at the time of her power failure, the cause of that has to be discovered and the bridge engineers should look into why the whole bridge collapsed like a pack of cards. You never know there may have been a fault that is in all or many bridges of this type that has yet to be identified. A very disturbing incident hopefully some lessons will be learnt from it so those lives lost will in future have some meaning.

[notamermaid]

Dolphins or bridge bases and ships are a problematic combination. A tragic outcome in this case. On the Rhine we have just a few stone bridges that can take of course any ship damage well but they are then usually not high as by nature stone arches do not give much headroom. Still, authorities are always careful. The relatively modern bridges be them suspension or other type have that "inbuilt" weakness that comes with steel construction. On the Rhine engineers have used several islands to span bridges across the river. Solves the problem of a lone pillar being exposed to the elements and the ships. Here is one example, the road bridge at Neuwied, North of Koblenz: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raiffeisenbrücke

For the technical stuff in English you can look here: https://structurae.net/en/structures/neuwied-bridge

The new suspension bridge replaces the steel girder bridge, you can see them side by side in the black-and-white construction photo. All pillars are away from the navigation channels (one main one and one for the harbour access), they are on land and on the island. They are solid stone or concrete. What is special about this bridge is that it is only the second one ever (in Germany I believe) to have been moved in its place with hydraulics.

 

Accidents with ships happen at bridges surprisingly often, but with little impact on lives and structure. A few years ago a river cruise ship was pushed by wind onto a stone pillar. Ship had damage, few injuries. It can happen but is rare. Only this morning I have read of two bridges being hit barges in the Netherlands (which is admittedly a bit unusual). Safety 101 is normally to check if the bridge needs closing to traffic, road or rail does not matter. Happened to me in England many years back. Train stopped and we were informed that they were waiting for the structural assessment as a lorry had hit the bridge. In this case it was the missing headroom. We proceeded an hour or so later. Also on the rivers it is mostly the headroom that I read about, not in France or Germany on the Rhine, more in other countries or in Germany on the Main. That river is notorious for low bridges.

 

notamermaid

 

[RDVIK2016]

6 hours ago, Canal archive said:

Difficult to decide as if all reports are correct the ship ‘simply’ lost all power and with it eight lives! Using tugs may or may not help but even they can lose power with no notice. I doubt there is a Dolphin in this world strong enough to deflect that size of vessel she is huge and already travelling at speed at the time of her power failure, the cause of that has to be discovered and the bridge engineers should look into why the whole bridge collapsed like a pack of cards. You never know there may have been a fault that is in all or many bridges of this type that has yet to be identified. A very disturbing incident hopefully some lessons will be learnt from it so those lives lost will in future have some meaning.

These dolphins in photo below at the Betsy Ross Bridge in Philadelphia look rather more formidable. The tugs could at least provide steering. DALI seems to have taken a bit of a turn towards the bridge pillar. She must have lost steering control when power went out, also thick black smoke comes out of the stack at the same time indicating there was something going on with combustion of fuel. They need to have some speed on for steering control, but it is not just speed through the water. The propeller can force water at a higher speed over the rudder (called screw race). If there was an issue with the propulsion shaft slowing down that will also reduce ability to steer.

[Canal archive]

Yup they look just a bit more up for the job and I must admit I thought loose power loose steerage. Still a really nasty disaster.

[notamermaid]

Loosing power and therefore steerage has been the reason for a few accidents on the Rhine. It can happen that the emergency anchor does not hold. The current is fast enough to potentially cause quite some damage to structures like embankment walls. If I may say so - in both photos from the US the construction looks a bit lightweight, although in the second photo there are icebreakers that can be useful. I mean, Rhine bridges can be really sturdy, they may look light as regards the steel but underneath are heavy duty stone bases. You can see such a structure at the famous Remagen bridge. The photo shows the structural damage to the steel from bombing at the end of WWII: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludendorff-Brücke#/media/Datei:Beschädigte_Brücke.jpg

All three sister bridges did not give in quickly to the assaults by air or land. But sadly as we know in the end they did, with many lives lost. But that is another story.

 

notamermaid

 

 

[notamermaid]

21 hours ago, RDVIK2016 said:

Would Heine have spoken a dialect in which Weh and Höh rhyme? I mean like in Bavaria where Böhmen becomes Behmen and schön is schee.

I do not know. Heine was from Düsseldorf so he may have thrown something in there or at least grew up with the dialect. I would say though that he may have done what we are very familiar with in German that is called an "unreiner Reim", an imperfect rhyme, which is legitimate, and is done via similar sounding vowels, like e and ä (a umlaut). Or like in your example Weh and Höh. If you would like to go down the rabbit hole of Düsseldorf dialect, here is a video, complete with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJHZpCFQbwc

 

I love the example with the word "the opposite" at 7:25. "das Gegenteil" becomes "dat Jäjedeel". But my favourite is still "däm sing" in Cologne dialect. It is the construction that is in English the possessive pronoun "his", in standard German simply "sein".

 

notamermaid

 

 

 

 

[RDVIK2016]

40 minutes ago, notamermaid said:

I do not know. Heine was from Düsseldorf so he may have thrown something in there or at least grew up with the dialect. I would say though that he may have done what we are very familiar with in German that is called an "unreiner Reim", an imperfect rhyme, which is legitimate, and is done via similar sounding vowels, like e and ä (a umlaut). Or like in your example Weh and Höh. If you would like to go down the rabbit hole of Düsseldorf dialect, here is a video, complete with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJHZpCFQbwc

 

I love the example with the word "the opposite" at 7:25. "das Gegenteil" becomes "dat Jäjedeel". But my favourite is still "däm sing" in Cologne dialect. It is the construction that is in English the possessive pronoun "his", in standard German simply "sein".

 

notamermaid

 

 

 

 

Thank you for this.

I have seen a lot of those Easy German videos with Cari. She speaks so very clearly. I wish all Germans spoke to us Amis that clearly and in standard German, but even her husband Janusz has a Polish accent. 

 

I'll have to work on understanding Rhineland dialects before I return there. I recently binge-watched the first four seasons/Staffeln of Babylon Berlin on ARD online. I realize that was just a little bit of Berliner dialect, but I will be there soon, so I wanted to hear some of it (I was in West Berlin for three weeks in 1970, but I was there among other US Army soldiers most of the time.) Surprisingly there were a couple of characters in the series that spoke like a Bayer (Dr. Schwarz) and a Wiener (Katelbach). There were also the Russian accents, the Jiddisch speaks, and a couple of American accents where I was saying "I hope I do not sound like that!". 

RDVIK

[notamermaid]

Have never watched Babylon Berlin. I must admit that I watch little television these days, at least not dramatized things. Mainly documentaries and a bit of news. In German I mean.

 

I guess it can be a bit of a surprise to a tourist how many dialects and accents there are, that is to say that one encounters on a Rhine river cruise. People that live 100km away from me up the valley can sound quite different.

 

The other week I was up in the Westerwald hills and listened to the locals in a café. It is all the Moselle Franconian dialect group which I consider myself to belong to from my upbringing but they are getting closer to Bonn and the Sieg river up there, which you can hear. It was nice to experience that.

 

What you learn at school and what you see written is Standard High German. As a spoken form of German among friends and family in its pure form it only exists around Hanover they say. Theoretically everyone who has been to school in Germany speaks it of course. But it is often easy to detect where a person comes from no matter how hard they try to use a newsreader type of Standard High German. Not that I know many people who try very hard...

 

notamermaid

 

 

 

[RDVIK2016]

5 hours ago, notamermaid said:

Have never watched Babylon Berlin. I must admit that I watch little television these days, at least not dramatized things. Mainly documentaries and a bit of news. In German I mean.

 

I guess it can be a bit of a surprise to a tourist how many dialects and accents there are, that is to say that one encounters on a Rhine river cruise. People that live 100km away from me up the valley can sound quite different.

 

The other week I was up in the Westerwald hills and listened to the locals in a café. It is all the Moselle Franconian dialect group which I consider myself to belong to from my upbringing but they are getting closer to Bonn and the Sieg river up there, which you can hear. It was nice to experience that.

 

What you learn at school and what you see written is Standard High German. As a spoken form of German among friends and family in its pure form it only exists around Hanover they say. Theoretically everyone who has been to school in Germany speaks it of course. But it is often easy to detect where a person comes from no matter how hard they try to use a newsreader type of Standard High German. Not that I know many people who try very hard...

 

notamermaid

My first wife spoke Northern Bavarian, but her mother and grandparents were refugees from Silesia near Breslau, her sister's husband is East Franconian from near Nürnberg. That Franke made little to no effort to speak standard German so there were times I could barely understand him. Germans can tell that I am an American who learned to speak German in East Bavaria.

RDVIK

[Canal archive]

My DH worked for a German company and was asked if he would try to learn German, ever the marketing man, he did, one to one and eventually over the telephone always with the same tutor. He thoroughly enjoyed it and the first exhibition (which shock horror I went to ostensibly to aid with looking after customers wives) he went to after a time his German colleagues realised he could and did understand and speak at least some German. They were horrified why, well we will leave that to them, but they tried and tried to work out which part of Germany his tutor came from! Well I told him you stories about speaking and the area the different dialects come from so he told me the answer, his tutor was English and had first learnt German backpacking around Germany she then tidied it up at college, work that one out.

[notamermaid]

It is Good Friday and the church bells are silent. It is a tradition to use wooden instruments instead, the German words are Klapper or Ratsche, depending on type. In Linz on the Rhine it has become quite an event. This is what it looks like (old video):

 

It appears to be a Crotalus in English. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crotalus_(instrument)

 

notamermaid

 

 

 

[RDVIK2016]

4 hours ago, notamermaid said:

It is Good Friday and the church bells are silent. It is a tradition to use wooden instruments instead, the German words are Klapper or Ratsche, depending on type. In Linz on the Rhine it has become quite an event. This is what it looks like (old video):

 

It appears to be a Crotalus in English. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crotalus_(instrument)

 

notamermaid

That's am impressively large group of Klapperer! Thanks for showing this. Crotalus is a new word for me.

 

Maybe along the Danube if you got into a small town early when bells would usually ring for morning prayers you could run into this version of this Good Friday practice. The Ratschenbuam need to call the people to prayer, because the bells have been silenced only to fly to Rome and return on the third day full of Easter eggs and treats. This video illustrates the practice that I was familiar with.Traditionally it was just boys, like here, ergo "Ratschenbuam" not "madln" or "kinder". The boys show off their skills and also recite their call  to prayer. "Wir ratschen, wir ratschen den Englischen Gruß, den jeder katholische Christ beten muss. Kniet's nieder, kniet's nieder, fallt's auf die Knie, bet's ein Vater Unser und drei Ave Marie". Funny that they say "Englischen Gruss" instead of "Engelsgruss", but that appears to be common. (not the same thing but reminds me of exclaiming Safra! or Zement! instead of Sacrament!) 

 

[notamermaid]

Today we have had Sahara dust in the air, a recurring weather phenomenon. If you look at your photos that you took in the Rhine Gorge or further upstream today you may wonder what your camera has done... It is definitely the air.

 

As we have talked about language, I am posting an article from Switzerland. You can just look at the photos, but for a bit of baffling "that is not the German I learnt!!" do listen to the audio at the top. It is Schwyzerdütsch: https://www.srf.ch/meteo/meteo-stories/sehr-hohe-feinstaubwerte-der-osterhase-liefert-180-000-tonnen-saharastaub

 

To give you a comparison at Rüdesheim here is a webcam screen shot from the archive (see time stamp):

 

And today (see time stamp):

 

notamermaid

 

[Canal archive]

Wow it’s a bit spooky luckily we missed it this time, last dusting my beautiful white mini became almost Khaki.

[notamermaid]

Spooky it is. One can only imagine what the people in times must have felt before it was figured out why the sky turns brown/weirdly coloured. The snow photos of Switzerland with the brownish strikes I find really weird.

 

notamermaid

 

[notamermaid]

The river is as busy as always, with barges great and small, tankers and an increasing amount river cruise ships and excursion boats, now that Easter is here. Wednesday will see the christening of the Amina in Bonn - I had mentioned it a few weeks back. She is still docked in Tiel on the Waal but her destination Bonn is already visible in her ship tracking signal.

 

It has been an Easter weekend with very mixed weather. We have two holidays here, so today is still a full church holiday with closures of almost everything, i.e. shops, offices, etc.

 

Life on the river is relatively uneventful thankfully, although the Netherlands have reported a ship accident involving two barges and another ship on the Waal with potential damage to the railway bridge, so we can have a look at more things like islands, ferries and bridges. But first a look at this past March.

 

notamermaid

 

[notamermaid]

It is April and time to have a look at what the river did in March. Maxau gauge:

The level went up briefly over the line for M_I which means that extra vigilance is necessary while sailing and with adjusted speed. Since then we have had too little rain to have an impact on the level and the graph has gone steadily down. This is putting Maxau nicely into the mean figures range. Kaub gauge:

Likewise we saw the short rise but no crossing the M_I line. Kaub is now above the mean but not by much.

 

We will most likely continue to see fairly steady levels with Kaub staying in the ideal range between 200cm and 300cm till 8 April and probably beyond.

 

notamermaid

 

 

[notamermaid]

Let us stay with Rüdesheim and the webcam on the opposite bank at Bingen. We can use it to have a look at the bridge from Rüdesheim to Bingen-Kempten. Here it is - was:

I have chosen this frame as the light is good for bringing out the stumps of the bridge. The two odd looking dots in the river are two of the pillars of the once mighty railway bridge. You could also cross it on foot. It was destroyed in 1945 and never rebuilt. The sister bridge at Urmitz was rebuilt in a different design and the more famous Remagen bridge was not.

 

From the air it looks like this: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburgbrücke#/media/Datei:Rhein_Hindenburgbrücke_Pfeiler_Rüdesheimer_Aue.jpg

 

Destruction (effort) was in the end by the hands of German soldiers. Call it what you will, I call it madness, in any case it was a more or less futile effort to hold back the advancing American troops.

 

I have mentioned before that engineers used the islands in the river often to put a bridge pillar on. This is a photo that shows the construction - a sad state:

https://www.bingen.de/kultur/stadtarchiv/virtuelles-binger-archiv/archivdingstag/die-hindenburgbruecke-wurde-nur-30-jahre-alt

 

The island is called the Rüdesheimer Aue. What is unusual is the word Aue in this case. But that is for another post when we talk about river islands.

 

notamermaid

 

 

[tartanexile81]

hello notamermaid and others. We have booked an escorted cruise for 8 days in July so I will now follow this thread with interest. I lived in Germany for a few years in the 1980s and have only been back a couple of times but this cruise will probably be the last time we visit - before old age and health overtake us. As I don't fly we will be travelling by train from Edinburgh to London where we will join our British organised tour with Riviera Travel. We then go from London St Pancras to Brussels and onwards to Cologne to join the MS Geoffrey Chaucer. 

 

 

"What you learn at school and what you see written is Standard High German. As a spoken form of German among friends and family in its pure form it only exists around Hanover they say. Theoretically everyone who has been to school in Germany speaks it of course. But it is often easy to detect where a person comes from no matter how hard they try to use a newsreader type of Standard High German." 

 

I found your piece about accent / dialect very interesting because I lived about 20 miles from Hanover and loved listening to and speaking German there. Obviously as I travelled round Germany that changed! My sister lived on the Bodensee and her in-laws were from the Black Forest /Schwarzwald so Schwabisch was another kettle of fish. 

 

 

[notamermaid]

1 hour ago, tartanexile81 said:

As I don't fly we will be travelling by train from Edinburgh to London where we will join our British organised tour with Riviera Travel. We then go from London St Pancras to Brussels and onwards to Cologne to join the MS Geoffrey Chaucer. 

That is quite a long journey to get to Cologne, but one I would love to do. Will you be travelling direct from Waverley to King's Cross? I love the sight of the Grand Central but I believe that does not have a direct connection, you need to change in Sunderland or thereabouts. Perhaps one day I will manage the Caledonian Sleeper.

 

I once inquired with Riviera if they could calculate me a price for a non-fly, non-train river cruise as I would have joined in Cologne coming from within Germany. They were very accommodating but the plan then fell through. So they will pick you up at King's Cross to transfer you to St. Pancras? I would not want to carry luggage through London via the Underground or bus. Okay, could take a cab...

 

I went from Ebbsfleet to Cologne some years ago and it was a great experience, made better by the fact that from Brussels to Cologne we took the Thalys rather than a German train.

 

Train travel in Europe is so good and convenient, it is certainly an alternative to flying, especially distances under five hours, i.e. what a fast train can cover in five hours.

 

You will not see this coming from Brussels, but the Hohernzollern Bridge crossing is amazing, I love it. That happens when you come into Cologne Main Station from Deutz. Fun fact: Cologne railway station was partly modelled on St. Pancras.

 

notamermaid

 

 

 

[gnome12]

2 hours ago, notamermaid said:

So they will pick you up at King's Cross to transfer you to St. Pancras? I would not want to carry luggage through London via the Underground or bus. Okay, could take a cab...

King’s Cross/St Pancras is basically one station. No crosstown transportation required. 

[notamermaid]

So the Amina has been christened and is now on her maiden voyage sailing just behind her sister ship the Alisa past the Koblenz embankment. Amina will be in Rüdesheim tomorrow.

 

notamermaid

 

 

[notamermaid]

Did I say it is being quiet on the Rhine? In Cologne it was a busy day yesterday. While dredging the Rhine at Deutz (maintenance work to the navigation channel) a bomb was found. WWII legacy again. At Deutz embankment are many offices including the RTL television channel building, which had to evacuated. This disrupted the broadcasting yesterday. The bomb was put on to a pontoon and defused. All clear.

 

Spot the river cruise company logo...

https://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/rheinland/bombe-fund-rhein-koeln-deutz-100.html

 

The evacuation also explains why I saw a river cruise ship docked much further out on the right bank on marinetraffic.com yesterday.

 

Further upstream there was unhappy excitement in Wiesbaden as well. In the city near the Rhine a bomb was defused yesterday, also.

 

In other news - odd coincidence - the gentleman that saved Cardiff town hall in Wales from a bomb fire has turned 100 and his heroic deed was therefore in the news again.

 

Unexploded ordinance is a legacy in Germany that will never leave us.

 

notamermaid