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

Another report on the Rousse Prestige, really good one. 😊 As I was secretly thinking and very much hoping, all injuries are indeed minor. I guess it is the "heavy bump that throws you off balance and against a table or onto the floor". Which would normally result in easy to treat injuries. The accident quite naturally became a topic on Binnenschifferforum and according to one poster all passengers are back on board. Photo of damage to stern: https://www.binnenschifferforum.de/showthread.php?117616-Schiffs-Unfall-auf-der-Donau-17-Verletzte

notamermaid

32 minutes ago, Canal archive said:

Many of the European River Captains are Eastern European and are absolutely brilliant.

The crew on my ship, the MS Belvedere, was Eastern European mostly. The two captains were from Serbia I believe. Interestingly, the younger one was in charge, with the older being the "second captain". It only became clear during the cocktail hour talks. The older one was more experienced with the passengers so talked a bit more. Really nice guy. He was the one who showed us the wheelhouse during an afternoon sail. The hotel staff appeared to be a mix of Eastern European and Austrian and German.

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

It is unlikely that we will read more about this. All the better I guess as that would mean that all those taken to hospital will recover quickly or are already back on board. So hopefully no more reporting.

@Canal archive if I have understood it correctly when river cruise ships do nighttime sailings this means there are three shifts in a day and three people allowed to steer the ship are on board. That is a captain, someone I believe is called a second mate (not sure about the maritime English actually) and a third one who is learning or can do some sailing. Not sure about the patents needed, etc.

That would for me be an interesting topic to follow up on. I spoke to crew and had seen two people steering the ship with a third obviously trained to handle the bridge controls (who I saw when I was in the wheelhouse briefly). But I have no further details on that. If anyone is interested in asking on board and posting...

notamermaid

Following the track of the Rousse Prestige online, I cold tell the accident happened at around 21.45 local time last night. According to Austrian reports the captain (second mate in this case) pressed an emergency button whereupon the electronics kicked back in and he could sail and dock the ship at the embankment. Rescue teams, etc. were called to the scene. 17 persons were injured and 11 of them taken to hospital but all injuries are supposed to be minor. You can see from the track that the Rousse Prestige docked for a few hours and that correlates with the report that the authorities later cleared the ship to be allowed to sail on. She left the Aschach lock area during the night and has since sailed on without further problems it seems. She is docked in Vienna at this time.

I am posting this screenshot also as it shows you the docking locations in Vienna. The Rousse Prestige is in Nussdorf. Several other ships have the more convenient city locations:

notamermaid

The Avalon Alegria has been christened on the Douro: https://www.travelweekly.com/River-Cruising/Avalon-Alegria-christened-in-Portugal

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

As ural guy has posted, our winter has been relatively mild, the cold spell in February was not really cold. March has been mild but oddly, after a good start, blooming has been halted a little by a warm spell around the 20 to 24 March not actually being that warm, i.e. more absent than there. Good Friday was kind of a miserable, cool and grey day. Today we are having Sahara dust in the air it seems, it started yesterday in Switzerland (a tint of brown in the grey). As regards weather we have had nicer Easter days in past years. I am being serious about the dust, it is a phenomenon in Europe, meaning it reaches countries North of the Alps. People have taken photographs: https://www.swr3.de/aktuell/nachrichten/saharastaub-deutschland-100.html

notamermaid

German passengers and a Bulgarian ship is an unusual constellation and I only know of one. Indeed, one report shows the livery as being Plantours, so most likely the ship is the Rousse  Prestige.

I do not know if this affects the passage through the lock for other ships but a German report says that the ship could sail on to Linz and there is only slight damage to the concrete walls of the lock. Sounds as if as regards material there is not much impact.

notamermaid

There has been an accident on the Danube with a river cruise ship. A ship sailing under Bulgarian flag with mostly German passengers on board hit a concrete wall in the lock at Aschach in Austria. Reports say that 17 people were lightly injured. Steering power was briefly lost, but the captain was able to get the electronics going again and sail out of the lock.

notamermaid

6 hours ago, RDVIK2016 said:

As we were talking about dialects elsewhere it is interesting the hear the differences between the the Lower Austrian in the video I shared and this Upper Austrian, but just wait until you go farther west into the Tyrol!

Indeed. Austria also has dialects that are distinct from each other and I know for sure that I would have a hard time understanding a full conversation. Through television and holiday I am familiar with the usual differences between "German" and "Austrian" but would fail sitting among locals.

notamermaid

It is Good Friday and the church bells are silent. The sound is replaced by ratchets. In Austria this tradition is so big that the government has included this on the national list of intangible cultural heritage: https://www.unesco.at/en/culture/intangible-cultural-heritage/national-inventory/news-1/article/ratschen-during-holy-week

In this video the children use the instruments, every hour to represent the "missing" church bells chimes, walk from door to door and say a verse. For their efforts they get cash to donate to charity and sweets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fah7h2mULA4

The commentator by the way speaks Austrian Standard High German and the children throw in quite a lot of dialect including a couple of words I am not familiar with.

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

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

17 hours ago, RDVIK2016 said:

The boat stayed tied up in Bratislava for several extra hours while they made arrangements for us to go as far as Komarom and then be bussed to Budapest the next morning.

That is one of the scenarios possible in low water.

For those new to the topic. On an itinerary from Amsterdam to Budapest there are two bottlenecks, areas that are prone to shallow conditions and can stop you sailing with your ship. Companies will use a ship swap, meaning you transfer from your ship on one end of the shallow section to the ship on the other end of the shallow section. Or you may spend part of your cruise in a hotel and on a coach to get to the next port - or your cruise will end.

Shallow section 1: the Rhine Gorge, from around Rüdesheim to around Koblenz.

Shallow section 2: the Bavarian Danube, from around Straubing to Vilshofen.

But that is not all. As mentioned in the quote there is also Komarom to Budapest. It is not what I would call a bottleneck as it is so near Budapest and can easily be reached by coach. Low water is not as frequent there as in Bavaria but it can happen.

Frequency of low water at shallow section 1: almost every year, some years little impact

Frequency of low water at shallow section 2: every year to varying degrees with impact every year from little (few years) to substantial (the majority of years). Komarom follows suit to shallow section 2 when the impact at section 2 is substantial.

That is a rough guide.

Can you plan your cruise to avoid it? To some degree. Foreseeable? No more than a few days in advance.

notamermaid

11 hours ago, RDVIK2016 said:

You can see from the river bank how low the water was.

Yes, the steel constructions are at quite an angle.  So is the UFO construction on the Bridge but that is by design. Grin. It is an odd sight. Nice to see a nighttime photo.

notamermaid

Jan Hus is an early reformer of the Catholic Church and his death was followed by the Hussite Wars, religious conflicts. His legacy, i.e. his ideas and teachings, are the basis of the Moravian Church and Unitas Fratrum, re-emerging in the 18th century. The base was then Herrnhut and from there they spread throughout the world. A mission was established in Pennsylvania on a Christmas Eve, therefore it is called Bethlehem.

Alphonse Mucha - I love his version of Art Nouveau. Had never heard of the Slav Epic.

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

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

I have had a quick look at European companies but could not find anything satisfactory. This article deals with 2025 but perhaps you can take it from there. The company Scenic: https://www.travelmarketreport.com/NicheLuxury/articles/Scenic-Opens-New-2025-River-Cruise-Itineraries-Excursions-and-Extensions

I searched for river cruise Munich extension.

notamermaid

11 hours ago, greydog said:

You drive around seeing res embassy buildings and walk around a couple large govt buildings without going inside.  After a family style lunch, you have an hour free time for shopping in relatively small city center.  Basically, there are no major attractions.

It is nearly eleven years ago that I was in Bratislava on my river cruise. The city was a regular stop on this itinerary and we arrived in the early morning. We had a relatively nice morning exploring with our guide. She took us in a mini-train up to the castle. A great view over the river made the ride worthwhile although we did not really see the inside of the castle. There were alleys and buildings we saw and our group walked past churches and renovated interesting buildings. We had about an hour of spare time to look into shops or explore a church. It was interesting to see what remained of the Soviet era and what they had done to the city since. As my previous job is connected to music I just had to take a photo of the theatre/opera house. Here is the castle:

The Saint George Fountain:

The opera house:

I enjoyed the short time we had there, but the couple we spoke mostly to on the cruise did not enjoy the city. Some years ago I spoke to a Slovakian gentleman who told me that if you go to his country go to the countryside, not Bratislava...

Would I go on a coach trip to see the city? Curious as I was about this place it was worthwhile for me stop there on the cruise. A coach trip of at least one hour and one hour back, I cannot say that I would recommend it. Staying in Vienna instead gives you more in-depth time in a European capital. If you would like to tick another European capital off your list just to compare it with another, a trip sounds okay. I find fitting your fabulous expression "exudes mild enthusiasm", @greydog.

notamermaid

1 hour ago, RDVIK2016 said:

The key to protection of skippers may actually be the additional presence of a statue of Johannes von Nepomuk. RDVIK

Ah yes. He is the saint for bridges. Why he is on the rock in this case I do not know. He was Bohemian and a priest in Prague. He was murdered there and his shrine is in the Saint Vitus Cathedral. It has been a very long time since I was in Prague. I may have been to the Cathedral but remember little about it and had to look it all up.

Prague is of course the most frequent extension of a river cruise that ends in Bavaria. I have stated in the past that it is a pity that Munich is not used more often. But all in all, if you are coming from North America especially, in my opinion Prague is the superior city as regards exploring different cultures and ways of life in Europe. Another language to listen to, different food from Germany and Austria make Prague an exciting city.

Which brings me to the mention of an excursion to Bratislava...

notamermaid

7 hours ago, Mike R 2018 said:

-Notamermaid-  Your observations and comments were appreciated on Cruise Critic prior to our 2019 Viking Rhine Getaway cruise.  Thank you once again!

Good to read that, thank you for saying hello again. 😊

Hope you have a great time exploring the Danube.

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