notamermaid

I have been wondering that myself. So far I have not read of anything or heard anything through work other than that some authorities might reduce the lights or reduce the hours they are lit. I will keep my ears open and try and get some info from papers. Not a fan of reading German newspapers these days, but one has to keep informed about this most essential of custom that are the markets of course. Actually, glancing at the papers the other day, I read that our chancellor has decided (after a big debate) to keep three nuclear power stations running for longer. Have not looked at details but it would appear that this should keep the lights on in Germany for longer... What has been noticed is that the sale of electric heaters has gone up as people are worried about having the gas central heating turned off due to lack of natural gas supply. Not a problem on a river cruise ship of course. Should the worse come to worst I will try and convince a river cruise company that they need me on board to report for a travel magazine or newspaper. notamermaid

"Light stands for the joy of living" This is the (my) translation of a quote from this article on saving energy and events that use light, especially the Christmas markets, but also the tradition of towns putting up Christmas trees in winter: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/regional/nordrheinwestfalen/wdr-story-51195.html Again we read in the article linked to above that LED lights do not use much energy. It is an interesting thought in that article. The event "Herbstleuchten" in Hamm uses lights that cost 45 euros to run on an evening. When you consider that more than 1000 people attend every evening who then leave the lights off at home, this actually (purely speaking about lights I reckon) saves energy. Just a reassuring take from the article: lights may go off a little earlier in towns and cities but most authorities are determined to put lighting up as in previous years - at least in North-Rhine Westphalia. notamermaid

Okay, now that was special! Just a few days after the official opening of the Niederfinow boat lift a river cruise ship did the first sailing of the canal and lift transport. Remember that this is a route that is rarely travelled and only smaller river cruise ships up to 110m length can go through the lift. The passengers of the Excellence Coral did not only have the honour of being the first in the lift but also stopped in it to be treated to an exclusive concert on board the ship. At a height of 36m they enjoyed three live acts. The Excellence Coral sails for a Swiss company. Here is the German article from Switzerland: https://www.travelnews.ch/on-the-move/22714-die-excellence-coral-im-rampenlicht-des-neuen-schiffshebewerks.html The new boat lift is of course larger than the old one and now opens up the area for river cruise ships up to 110m length, the classification for the lift has jumped to V, i.e. a higher Federal German Waterway identification number. However, I do not know if smaller locks along the Oder Havel Canal and nearby will still restrict the area to ships smaller than 110m, meaning the waterways in the East of Germany around Berlin will continue to be sailed by only a handful of river cruise ships. notamermaid

Thank you. Please do if you find the time. We hear little from beyond Budapest. I expected the situation to be fine but it is good to be reassured by people actually on the that route now. Also, I am sure people will appreciate it if you share any tips from that part of the river. I hope you have a great time sailing in the autumn scenery on the Danube. notamermaid

@Worksheet Thank you for sharing your experience. I would say there were somewhat inconsiderate passengers on your cruise. I had the similar "group experience" in that they tended to be too loud, too focussed on themselves. Happened long before Covid but the experience of that mentality stuck with me. While there is no directive or regulation to self-isolate, you can even go to your office when you are positive and feeling fine, in such close confinements as a river cruise ship it should be the norm to not eat in the main dining room when you are coughing and sneezing a lot. I hope other cruisers are as considerate as you were on the ships that are currently sailing. I reckon he/she was expecting to hear from the butler if you needed anything. Still, it would have looked better if the CD had inquired actively in my opinion. Good to read that you felt better relatively quickly, although it sounds like you lacked the energy to enjoy Frankfurt. notamermaid

Apart from the challenges avoiding Covid, how did you enjoy the Rhine cruise? Would you like to share any excursions you liked or special places that you had not been to on a previous occasion? What river cruise company was it on the Rhine? River level: Kaub gauge at 161cm. All good, not too low and not too high anywhere along the river. notamermaid

Sorry to read that. All the best. notamermaid

I am not sure to how much trouble they go enforcing this with fines. Perhaps they ask you to leave the train? I have not been confronted with the problem, always had a mask or could buy one. These N95 masks should be available in pharmacies and many other outlets, probably even shops in the airport. Could you get a couple at a pharmacy near where you are? Then you could wear what you are comfortable with and (apart from the long distance trains where they probably expect you to know) be the happy tourist that just got it wrong and put the other type on. I am quite relaxed about it all these days, just have an N95 mask in my bag, just like paper handkerchiefs, in case I need one - the mask or the handkerchief. notamermaid

Let's hope not. Touch wood. I was in a museum on Friday where they politely asked you via a notice at the door to wear a mask. So far in such places you really do not have to, but it is good to have a mask in your pocket/bag just in case there is a place that does enforce mask-wearing as a house rule. That is what I say to myself. Not sure that anyone does right now, i.e. go beyond the regulations you have read in the link. I did not wear a mask as I find museums too stuffy and there was hardly anybody in the rooms anyway. The two women at the counter did. In the last three days I would say I have seen another uptick in mask-wearing among the general public. Museum - so what small town was I in? That is for another post. Here are two clues: 1. seven 2. dragon. Oh, by the way. Weather a bit warm and stuffy. Rain in the air which makes it both pleasant, i.e not cold, but also a bit unpleasant due to the moisture. Autumn colours coming along very nicely. Windy at times, but still leaving enough leaves on the trees to enjoy them. Kaub gauge: 152cm. Rising fast due to recent rain. notamermaid

This has turned out to be correct (give or take an hour) and after a steady two days a little above 300cm, the level is rising again and has now reached 357cm. Looks good, seeing that there is little rain now to make the river rise for much longer at a fast pace. It should keep below 400cm according to the forecast. Tuesday will see more rain. How that works out we will need to wait and see. There is the bridge at Passau but the level has not reached 500cm there yet so plenty of room for a higher volume of water to pass under it. notamermaid

These are the rules as reported by Deutsche Welle: https://www.dw.com/en/new-german-covid-19-rules-come-into-force-as-infections-rise-in-colder-months/a-63305695 notamermaid

If you want to be well-prepared there is. I just went without thinking and with little planning, accepting everything that would be thrown at me, but I live on the Rhine. For the six hour train journey to Passau I did not feel the need to prepare much. Choose your level of preparation and planning and comfort level between my extreme and not wanting to be on a bus at all. As others have said, there is no guarantee on a river. All in all, high water is the less disrupting force as regards duration. You intent to be on the Rhine so here are few thoughts. I would put this in slightly other words and say on the Rhine it is mid-August to September, with October to some extent, resolving itself mid- to late-October. It is different every year and may not happen at all. This year low water started unusually early. A 110m ship gives the company (and therefore you) a little bit more "wiggle room", i.e. may be able to sail longer than a 135m ship. This is a generalization, meaning a rule of thumb. Choose your company wisely and get trip insurance, preferably not through the river company itself. Others can help you with what the North American market can offer you there. Recent threads that deal with the low water this season can help you get an idea what could happen. Have a look here: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2827571-rhine-water-levels-2022-and-similar-topics/page/44/#comment-64126286 and here for great tips: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2150685-new-to-river-cruising-start-here/#comment-60804647 They do quite a bit. It is not info so easily found so here is some for the Rhine. At Maxau gauge in the Upper Rhine valley the difference between high and low can easily be three metres, i.e. fluctuation during a year, sometimes four metres. It can be more, but that is extreme and rarely happens. The bottleneck in low water is the Rhine Gorge right in the middle of a Basel to Amsterdam cruise and that is also the most scenic part. notamermaid

The level at Pfelling has fallen to now 307cm (daily fluctuation ignored). It looks to be keeping steadily above 300cm still. Hopefully this will continue. The weather is a bit cool, but standard for autumn. There is rain over Germany, more along the Rhine than the Danube. This may change during the night. Pfelling gauge is forecast to go up again tomorrow evening. Normally not. The level is still high enough. But Avalonwaterways may anticipate something that I cannot know about. Or it is logistical. Deggendorf and Vilshofen are relatively close so moving the embarkation may save time sailing. I am sure they are happy to tell you on board why they made the decision. Have a great time. notamermaid

Perhaps this could help the boys: https://www.kuhnle-tours.com/destinations/germany/ Unfortunately they have no original narrowboat on offer but you can hire a narrowboat style houseboat. If you want the "other" North of Germany you could check out the offer in Hamburg, which is two newbuilts modelled on old English narrowboats. I have read of several anecdotal sightings of original narrowboats on canals in France and one on the Rhine (probably not for hire), but none in the East of Germany. notamermaid

Uniworld reports a huge increase in interest in river cruising in the UK: https://travelweekly.co.uk/news/travel-agents/uk-river-cruise-market-has-exploded-says-uniworld-chief The Milestone hotel in London is furbished like a Uniworld river cruise ship? Must have a look at that. If only to find that it is above what my budget is... It would be interesting to find out if the increased interest is also seen with Riviera Travel. notamermaid

Hmm, what may sound like a beer-induced idea may not be so far-fetched. What if you could rent a narrowboat in Germany? After all, we Germans have imported a lot of stuff over the years, like old phone boxes. I will come back to that. notamermaid

The boat lift at Niederfinow is open: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-completes-new-boat-elevator/av-63394746 notamermaid

It is October and time to look back at how the river did at Kaub in September: The month started with low levels but overall was already doing better than in much of August. Compared with the Danube, this low level corresponded with Pfelling in Bavaria being low, but on the Danube the low led to most river cruise ships not being able to pass through the shallows whereas the situation on the Rhine proved difficult for far fewer river cruise ships. With rainy weather coming to Germany the Rhine just like the Danube improved fast. Kaub continued with ups and downs - without having any further impact of note to cruising - till heavy rain set in at the end of the month. While the Rhine was low for most of September for barge cruising, statistically it was not officially low at Kaub from 11 September. The month turned out to be better than we had feared. A dry spell is now causing the levels all along the river from Iffezheim into the Netherlands to fall steadily (gauge at Kaub): But as you can see the downward trend is slowing and indeed the forecast for Friday afternoon is showing 130cm still, with no likelihood of Kaub falling below 100cm before rain should make it rise again. notamermaid

It is October and time to have a look at how the Danube at Pfelling did in September: The month started with really low water, too low for the large river cruise ships. Rainy weather and cooler temperatures set in during the second week which resulted in the necessary rise to bring the river level back to figures that allowed all river cruise ships to sail again. Still keeping close to the RNW line of 290cm it could have been tight easily for sailing but on 16 September rain further upstream all over the basin brought the river up to more comfortable levels. We see the level ebb and fall with every large amount of rainfall into October and the slightly erratic nature is likely to continue. We are now in a dry spell. notamermaid

Yes. That word is still used, perhaps not as much as a decade ago, but then you need that kind of weather to hear it often. Some trees near me are changing colour from one side to the other, meaning golden-orange on one and still green with some orange-brown on the other. A bit odd, I think it must be because they are close to a building on one side. The lime trees are the ones giving the real yesslo-gold not far from me and in the sunshine at the weekend it was quite the sight. The horse chestnut trees are shedding their leaves by the bucket load. I enjoy the rustling of walking fast through them when no one is looking, oooh, I am a child at heart. notamermaid

Don't be sorry as this is a very important point and one I was trying to imply when I said anecdotal. It can only refer to a specific vessel, always. The size of ship and on top of that company operating it are an indication but each vessel has a minimal difference in how it reacts, a different captain, sailing upstream or downstream, at which time of day, etc. and what the crew can do with the ballast tanks. In short: there is no strict line (figure), just a margin, or width of figures, of river level that can give a likely scenario. Brutally speaking: especially in autumn on the Danube expect anything when you book. Pfelling gauge: in the absence of rain it is falling steadily, as one would expect. Now at 332cm. The decline is slowing down and could be reduced to single figures within 24 hours. Right now the forecast suggests 322cm for tomorrow morning and little change on that for Thursday. We have no forecast that looks further into the future. Weather forecast suggests rain on Friday and potentially at the weekend. All in all relatively mild and dry weather with few autumn storms. I think we need to look at Pfelling again on Friday. First, the September summary in a graph. notamermaid

No way will I ever be. Grin. But thanks for the compliment. I do not know, but I have tried to do a recap by looking back through the thread. On 22 August a cruiser said that they had boarded a Viking ship in Komarno as the river was too low in Budapest but later did dock in Budapest when the level rose. The graph that I posted some time later showed that the level was around one meter around that day (21 to 23 August). Note that this is anecdotal and may well not apply to your itinerary and river cruise ship. notamermaid

Interesting steady drop anticipated and not one that I can explain I think. I can say that it is the nature of the river before and at Budapest but that is not really that helpful. If I extrapolate this from what I know about the Rhine I can say that it is a mix of basic run-off, by that I mean what is in the ground water table and reaches the main channel in a steady low amount; the water given by the tributaries, water from the main channel through rain and what comes from the source in Germany, the channel man-made alterations (i.e. straightening and embankments), hills that alter the width of the valley and locks retaining water upstream. As regards the water table, Spring has been too low on rain and in autumn this shows on the Rhine and on the Danube now, as it has done in August already. In that month of course it was made worse by far too little rainfall. A high volume of water will cause a fast rise but in an environment altered by humans it can result in not enough water being retained in the low lands adjacent to the river and a somewhat channelled river letting it flow through too fast. I suspect this partly also applies to the Budapest built-up area. You are right, low temperatures should help in keeping the level up. I think they will do to some extent in that when the levels of the Danube reach a certain low, the baseline flow will keep it from falling further at the same rate as it does now. To know more about this we would then need to have an idea of how much water the locks upstream tend to retain. Since you posted the forecast has moved of course and it now "sees" into the future to 16 October. We can see the line levelling off and I am hopeful that this will continue to be or become what I have described as a sort of baseline under which the river is unlikely to go now. But that is only an assumption from this laywoman as I have indicated above. Fingers crossed we will see rain in Bavaria towards the end of this week and if not, I hope that my thoughts on this are helpful to you. notamermaid

Thank you. Uniworld, interesting. I had not looked at their offers. 2011 is some time ago so I have had a quick look now for 2023. Uniworld describes this as new for 2023 so I expect it is a variation on a previous itinerary: https://www.uniworld.com/us/river-cruise/central-europe/rhine/zurich-and-the-rhine-river-valley/2023-nuremberg-to-zurich/day-to-day This particular itinerary does not do the little trip down to Rüdesheim. Interesting about Uniworld is that they dock in Rastatt on the Rhine which makes this stand out from other offers. Of the Main river villages it includes Volkach. Uniworld offers a longer version which may well be two legs like the half you did, gnome12: https://www.uniworld.com/us/river-cruise/central-europe/rhine/grand-central-europe/2023-basel-to-vienna notamermaid

It is October and time to look back at the river levels in September at Dresden: A rocky start to the month with a worrying drop in the second week. But the higher volume of rain and lower temperatures helped and kept the level pleasant for the rest of the month. Into October we continued to see a level of over 100cm. We now have dryer days but for now the level is still good. 115cm. notamermaid