Rhine… Castles, floods

 



As we rode the Rhine rose by centimetres every hour. Soon we were taking detours, as bike tracks, signs, roads and finally buildings began to disappear under water. Ruth and I rode through water for several hundred metres, the track discerned by the top of the long grass. One detour took into the middle of a Japanese Anime and Manga dress-up convention in beautiful Mains-Kastel, complete with knights, demons and mermaids. The characters were happy to pose for us. Castles on every cliff. Beautiful stone work and detailing on the houses. Grapes on impossibly steep terraces. At the junction of the Rhine and Mosel Rivers stands Deutsches Eck, a truly massive, impressive and somewhat daunting monument to German unity.



The Rhine River overflowed its banks yesterday, flooding Cologne's old town and parts of Bonn and Koblenz after three days of pounding rains. Further south, Heidelberg was awash in waters of the raging Neckar River. German news media said four people had been killed.

With stores and offices closed, Christmas shopping was sharply curtailed in dozens of cities in southern and south-western Germany. Adding to the gloom, Germany's insurance companies announced that their policies generally exclude flood damage in most areas.
Emergency crews checked hastily erected dikes and other barriers, hoping to hold back some of the worst flooding in decades. US soldiers stationed in Germany joined rescue crews in several cities. Weather forecasters predicted more rain and snow in days to come.
Federal authorities halted shipping traffic on the Rhine, the main north-south commercial waterway in Europe. The closure was expected to last at least until the weekend, said the Water and Shipping office in Bingen. The flooding stretched from Trier, Germany's oldest city near the border with Luxembourg, to Saarbrucken along the French border and to Regensburg in eastern Bavaria.

Biebesheim, Germany, January, 1955: German workers haul wheelbarrows of sandbags in an effort to reinforce a dike that's threatened by flood waters of the Rhine river. The Rhine reached its highest level in 35 years during storms that paralyzed much of Europe and caused at least 11 deaths. The U.S. military alerted its bases to be prepared to assist residents; dozens of troops were sent out to stack sandbags, pump water and help evacuate families. Meanwhile, in northern Germany, Scandinavia, Scotland and Ireland, blizzard conditions prevailed.