das rheingold

We couldn’t visit Cologne without a cruise on the Rhine, so we booked sailings for two of the four days we were to be in the city in advance. My initial plan had been to spend one day sailing downstream and one day upstream, but we quickly discovered, when we walked down to the river upon our arrival to locate the landing stage, that the company we had booked with only sailed upstream. And there was only one sailing from Cologne each day.

Consequently, while I waited in line to board the boat, Paula went to speak to the man in the ticket kiosk, who advised her that if we were planning to go as far as Linz, then at all costs we should stay on the boat, because it would be the only sailing that day as far as Cologne. No problem! It didn’t take me long to discover that there was a bar on board, and when in Germany one drinks beer.

It’s impossible to contemplate the Rhine close up without being aware of the enormous advantage that this artery gives the German economy. It might even be the origin of the famous German reputation for efficiency. There are three main types of cargo vessel on the river: bulk carriers, tankers and container barges:

bulk carrier

tanker

container barge

Some of the bulk carriers we saw were carrying gravel and were not covered, but most were like the one in the photo, with covers over the cargo, which I’m guessing indicates a perishable cargo, such as grain.

Along much of the river, the banks have been taken over by industrial facilities, such as this container terminal:

…and this wharf, which appears to be for loading and unloading coal:

However, there are still a few hints of an unspoilt riparian environment (the land to the right of this creek is a long, narrow island running close to and parallel to the east bank of the river):

In terms of what can be seen from a boat on the river, the landscape is almost magical. Do bear in mind that this is the land of Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, and all the other denizens of the world recorded by the Brothers Grimm. I can easily imagine Rapunzel being imprisoned in this tower, for example:

I imagine that you would need to be pretty wealthy to own a house with river frontage, like these ones:

Notice the footpath and cycle track running along the bank in the foreground. Although there were places where we couldn’t see either, there do appear to be long contiguous stretches, and were we ever to go back to Cologne, cycling along the Rhine would be on the agenda.

There is also a cycle track running alongside the railway in the next photo:

The two white posts are precisely 100 metres apart, and posts like these appear every 100 metres along the river, with a larger post showing cumulative distance, presumably from the source of the river, every kilometre.

And this is a closer look at the house directly above the red train on the right of the last photo:

The following sequence of photographs features other exotic buildings that I happened to notice while sailing past:

The next photo shows part of the waterfront in Unkel, one of the later stops on the voyage:

I’ve included the next photo because the building strikes me as unusual. I’m guessing that, based on the number of balconies, it is an apartment complex, although I've never seen an apartment block quite like this before:

The left-hand mansion in the next photo appears to be derelict:

In addition to the exotic and the peculiar, we did see a few futuristic buildings, like these apartment blocks in Cologne:

I can’t help wondering what it would be like to live in an apartment directly above the overhang. Would I want to know how thick the concrete was beneath my feet? Would I be conscious of the 100 feet of thin air directly below that? The ‘leg’ supporting the overhang is a combined stairwell and lift shaft that doesn’t appear to be capable of carrying this burden unaided, so I’m bound to wonder how this weight is being counterbalanced.

This one is located on the east bank of the river between Cologne and Bonn:

It looks like a commercial building but may be residential, given what appear to be private roof gardens.

And this is Linz, where the boat turned around and came back downstream:

There are bridges across the Rhine in Cologne and Bonn, but none elsewhere. However, there are quite a few car ferries:

Judging by the size of the ferry, drivers at the back of this queue will have to wait for the next one.

As I mentioned above, we had pre-booked two days on the Rhine, and although we did enjoy our first day, we didn’t fancy repeating it. I examined the timetable and worked out that if we disembarked in Bonn, we could spend two hours there, board another boat heading upstream—there are three additional sailings each day starting in Bonn—and explore one other location.

We chose Königswinter, which I’d photographed on the first day:

I will conclude this essay with photographs of what I considered to be the two most striking buildings we saw during our sojourns on the Rhine. The first is of a church in Wesseling, an industrial town between Cologne and Bonn:

Is it just me, or does this church have an oriental feel to it?

I spotted this mansion on the outskirts of Bonn:

By the way, the river may look placid in these photos, but you can get an idea of the strength of the current by studying the timetable. The trip from Cologne to Linz, a distance of about 60 kilometres according to the signposts I referred to earlier, is scheduled to take five hours and 40 minutes, the return journey only three hours and 10 minutes.