Turning Left

Say Their Names *

 JUNE 21 – SUMMER SOLSTICE

We turned left, and everything changed.

After dinner last night, we went out onto the front deck, claimed the rocking chairs at the very front, and watched the last of the Rhine go by (the last of our part, anyway). It was wider than almost anywhere else, with inlets, bays and, maybe, tributaries. It was generally an industrial area. The day was bright and clear. Then, as had been promised during the daily update, we turned left.

The Main (pronounced “Men”) is the largest tributary of the Rhine, and is the second of three rivers we'll be navigating. Perhaps to call it a river is being generous; it started out as a river, but by 1992 was straddled by 34 large locks, stopping its natural flow and creating calm sailing between the locks. We will, apparently, go through all 34 of those locks, and then turn right onto the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal, which will, with the help of sixteen more locks, bring us up and over the Swabian Alps (Wow! We're going to sail over the Alps!) and onto the Danube.

Side note – the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal was one of the largest civil engineering projects of all time, and it replaced a similar canal – the Ludwig Canal – which was damaged beyond repair by – you guessed it – bombing in WWII.

Got all that? I don't either, mostly because I can't find any really good maps of these waterways. Nevertheless, we are enjoying the ride.

Back to last night – we were sitting on our rocking chairs at the extreme bow end (front) of the boat after dinner, and soon after we made the left turn onto the Main we encountered the first lock. This was a Very Big Deal on the boat, and almost immediately, the whole front deck was crammed - standing room only - and we had front seats to the main event.

It was, of course, just a lock. We spent a week on the Erie Canal years ago and locked through countless times, and these locks, it turns out, work the same way (maybe every lock in the world works the same way?). We also transited the Panama Canal; the scale was a little different, but the locks worked the same way. This was a pretty standard lock experience, except for all the waiting.

We were coming from the Rhine, and since the Main flows into the Rhine, we were going uphill. We had to wait for a couple ships to go into the lock, for the lock to fill, for them to exit the lock on the other end, for a couple upstream ships to enter the lock, and for those ships to exit the lock on our end. That took a looong time. The crowd's enthusiasm was undiminished. When the water started bubbling out of the lock, meaning the upstream ships were coming down, everyone cheered. Then more waiting. Finally, the lock doors opened, and a larger cheer erupted. When the two barges cleared, we began a very slow approach, entered the lock, and continued right up to the much smaller boat which had snuck in ahead of us. We were all indignant when that happened, but one look into the lock as we entered made us realize that not only would we both fit, but there would be room for another full size ship behind us. I checked out that lock on Google Maps, later on, and measured it: it's just slightly shorter than a quarter mile long. It is also just about the width of our ship, which slid in without breaking anything.

By the time we got in, it was after 10PM, and so since Abbey and I had seen all this before, we relinquished our elite seats and went to bed.

This morning was very different. First of all, no roof deck. But the front deck was just fine. No wind at all, the pink glow in the east reflected in still water. Lots and lots of birds with guttural, crow-like calls; Merlin, a bird ID app, says they're hooded crows, but they're not nearly as loud and have a much... vaguer sound. They fly off and others can be heard, including a Eurasian Blackcap.  According to Merlin.

We're gliding toward a lock, very slowly. Canal and lock infrastructure is all around, including what looks like an airport control tower over the middle of the lock. The lock is impossibly long; it must take forever to fill and drain. We're repeating last night's process, without the waiting. Huge transmission towers cross the river and march away behind the trees.

It takes a very long time to reach the front (from our perspective) of the lock. The boat jiggles a bit now and then, as if it's bouncing off the side, just a little. Red light at the end of the lock. There are streetlights all along the lock, lighting it up; a crow, in silhouette, sits atop one of them. The moon is getting crescent-y, and rides above a faint layer of cloud which is being painted pink by the dawn.

We stop, maybe thirty yards from the gate. The radar unit at the very bow of the ship stops revolving. The ship's engines are louder than other mornings; it probably takes a lot of power to go extremely slowly. After a few minutes, the water suddenly erupts ahead of us – river water entering the lock to lift us up. We rise, slowly and imperceptibly; the only way you can tell we're rising is by looking out the side. Now the level of my head is above the top of the lock. Everything gets a little brighter. The bubbling water calms to swirls and eddies, and then goes calm.

The lock gates open and the radar starts up at the same time. The light goes green. We slide out past lock machinery and a number of tugs, tied up. A sign at the end of the lock says:

Achtung!

Bruckenarbeiten bei

Main-km 59.56

above the sign, another:                                         Bergfahrtoffnung gesperrt.

In English:

Danger!

Bridge Work

Main-km 59.56

Uphill access closed  

(thanks Google)

We follow a wall on our left, between us and the river proper. Some ducks are walking along it, going to work. We join the main river. The main part of the Main.

Past the lock, the river is suddenly a bucolic landscape far from any evidence of man. Large trees, growing densely, line the banks. A smell like – honeysuckle? The river is a mirror, and we float dreamlike. It reminds me of Abbey's painting of the River Avon.

It's cold out – low 50s – and I've been out her for forty five minutes. I've got to go in. The Lounge is, as usual, cold as well, so I find a seat in the third floor lobby, with floor-to-ceiling windows on both sides.

Pretty soon there are signs of civilization – buildings through the trees, an ancient church next to a 1950's apartment building, a square stone tower with Romanesque windows at the very top. A small marina. The Main is a smaller river than the Rhine, more personal and intimate. The shore is very close.

And just like that, we're back into an industrial landscape, on a much smaller scale, that is here and gone, and we're back to trees. It's like the heart of darkness, and then, in the distance, tank farms and a huge old iron bridge. A Norman Rockwell swimming hole, and the trees part and there's a nuclear power plant. But maybe not nuclear – there's a mountain of coal, or coal ash, that parallels the river for quite a way, and three enormous smokestacks, quiet for now. It's the giant cooling tower that made me think nuclear. And meanwhile, trees and undergrowth by the river, and an egret looking for breakfast. Swans. Brief glimpse of a deer. And then, another lock.

And so the morning progresses. We are gliding up this narrow river, tree-lined and dark in the early morning light. It feels like some sections of the Erie Canal. Occasional bursts of industry, or a bridge, but not many. There's no apparent current; even the channel markers sit calm in still water. The only way we know we're heading upstream is when the locks lift us up rather than lowering us.

This next lock looks like a tall one. There are usually two locks side-by-side, and the whole affair covers only half the river (which widens at each lock). The other half is apparently dammed. Thus, the lack of current; we are essentially traveling from one lake to another.

We are drifting to the left side of the entrance section of this lock, but the lock on the left is blocked by a construction barge; the lock door is only half closed, and there is scaffolding visible in the lock. This is, apparently, the lock we were warned about. We are waiting – for what? This is a big lock and dam arrangement, with another control tower in the middle. So far, we have not seen a single human being on, in or around the locks. It's an odd feeling, like the machines are operating things independently. There are people running things, of course, but they are not in evidence [UPDATE: Later I found out that many of these locks are operated remotely; on the Main-Danube Canal, the sixteen locks are operated from only four locations].

The doors of the right-hand lock have opened. We are not moving; it will be quite a feat to move right and line up to enter the lock. I don't know what we're waiting for – another ship to pass us on the right? Since the roof deck was closed, it's impossible to see anything behind the ship.

Oh. Of course. There's a ship that has come down in the lock and is now sailing out of it, towards where we are, and it will pass us to the right. The Bandolino, a cargo barge with a spiffy new paint job. The load area is covered, so who knows what's in there. And I finally remembered to note that almost every large barge we have seen has a car or two on the back deck.

And a second barge emerges from the dock, also covered, as long as the first one. As it passes us by, we push off from the left wall and line up to enter the lock, using thrusters to go sideways. Thrusters are noisy. The lights turn green and in we go. Slowly.

The sun disappears as we enter the lock, and rises again as we rise. Although everything happens in slow motion, it's actually pretty quick and efficient, considering the unimaginable volume of water that needs to be moved into the lock. In this one, it doesn't come in through pipes by the upper gates, but somewhere else. It's smoothly done.

Radar on, gates open, lights green. Time to go get breakfast.

We stopped early this afternoon at Miltonsburg, one of the many small towns (as opposed to tiny villages) along the river. We did a walking tour, with free time at the end. I wasn't feeling 100%, and there was a delay, and a change of schedule, and by the time we were on the shore I was ready for a break. The sun was dangerously hot, and it looked like there wouldn't be a lot of shade (we found enough to keep us from burning up).

Miltonsburg is basically one modern avenue paralleling one ancient high street between the hill and the river, a pattern we can assume is repeated up and down the river. A mixture of old and new buildings, but the architecture almost always reflected the past. 

 We saw the oldest inn in Germany (below, right) – "Gasthaus Zum Riesen" or "the Giant Guesthouse" - was probably built in the 12th century but the facade we were seeing was actually a more modern renovation – from the sixteenth century. The six-pointed star on the sign is the "Brauerstern," or brewer's star.  It is, at its simplest, a way to let passers-by know that fresh beer could be found here.  At its most complex, abstruse and mystical, it had its origins in alchemy and the Kabbalah, and it seems to raise beer to the level of the foundations of the universe.  See here for more; it's really something.  Here's a taste:

One beer, coming up.

There is a castle up the hill some, but it looks more like a Victorian romantic confection than a castle. It's pink, as I remember, or maybe red – most buildings took advantage of the really nice red rock available locally, as well as slate roofs, ditto.  But really - a pink castle?  Some really old and artistic doors, and something we saw a lot of up and down the various rivers:  markings on the walls of buildings in town, marking the highest level of various catastrophic floods for in the last few hundred years (above, left).  It was truly hard to believe that the whole volume of valley below that mark was taken up by rushing water.  Terrifying.

The Oldest Inn

Apropos of nothing, we are in Bavaria today.  Just thought you'd like to know. 

It wasn't a good leg day for me, and I sat as often as I could. Once I was on a bench that belonged to the gelateria across the cobbled medieval street; who knows how it had gotten there, but the gelateria's owner decided it was time to retrieve it. He evicted me from the bench, carried it across the street, and sprawled on it, grinning. Welcome to Miltensberg.

At a few places in town (above, and below left), there are small brass plaques ("Stolpersteine," or stumbling stones) installed in the cobbles in front of a building. The plaques have names and dates on them: Jewish residents of that building and the date they were taken on the long, one-way trip to the concentration camps. Many other cities we visited had their own stumbling stones.  Over and over we are reminded by guides of the atrocities of the Nazis and the horror felt by the German people today. Their response – like the brass plaques – is almost always measured, solemn, authentic and intense. They do not shy away from their history; they acknowledge it head-on and in doing so, set the stage for a better future.

Our three guides so far (windmills, Cologne, Koblenz) have been excellent – top-notch – and I for one have been very grateful for the opportunity to learn so much. However, our guide in Milltenberg  was less than stellar. Other guides spoke English like a native with an accent; she seemed to be working on speaking English but not there yet. There was much less content to this tour than the others. And I couldn't understand a lot of what she said, because of difficulties with her microphone, my receiver/ear speaker, or my hearing. All told, when we ended the tour I was ready for a nap – but it was over an hour before the bus was to show up. I was hot and tired and grumpy, and sat on an uncomfortable stone bench (at least it was in the shade) while Abbey joined a small group from the ship who went exploring. I'll let her tell that story.

Back to the ship, and showers and laundry. At the same time. No laundry facilities on the ship, although they'll do your laundry for a lot of money. Abbey brought a little laundry detergent, and the process was like this: Get in the tiny shower, put a couple shirts etc. on the floor, pour the detergent on it, take a shower, stomping on the laundry all the time, then when you were done with the shower, rinse the laundry with the hand-held shower head. Wring it out, and roll it in a big towel, stomp on the roll, unroll it and hang it up. Easy!

Another outstanding dinner, and out on the front deck to watch the river go by.

* - It occurs to me that this may not be a phrase that is universally understood.  The Google AI summary says it better than I could:

"Say Their Names" is a phrase used to memorialize individuals, particularly Black people, who have been killed by police or in other acts of violence. It's a call to action to remember their lives, acknowledge the circumstances of their deaths, and work towards justice and change. The phrase has become a rallying cry in movements for racial justice and police reform. 

Google the phrase yourself for a really wide variety of ways** this can be a powerful message.  It can be applied to any injustice, where human beings are damaged or destroyed in order to minimalize them, invalidate them, express contempt for them, eliminate them - to rob them of their real humanity.  Massacres of Native Americans, the Eastern European Jewish pogroms, the Latin American desaparacidos, the Gaza genocide, the Holocaust - the point of saying their names is to give them back their identity, their humanity, to say that they have lived and that they have been overtaken by evil - but not forgotten.

In Germany, they say their names in a very permanent, moving way.

** - My favorite:  "Hell You Talmbout," by Janelle Monáe, and popularized by David Byrne in his musical "American Utopia" (Prime).