hine river transformed into nearly pristine water
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hine River Transformed Into Nearly Pristine Water StreamEXPLORE GERMANY'S RIVERS
1 Rhine River Transformed Into Nearly Pristine Water Stream
2 A River Runs Through It
3 Discovering the Altmhl Valley
4 A Cycle Trip and Tipple Along the Moselle
5 A Picturesque Pedal Down the Rhine
6 Cruising Germany's Great Rivers
The Rhine is the longest river within Germany and is known for its beauty, with medieval
castles and lovely wine villages along its banks. But it didn't used to be that way. For a
long time, it was heavily polluted.
Part of the RhineRiver is a UNESCO
Cultural Heritage
site
People used to
gravitate toward the
Rhine River for all
sorts of play -- even
swimming despite
the dangerous
currents. Legend has it that in winter, part of the Rhine used to freeze over, and people
would walk across the mighty waterway.
The river begins in Switzerland. Passing through the city of Basel, it forms the border
between Germany and France, flows into Germany and the Netherlands and ends in the
North Sea.
But in the wake of an environmental disaster 20 years ago in Switzerland, many stayed
away from the water, with experts wondering if it would ever be clean again. At a recent
press conference, an international commission said the Rhine is a "living" river once
more.
Polluted with pesticides
In 1986, a fire broke out in a production plant storage room at the pharmaceutical
company Sandoz in the Swiss city of Basel. As a result, huge amounts of pesticides were
released into the Upper Rhine, killing a multitude of fish and micro-organisms.
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The accident turned the river into Europe's biggest sewer.
Fritz Holzwarth, head of the Bonn-based International Commission for the Protection of
the Rhine, said that it was this catastrophe that triggered concern about the river's health.
"We can say that the Sandoz incident was basically the worst possible scenario at the time
so it contributed a great deal to making the protection of water an important issue in
politics," he said.
A huge task
Fairy-tale beauty
along the
waterway's twists
and turns
It would take a lot
of effort before the
river could be
transformed into a
place where people
could swim again.
Ultimately, it was pressure from an outraged public that forced politicians to take fast
action.
Since then, investments in industrial and public water purification plants have amounted
to 60 billion euros (over $75 billion), with local governments investing a yearly amount
of one billion euros in water purification.
The risk of another dramatic accident has been minimized since the companies located
along the Rhine have taken precautions, Holzwarth said, adding that a pro-active
approach is necessary to keep the river clean.
"The International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine, together with those who
live near the river's banks, want to advance a perspective that allows people to live with
and enjoy the river," he said. "We want to include the river in our lives and in those of our
children," he added.To that end, a 320-kilometer-long (nearly 200-mile) hiking trail called the Rheinsteig was
recently completed between Bonn and Koblenz.
In addition, the Rhine, Europe's most densely populated river, is a UNESCO World
Heritage Site. It has become a home again to over 60 different species of fish.DW.DE
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The Rhine River's Gold RushNORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST: GERMANY'S FOUR CORNERS
1 Northern Germany's Literary Houses
2 Platt and Proud
3 Sylt: In Winter, a Mellower Pleasure
4 More Beach up North
5 Climbing the Windmills of Schleswig-Holstein
6 Rhine River Transformed Into Nearly Pristine Water Stream
7 The Rhine River's Gold Rush
8 The Business of Carnival
9 Vogelsang Castle: In the Shadow of the Third Reich
10 Eastern German Town Boasts Cutting-Edge Technology
11 Blame it On the Bratwurst
12 Santa's Other Workshop: Thuringia
13 Six Centuries of Sweet Success
14 Catch a Wave in Germany's California
15 Neuschwanstein Castle Modernized for Visitors
16 Reinventing the Bavarian Myth
17 Bavaria Says "Gr Gott" in Chinese
Neuenburg has the mood of a gold rush on Saturdays. That's when amateur treasure
seekers wade into the Rhine River and pan for gold. With a little luck, they bring slivers
of the precious metal home with them.
Gold rush on the
Rhine
Neuenburg, a city
on the Rhine River,
has the mood of a
gold rush town on
Saturdays. That's
when amateur
treasure seekers
wade into the Rhine to learn the art of panning for gold.
With a little luck, at the end of the day they bring precious metal back home with them.
A little known fact: There really is gold in Germany's Rhine. You're not likely to find
coins or goblets, "but one is guaranteed to find at least little flecks of gold," said hobby
gold prospector Franz-Josef Andorf.
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In Neuenburg, Andorf teaches a class for locals and tourists interested in gold panning.
A golden opportunity
Small flecks of gold
found in the Rhine
River
"This is a totally
thrilling feeling,"
said Helga Maier-
Garlipp, who is
taking her first
course with Andorf.
She's lucky:
standing at the bank of the Rhine, her hand holds several wafer-thin gold flecks.
The Rhine deposits more gold in Neuenburg than in the rest of Germany, Mayor Joachim
Schuster says with pride. The precious metal comes from a geological formation in
Switzerland and gets moved down several rivers to the Rhine. The quantity of gold is
small, there's nowhere near enough to cause a gold rush like in California or Australia.
Yet what's there has been keeping people hunting for hundreds of years.
Gold flecks can be found in river detritus that gets agitated and washed up during high
water, Andorf said. To search for the gold, his students dig up the hardened riverbed with
picks and shovels. Andorf's students put the material through a wash pan. The sand gets
washed out, leaving hard minerals and gold in the bottom of the container.
All that glitters is not gold
This gold nugget
was found in
Switzerland
The motion needed
for panning the
gold is not so easyand requires
practice, Andorf
said. Also, novices
often get tricked by
pyrite. The so-called fool's gold glitters in the pan and sometimes causes premature
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celebrations.
"When you can't split the piece with your thumbnail, then it is really gold," Andorf told
his students. The gold slivers they find in the Rhine are, for the most part, smaller than a
millimeter.
Andorf's course is organized as a continuing education program for people who want to
pursue gold panning as a hobby. The class is not meant for professional treasure seekers.DW.DE
From the Pen to the Pitch: World Literature Meets SoccerKICKING OFF WITH CULTURE
1 Germany Pulls Out All The Stops For Cultural World Cup
2 World Cup Gala Gets the Ax3 From the Pen to the Pitch: World Literature Meets Soccer
4 Germany Plans Star-Studded Opening Gala For World Cup
5 Waiting for the World Cup Tourists
6 Off the Pitch, Into the Concert Hall
7 Hip-Hop Stars Face Off in Leipzig
8 Gods and Hooligans Clash in Soccer Opera
The author crafting pitch-perfect prose and the soccer player setting up a picture-perfect
goal might seem like diametric opposites. But they have more in common than you'd
think, as a recent symposium in Berlin showed.
A perfect match?
Books and World
Cup mascot Goleo
You can almost be
certain that the last
thing on soccer
fans' minds as their
team scores a
winning goal is
sitting down in a quiet corner with a good book. Many might argue that the worlds of
literature and soccer are different planets, indeed maybe in different galaxies.
But a group of highly renowned authors who gathered in Berlin this weekend would beg
to differ. For them, soccer is not only a sport that they love -- it and everything around it
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are phenomena which inform their work.
Culture Minister
Bernd Neumann
opens the literaure
summit in Berlin
As part of the 2006
World Cup's
cultural program,
more than a dozen
authors from four
continents came to
Berlin to talk about where literature and soccer intersect, and how their own experiences
with the sport had influenced their lives and their writing.
The symposium, called "Headers: International Literature Meets International Soccer,"
was touted as a mini-summit of world literature, held appropriately enough at Berlin's
Museum of Communication. Indeed, some big names did come out for a kind of two-day
all-star game, but one that was conducted in the head rather than on the playing field.
The personal and the political
Much has been written about the intellectualization of the sport in the lead-up to this
summer's World Cup. Far from being the domain of beer-swilling thugs with limited
brain power, football has become acceptable in polite society, even in intellectual and
artistic circles.
Former soccer star
Franz Beckenbauer
with a print of him
done by Andy
Warhol
There was even an
exhibition devotedto visual artists'
take on "the
beautiful game"
which just finished its run at a museum in Berlin.
But it wasn't always so, according to several writers who participated in the symposium's
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panel discussions. South Korean author Hwang Chi-Woo, of his country's most well-
known poets, said many intellectuals used to have a schizophrenic relationship with
soccer and often remained in the closet as far as their appreciation for the game went.
"At home, we watched, and we were passionate about the game," he said. "But in public,
we shied away from it. We did not want to be seen as soccer fans."
For him, there were political reasons for doing so, since under South Korea's military
dictatorship, which only collapsed in 1992, soccer was used to manipulate the masses,
and was seen by the intelligentsia as a control mechanism best avoided.
Russian author
Victor Yerofeyev,
far right, makes a
point at the FIFA
literature event
For Russian
novelist and
essayist Victor
Yerofeyev, his
relationship with
soccer under the Soviet regime was similar. Then, Russian soccer was seen as something
like a collective factory, and had a distinctly militaristic nature to it. Many Russians who
detested those aspects of Soviet life rooted for the other side whenever the national team
played as a way of protest.
But at the same time, they loved the game, partly for the same reason they loved
literature.
"Books and soccer were the two ways to escape the reality of the everyday," he said.
Stories and change
For Swedish superstar author Henning Mankell, soccer shares with literature the ability to
tell a story.
Swedish authorHenning Mankell
He recounted a
game he saw in
Mozambique that
changed his view of
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the game forever. It was 15 years ago at the conclusion of a brutal civil war there. One
attempt to get the two sides of the conflict to reconcile was to arrange a soccer match
between two teams of men who had committed atrocities in the war.
As Mankell watched these men play, he said they began to see each other differently than
they had before, realizing they could solve their conflicts in a way that did not involve
violence.
"Drama, literature and soccer are about the same thing, conflict, contradictions and
finally, solving problems," Mankell said. "That's what the author has to do, and the soccer
player does as well. And both have to make it interesting, otherwise no one will watch the
game and no one will read the book."
Place of transgression
One of the topics that came up several times was that of soccer's underbelly: the dark
sides of the game, be it hooliganism, racism or general intolerance and violence against
opposing sides.
The literature
summit was held in
the atrium of the
Museum for
Communication
For Tim Parks, a
British novelist who
lives in Italy and
wrote a popular
book recounting his
travels with Hellas Verona club, soccer, like literature, can be a place of transgression,
where the darker side of human nature finds an outlet.
"People go to stadiums to experience the emotion of collective delirium, to experience a
place of danger," he said.
Since matches are like "mini-wars," they let people lose themselves in a side ofthemselves that modern society tells them to keep bottled up.
"When we see games with no aggression, we hate those games," he said.
It's a rich field for literature, he said. His book, A Season with Verona, details how a local
soccer team works, how its players and its hard-core fans live, and the dynamics between
all participants at games that, even in Italy, have a reputation for being explosive affairs.
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"What's most interesting for us authors is not actually the game itself, but what's
happening all around," he said, since the increasing amount of good writing about soccer
"starts where the game on the field ends."DW.DE
Rejuvenating The Rhine River
A German state plans to earmark a part of the Rhine river as a special protection zone to
meet EU requirements on preserving the natural habitat. But the move has elicited mixed
reactions.
The Rhine is one of
Germany's mostpicturesque
waterways
Germany's most
treasured waterway
for both tourists and
Germans alike was
treated like a
stepchild during the
first three-quarters of the 20th century.
From the upper reaches of the river in Switzerland and southern Germany to its delta in
the Netherlands, the Rhine was used as a dumping ground by both industries and cities.
But it wasn't until 1986 when the Sandoz chemical spill in Basel, Switzerland, happened,
that measures were at last taken to clean up one of Europe's most scenic rivers. Two
decades ago, it would have been unthinkable to eat fish and other marine animals caught
in the river. Nowadays, migratory species such as salmon have not only reappeared but
are surviving in the Rhine.
Klaus Markgraf-Mau a Rhine River expert from NABU, a German conservation group,
is pleased that even fishermen are coming back.
"Everyone along the Rhine who is engaged in environmental aspects is proud to have
them back because it's a good sign concerning the water quality," Markgraf-Mau said.
Satisfying EU requirements
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The Rhine,
Germany's largest
river, needs to be
better protected
While
environmentalists
are happy that the
Rhine is in such
good condition and
that fish like
salmon and shad are returning to its waters, the EU wants further protection for the
waterway.
In 1992, lawmakers in Brussels passed the Flora, Fauna, Habitat directive, or FFH. By
signing on to the FFH, EU countries promise to preserve and protect natural habitats,
including rivers, lakes and streams, within some four million square kilometers (1.5
million square miles) of Europe.
But deciding what exactly should be protected is a matter of national or local sovereignty.
In Germany, individual states are held responsible. The environmental ministry of North-
Rhine Westphalia has proposed to set aside 30 percent of the Rhine River under the FFH
directive.
"The purpose is to determine and create the habitats for rare fish," said Markus Fliege, a
ministry spokesperson. "We have marked out a few fish sanctuaries that we believe and
that experts also believe to be sufficient and that will protect and sustain the habitats in
question."
Too little or too much?
The Rhine is
Germany's most
important
thoroughfares forships
For the time being,
the proposal of
North Rhine-
Westphalia's
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government's looks set to be approved by the EU. But it has been criticized by shipping
companies on the one hand as being excessive, and on the other by environmentalists
who say it doesn't go far enough.
"The scientific advisors of the EU have hinted that our recommendations will be
accepted," Fliege said. "We have heard that some environmentalists as well as some
business associations are not 100 percent satisfied with this. But this simply confirms that
our solution lies in-between and is a sensible one."
Politics is almost always a matter of compromise, and the current center-right
government in Dsseldorf prides itself on the fact that its proposal goes further than that
of its predecessors which included the environmental Greens.
Nevertheless, NABU expert Markgraf-Mau, who jointly heads a project to promote the
habitat along and on Germany's longest river, called "Living Rhine", points to holes in the
proposals.
"It covers only a small part of the habitat," he said. "The most important part that is
missing the central part of the river, the shipping channel itself, because nowadays we
have only parts on both sides, the river banks."
Concrete walls
According to conservationists, the situation in the central part of the Rhine is where the
crux of the problem is. Fish species that live on the bottom of the shipping channels will
pay the price and lose valuable habitats should the river need to be dredged in the future
-- and this may be unavoidable.
Rows of cars on a
cargo ship on the
Rhine
But even in areas
other than the
shipping channels,
the Rhine flows
through a man-made straitjacket of
embankments and
concrete walls, mostly past cities and towns. And it's the areas where these walls are of
little use that should be given priority.
"The goal of our project, 'Living Rhine,' is to put concrete out of the bank and to have
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more space for dynamics along the river," Markgraf-Mau said.DW.DE
Cruising Germany's Great RiversEXPLORE GERMANY'S RIVERS
1 Rhine River Transformed Into Nearly Pristine Water Stream
2 A River Runs Through It
3 Discovering the Altmhl Valley
4 A Cycle Trip and Tipple Along the Moselle
5 A Picturesque Pedal Down the Rhine
6 Cruising Germany's Great Rivers
Looking to experience the charm and variety of Germany without working too hard at it?
You may want to consider a river cruise. Just sit back, relax, and watch thousands ofyears of history glide by.
The Elbe River runs
from Hamburg,
through Magdeburg
to the Czech border
Its a typical case of
the travelers blues:
Your feet hurt fromtramping around
too many medieval
churches. A bus
tour? Too claustrophobic. And cycling would be too much like hard work. Lucky for you
there's another way to visit Germany: floating along on its waterways.
Germany has more than 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) of interconnected rivers, canals
and lakes whose waters are plied by barges and sailboats, cruise ships and kayaks. The
quaint tourist centers people visit today grew up along those routes centuries ago, but the
Rhine and Elbe rivers are still busy transport waterways, crucial to German industry and
agriculture.
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Rhein mit Loreley
in St. Goarshausen
One of the great
pleasures of the
cruise experience is
sitting back and
taking it all in
sipping a Riesling
or Pilsner while
watching the
scenery go by. But a river cruise doesnt need to be an entirely passive experience. There
are plenty of chances to stop and visit the castles, palaces and vineyards dotting the banks
of the main tourist rivers: the Rhine, Weser, Danube, and Mosel.
River of painters and poets
Hands down, Germany's most famous river is the Rhine. Although it has inspired painters
and poets for centuries, the Romantics of the mid-19th century drew particular inspiration
from its dramatic beauty. They made the Legend of the Lorelei based on a towering cliff
along the Rhine into one of their key symbols. According to the myth, a maiden named
Lorelei sat upon a cliff at the rivers narrowest, deepest and swiftest point. She combed
her golden hair and bewitched the hearts of sailors with her singing. When they looked up
at the irresistible siren, their boats would crash and sink.
Should your modern-day cruise ship manage to get past the Lorelei unscathed (chances
are better these days, since the once-dangerous passage is now clearly marked with
buoys) it's worth taking some time to explore the sides of the valley.
At Frankfurt an der
Oder, visitors can
cross the Oder
River to the Polish
town of SlubiceLong stretches of
the Rhines banks
are covered with
terraced vineyards,
and picturesque
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castles perch on hilltops. The valleys footpaths and trails offer magnificent views,
including well-marked tourist roads such as the winding Lorelei Castle Road and the
Rhine Wine Trail.
The area is a wine lovers dream, with endless opportunities to tour wineries, attend
tastings, and take courses on the wines and foods of the regions. A busy tourist area, the
Rhine Valley has some of the best-appointed hotels in the country and fine restaurants
to go with them.
Gateway to history
If you are as interested in history as you are in wine, you might prefer a trip down the
Danube. The Danube (which, just to make things clear, isnt blue) is Europes second-
longest river. It doesn't have the dramatic scenery or castles of the Rhine, but it's worth
exploring for its own quiet charm and the traces of its varied, exotic history.
The Romans left their mark there, and a trip down the river can take you from Germanys
best preserved medieval city, Regensburg, to Passau, which lies at the confluence of the
Danube, Inn and Ilz rivers. From there you slip downstream beyond the German border to
Vienna and Budapest, past the castles, palaces and vineyards of central Europe.
Nature and Culture
The Spree River in
Berlin runs past the
Museum Island
with the Bode
Museum and the
Pergamonmuseum
The river Oder is
Germany's
easternmost river,
and to travel along
it is to tread the line between Germany and Poland. The Oder Valleys isolation under the
GDR left it nearly undisturbed by human activity, and today it is known for its marshesand lakes dotted with untouched villages that are unlike anything in western Germany.
You pass through wildlife-rich natural parks like the Lower Oder Valley National Park
and the Oderbruch marshlands.
Of course, the Polish border region is also a must for World War II buffs the place
where the Russians broke through the German lines to start the final assault on Berlin.
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If you're feeling really ambitious, and you have a lot of time, you can take a cruise on the
Elbe from Magdeburg to Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. The Elbe is the most
important river linking southeastern Europe with northeastern Europe. From its birthplace
in the Czech Republic to the point where it sinks into the North Sea, in Hamburg, the
Elbe is over 1,000 kilometers long.
The Elbe passes through varied and distinct landscapes, starting with a sandstone massif
and running through vineyards to end up in meadow lowlands. Located on the banks of
the Elbe are towns like Dessau, home to the famous Bauhaus school of architects;
Luther's former home Wittenberg, and Meien, famous for its porcelain. The baroque city
of Dresden (photo), capital of Saxony, also lies on the banks of the Elbe.
Meeting up with the Brothers Grimm
Fans of German fairy tales will get a lot out of cruising the Weser, the birthplace of the
Brothers Grimm and inspiration for some of their best-known stories. Germanys Fairy
Tale Road, with its half-timbered towns and castles, follows the course of the river.
Travelers can check in with childhood friends such as Cinderella (in Polle), Hansel and
Gretel (in Hxter), and the Pied Piper of Hamelin (Hameln).
Dresden on the
Elbe River is one of
Germany's
architectural gems
After flowing
through wide
stretches of
farmland, the Weser
reaches Bremen, a
Hanseatic port city
(which was also the destination of choice for the four hopeful characters in the Grimm
story The Bremen Town Musicians. Despite fierce competition from Hamburg, Bremen
has been able to hold its own among German North Sea ports, albeit on a smaller scale.City river tours
Of course, if you dont have several days to let the country float by you, a short day
cruise might be more to your liking. Most of Germanys big cities are perched on the
banks of a river: Hamburg on the Elbe, Cologne on the Rhine, Munich on the Isar, and
Berlin on the Spree (photo of Museum Island). They all offer short jaunts up and down
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the waterways, past historical sites and beautiful landscapes. And most can be booked for
an hour or two, just long enough to allow you to sit back and rest your weary feet, take in
a refreshing summer breeze, and enjoy seeing Germany from a different perspective.
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