The Rhine is high but we're holding on....
 

...to borrow from a Blondie song...

All the rain has, predictably, let to some flooding risks in German-speaking Switzerland...sandbags are out in parts of Klein Basel. Check out the photos here.
http://www.20min.ch/ro/news/suisse/s...eluge-14658587

I was on some of the Rhine bridges in Basel this afternoon shooting photos and videos. The river is fast and furious, lots of debris.

Stark bleiben!

Not my Bern!

Thanks for sharing those.

We were just in Prague and Passau on a river cruise a couple of weeks ago and now they are under water. One of the problems of living in a river town I imagine.

How said. Love Stein am Rhein.

I wonder if this is going to ultimately affect Rhine river cruises.

Dukey, it doesn't look like the Rhine is affected at this point.

We have friends currently on a river cruise on the Elbe. Their boat has had a difficult time finding places to dock and had to change the location point at the end of their cruise near Prague. I'm sure they will have many stories to tell us about their time on the Elbe. Deborah

The Rhine, Neckar and Main rivers have all been affected.

"German news agency DPA reported that large stretches of the Rhine, Main and Neckar rivers have been closed to ship traffic."

"With more flooding expected on the Rhine river between western German cities of Bingen and Bonn, shipping on the waterway will be banned Sunday evening, the Rhineland-Palatinate flood warning centre said.

"We only expect waters to peak on June 4 (Tuesday)," a spokesman said. "Until then levels will continue to rise."

Switzerland already suspended shipping along a 30-kilometre stretch of the Rhine after officials in Basel reported it had reached a critical level of 8.3 metres.

The floods followed the second-wettest May in 130 years, the German weather service said. Germany's soil is moister than at any time in the last 50 years, it said."

Yes, I was surprised to read the post above that the Rhine had not been affected. I could see the effects first-hand when I was in the center of Basel on Saturday -- no shipping traffic, no access to the lower sidewalks along the Rhine (the "upper" sidewalks are still accessible). The Birs river flowing into the Rhine is also very high.

If we start getting significant snowmelt (now that the weather is finally warming up), the waters could remain high for a while.

Sorry, I could not find any reference to flooding on the Rhine when I googled. My mistake. I should have known better.

Spring time flooding seems to be a regular occurrence in some areas. We ran into it back in 2002 in Lucerne. Over the past few years, we had stopped traveling in May and now travel mostly in September.

I guess we were very lucky to have taken our cruise a couple of weeks ago. Close call.