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Normally on the Rhine, you’d see wall-to-wall barges and lighters at this point. (This is from the North railway bridge, linking Mainz with those rascals across the river.)
But it’s a bit quiet around here at the moment.
The captain of a container barge downriver close to Cologne pulled a fairly rapid U-turn in mid-river on Sunday, dumping 30 or so containers into the river.
Some merrily bobbed around like corks, some headed straight for the bottom, some floated around for a bit, got tired and submerged themselves elsewhere. 3 appear to have dissolved. Not to be found.
Not an easy job retrieving them. The current really zips along and they’re setting up deflector shields (What? Where’s Dr. Spock when we need him…?) to let the divers work underwater to attach cables without getting flushed away down to Rotterdam.
So there’s not a lot of traffic on the river at the moment.
None, actually.
Now would be a good time to go for a swim…
Mainz Daily Photo 
>An unusually quiet river is right! It’s lovely, tho, when that happens. What was in the containers?? Something lethal–wouldn’t swim there in any case, I think.