Erin the Tear and the Smile, has its counterpart in sentimental songs about the Rhine. "If I'm going to marry, it has to be a girl from the Rhine: and "Give my best to the blond kid on the Rhine." Then there's "Back on the Rhine and you think the whole world is yours." Free translations, but you get the drift. And, of course, Heinrich Heine's famous poem about the Loreley, jazzed up on a tape being sold on the ship. An old stager told the rest of the people on board that, come autumn and the wine festivals, it's all fairy lights at night and oom-pah-pah and dancing and drinking in wine villages.
As you lie in your cabin for an afternoon rest, there are places where the vineyards come down so steeply that they're almost in the cabin with you. You would swear that men couldn't tend them except on their hands and knees. Yet immediately two men come into view, spraying away, standing up. Farther along, the rock formation changes, and instead of the vines running downhill to you, they follow lines parallel to the river. All around you are castles ruined and castles standing. A fish jumps suddenly: a small meeting of interests between the two countries comes to mind. Did not some fishery owner, maybe a century ago, get ova or fingerlings from Germany to help restock an exhausted lake or river. And did Ireland not, in recent times, reciprocate when asked for similar help. Most likely this would be for tributaries of the Rhine. Someone will know and tell us.
You cannot forget the beauty and the tremor of another kind. Ludwigshafen/Mannhein presents a gleaming, most colourful picture of modern industry, all colours and shining metal pipes that twist and turn like snakes. This is maybe a touch of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times film with the little man running frantically from one lever to another, steam jetting out, or threatening to, and disaster ever expected. So clean-looking in the sunshine; perhaps deadly. Then there is Biblis, according to Baedeker "once a country village, (fruit and vegetable growing), now an industrial town with one of the largest atomic power stations in the world (Unit A 1145 MW, Unit B 1240 MW; Unit C, 1228 MW under construction.)" Right near the bank of the river and downstream is a trail of foam. "Maybe from the hot water" ventures one equally ignorant.
The river varies in width from about 200 metres, through stages of 300, 400, 500 and becomes 1,000 meters wide at Hoek van Holland. Again it's Baedeker who tells us that this river is by far the most abundantly flowing in Central Europe, and the volume of water flowing is relatively regular over the year.
So now, back to Ireland and the sweetly odious smell of slurry. Y