Rain

June 1

Well, we have the answer . . . We've been saying each morning since we arrived in England April 1st, waking to yet another rainy day, where is all this water going to go?

It was going here to the Neckar. 

This was the scene from our balcony this morning.  Last night, the row of trees stood on the bank of the Neckar, with a lawn, flowerbeds and a broad pedestrian/bicycle lane where  John and I strolled (under umbrellas: we haven't taken a walk without these on the entire trip.)

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Same scene yesterday:















And this is what it sounded like:

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It's clear that flooded streets aren't that unusual.  Last night police were placing these Hoch Wasser  (High Water) signs and the handy temporary barriers at several low places; today they simply moved them higher.  The faint figure in the background is John (under umbrella) trying to find the place where we parked for supper last night. 

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Yes! There it was: there's a little cafe just out of the picture to the left and our car was parked beside what was a fairly tall bush, top right.  We were safely back at our hotel  high above the river long before the water rose.  We went back today to see if the cafe owner was right when he said water never flooded HIS street.

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This duck is napping where we walked yesterday.

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We drove a few miles downstream to see the high water at Heidelberg: the ground floor was flooded in these houses beside the famous bridge.

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Those are sandbags beside the house in the center.  Can you make out the ruined castle through the rain?

"Through the rain" is mostly how we've seen England, France, Switzerland and Germany this spring. Such sad biergartens here, chairs upturned on the table tops,  vines on overhead trellises dripping water.  John and I have stopped taking photos of ourselves because we can't stand one more of me in that brown cap and John in his winter coat.  But gray weather notwithstanding  (it's prolonged the spring so that we saw tulips yesterday!) we wouldn't rather be doing anything else than taking this rambling trip . . .

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