From ocean to river

My trip to Berlin was enjoyable in part because I got to travel by train (through very beautiful scenery but impossible to get a good picture of)…

…and by ferry from Oslo down to Copenhagen (and home again from Kiel). I am used to thinking of international ferry trips from Bergen which have to cross the open and often mean North Sea, whether headed for Newcastle or Hirtshals (look 'em up). It finally dawned on me that the shelter of Denmark makes the ferry lines from Oslo down to the continent more comfortable. Here we are passing by the nuclear power plant Barsebäck, on Sweden's shore.

We drove from Copenhagen down to the end of Falsen, and from there took a ferry to Rostock, in Germany. Rostock would have been in the former East-Germany (DDR). It was already late in the afternoon and we didn't arrive in Dresden until around 8:30 pm. To the hotel's credit, we were served a delicious, fresh and hot dinner.

The next day we were on a bus tour of Dresden in the morning, and our guide had us stop on the banks of the river Elbe. Yes, there is a river somewhere in the following photos:

The wide and beautiful meadow we were standing on functions as a flood barrier. The Elbe was one of the rivers that went over its banks during the flooding in 2002.

As you look across the Elbe at what look like incredibly grand homes, but at the time they were built were considered modest (that decadent 18th century…), you can get a feel for what attracted so many artists to the area during the early 1800's. These close-ups show the variation in building style (one was inspired by English Tudor) and their vineyards. The funny blue stuff is probably some kind of plastic covering.

Oh, OK. You want to see some actual water. Fine. Here's one view of the river Elbe while we were still "in town":

And here is the view from our hotel, which was "in town", too, but outside the inner "altstadt" - the old city. We were about 4 km farther west by a different bend in the river, still in "altstadt" but no longer the inner one:

We were right near a rowing club, and several of us thought the river looked very inviting.