{"id":4965,"date":"2016-06-21T03:32:32","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T17:32:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/?p=4965"},"modified":"2025-12-13T05:58:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T05:58:12","slug":"shifting-borders-and-seriously-shifting-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/2016\/06\/21\/shifting-borders-and-seriously-shifting-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Shifting Borders and Seriously Shifting Water"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yet another glorious day to be thankful<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Some
Some lovely windows in Stein am Rhein<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Monday was one of those memorable days; both confusing and amazing. We left Camping Gaienhofen in Germany and drove into Switzerland to spend a couple of hours dawdling around Stein Am Rhein, a town full of beautifully painted buildings.\u00a0 When we strolled down to the edge of the lake, we realised how full the Bodensee and the Rhine River currently are.\u00a0 The water was lapping across the promenade and looked like it had recently been a lot higher.\u00a0 This part of Europe has had so much rain over the last few months and as we know, it is still coming down, quite a bit.\u00a0 It must have been awful living here through the floods but, selfishly for us, it turned into a bonus in the afternoon\u2026..<\/p>\n

\"Rodney
Rodney on the Rhein<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Rathausplatz
Rathausplatz in Stein am Rhein<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The
The walls of the buildings are just so beautifully painted in Stein am Rhein<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The
The Untertor in Stein am Rhein<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

When we left Stein Am Rhein we could have taken the road to Schaffhausen that stayed on the north side of the Rhine and this would have meant that we would have gone from Germany to Switzerland, to Germany, to Switzerland, to Germany, to Switzerland to get to our afternoon destination.\u00a0 But we decided to cross the Rhine at Hemishofen and stay in Switzerland.\u00a0 We were completely tangled up in borders, so many borders, there seems to be no sense in where the line wriggles around in this area; it certainly doesn\u2019t follow the Rhine.\u00a0 In some sections, Switzerland owns both sides of the river and on other sections Germany has one side and Switzerland has the opposite bank.\u00a0 It\u2019s all very confusing.\u00a0 Later in the day, we headed south from Dachsen to buy some GPL for Eileen, which did take us into Germany again, after which we crossed back into Switzerland and then back in to Germany.\u00a0 All day we kept forgetting which country we were in, but it didn\u2019t really matter because the sun was shining and it was an absolutely perfect day to visit the Rhine Falls.<\/p>\n

\"
Schaffhausen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

I really can\u2019t do any justice to describe the formidable and impressive power of nature that we were staring at.\u00a0 Because of the excessive rain of late, it was flowing at close to one million litres per second which, looking at their records, is up there with some of the highest.\u00a0 It was fantastically, mesmerising to watch that enormous volume of water thundering below our feet.<\/p>\n

\"Quick
Quick I’m getting wet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The
The mighty Rhine Falls<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

We dawdled about here and there, constantly watching the powerful movement of water forcefully rushing past us and having to shout to hear each other over the noise of the mighty falls.\u00a0 There are numerous viewpoints, above, below, beside and at times it does feel dangerously close; you have to hope they designed and maintain those lookouts that are really, really close!\u00a0 We must have stayed there for at least two hours and every minute was enticing.<\/p>\n

\"Viewing
Viewing platform on the southern side of the Rhine Falls<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

The Rhine Falls from the north side<\/p>\n

\"Our
Our lunchtime view of the Rhine Falls<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

As we drove north through Germany, we crossed vibrant green pastures set on undulating slopes, dotted with farms and small patches of woodland.\u00a0 We stopped for the night at the appropriately named Camping Rothaus in \u2026..\u00a0 Rothaus and looked through all our photos to relive what we had seen that day, another \u2018Wow\u2019 on this year\u2019s trip.<\/p>\n

\"Looking
Looking back at Schloss Laufen on the southern side of the Rhine Falls<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

We were now in the Schwarzwald, Black Forest, but it wasn\u2019t really a black forest, more of a soggy, green and brown forest.\u00a0 There were no gateaux, amongst the pine trees and not a cherry in sight, just low drizzly clouds and damp cows laying down in wet fields.\u00a0 Tall purple lupins made a valiant attempt to add colour to a very grey drizzly day, but they couldn\u2019t make the showery weather go away. For our picnic lunch we found a layby above a valley so green that even in the rain it seemed to glow like an emerald.<\/p>\n

\"
How green is green, even under heavy clouds?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Leaving the Black Forest, we were effortlessly gliding along on smooth, signposted roads; it was quite discombobulating after what we\u2019ve got used to in Italy.\u00a0 Ahh the efficiency of the Germans, you\u2019re making Eileen happy, she really doesn\u2019t miss those bande rumorose (rumble strips), the curse of campervans.\u00a0 We drove through the city of Freiburg Im Breisgau, which looked quite nice, but we were running a bit short on time and parking for a campervan was looking impossible.\u00a0 So, we continued west, crossed the Rhine yet again, and ended up in France.\u00a0 Well we think we\u2019re in France, it looks like Germany; we\u2019re in the Alsace.<\/p>\n

\"A
A jeweller’s sign in Stein am Rhein<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yet another glorious day to be thankful   Monday was one of those memorable days; both confusing and amazing. We left Camping Gaienhofen in Germany and drove into Switzerland to spend a couple of hours dawdling around Stein Am Rhein, a town full of beautifully painted buildings.\u00a0 When we strolled down to the edge of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4969,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8215,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4965\/revisions\/8215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}