Ulrike Schäfer is standing with a friend on the banks of the Rhine and taking a photo.

No selfie, what stretches out in front of her is more interesting.

Actually, she knows the place here in Bingen only too well.

To her left, the Nahe flows into the Rhine, and she lives on the small tributary.

But she has seldom seen rivers like this.

“I will show the picture to my family.

They like to come here and will be amazed,” she says.

The 66-year-old woman often spends time here with her grandchildren.

"We enjoy the wind and the sun and the water - if it's there." Her friend interrupts her: "It's scary."

Kim Maurus

volunteer.

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The air in Bingen this afternoon is oppressively hot, the thermometer shows 32.5 degrees.

It hasn't really rained here in Rheinhessen for weeks.

The river promenade offers a postcard view of the Rüdesheim vineyards on the other side of the Rhine.

But the panorama doesn't look really nice.

"It's quite brown," says Schäfer.

"Normally, when we sit here in summer, it's green slopes."

"It's scary"

There is also a lot going on on the Bingen promenade during the week.

Older people go for a walk in groups, cyclists ring their bells past pedestrians, dishes rattle through the kitchen window in the beer garden.

But the benches on the shore, which are in the sun, remain empty.

And you wait in vain for a breeze blowing from the water.

The Rhine looks like someone generously rained stones on it.

Due to the low water level, small islands have formed, and many a walker climbs on them.

A few tourist boats chug through the deep Rhine fairway, where cargo ships normally operate every minute.

But even they can no longer stop everywhere.

Uwe Giehmann is sitting in the ticket booth of the Bingen-Rüdesheimer shipping company.

It's 4:30 p.m., closing time.

"We were still driving three years ago," he says.

It was dry then too.

The company's four ships have a relatively shallow draft.

"Only our largest ship was no longer sailing at the time, it had a draft of 1.45 meters," says Giehmann.

A few centimeters make all the difference, the company's three smaller ships protrude only 1.20 to 1.25 meters into the water.

A competitor with larger ships has already had to stop operations.

Unusual timing for drought

However, this year the "Bingen-Rüdesheimer" will not be able to do without tutoring and restrictions.

The place at your pier in Bacharach a little further downstream is currently being dredged, as Giehmann reports.

The company has already installed an additional floating island in St. Goarshausen so that it can continue to moor.

And five of the eleven piers are closed.

"We're touching ground there, we can't do anything." The timing of the drought was particularly unusual.

It used to be so dry in October, a few days before the end of the season.

The passengers supposedly don't mind.

“They drive like the great ones at the moment,” he says, also because nothing has happened for so long because of Corona.

And: “Almost everyone is still on vacation.

The foreign tourists want to get on the ship anyway.

I mean: Where is it nicer than on the Middle Rhine?” A full tourist ship is just arriving at a landing stage, and the disembarking passengers struggle up the jetty for minutes.

Most speak English.

The heat seems to bother them more than the dry Rhine.

"Let's wait here," says a woman, pulling an elderly lady into the shade.